Life heuristics, big models and generalizations that act as my guiding light in real world situations
Hello my lovely friend, I know almost all of you like 20 something subs. It is very selective group who reads this whimsical nonsense I write.
Can you name some big reusable golden nuggets that guide you in life often? Some navigational heuristics that help you make up your mind, and leads the way on many occasion? Here’s some of mine in form of self-dialog (they don’t appear in this form in my head):
“This sounds like a project with big potential upside, it’s very uncertain and ambitious, but we never know what kind of structures it could nucleate. Let’s hop on this!”
(An optimistic generalization of embracing projects even with high uncertainty, because of the conceptualization that under all the complexity and noise can lie something beautiful, which we simply cannot see yet.")
“This stuff I’m reading is stimulating to the mind, but how could this ever apply or relate to things I do?”
(A generalization about applicability of knowledge, which should be the big guiding light in knowledge selection.)
“Wait couple seconds before you speak, after he’s finished with his statement.”
(Simple rule of thumb that pops up every day.)
“He might be right or wrong, it may or may not be, we don’t know, we cannot predict this stuff as there’s too many unknowns involved which could change the trajectory completely. It is useless to argue over this.”
(A generalization about silly arguments and “guess-a-thons” — which Tom Chi calls them — over matters that are impossible to see clearly today, as the thing is not observable or predictable by simple rationalizing.)
“Things expand. Even if I don’t see what this project could yield, things expand. It is a law of nature in which I trust and my effort won’t be completely useless no matter what happens.”
(A generalization of when you put energy into a system, it will transform at the very least some of it into useful output. The more energy input over time, the larger the thing will expand. E.g. how a twitch streamer accumulates followers, a project that grows unexpectedly large, how a city in a game of Civilization expands… As I trust this, the “darkness” and unknowns in a thing does not turn me off, it’s a guiding light.)
These are some, and there’s so many more of such generalizations that help me all the time. They’re my whispering assistant in my ear. I built these through reading, life experience. I found it needs lot of instances, examples and analogies between things to build such reusable generalizations that pop up all the time in my life. (repeated analogies expand concepts)
It’s pretty fun to think about these. What are your big guiding lights, generalizations that you see over and over again in life? I know you have those, all of us do. Reply to this email, curious to hear :)
Niko