Mental Liquidity

https://collabfund.com/blog/mental-liquidity/

by bkohlmann • 3 years ago

221 114 3 years ago

collabfund.com

skilled• 3 years ago

I think this article is a little too overzealous with trying to simplify a topic like beliefs and ideas.

A lot of it also sounds like common sense to me, the people capable of grasping this:

Be careful what beliefs you let become part of your identity.

Are quite capable of adjusting themselves.

Everything else falls into either Ego, or people being self-(un)aware, and for the latter - you can only change "their" belief system if they themselves are willing to change.

mo_42• 3 years ago

I like this nice little text. Einstein is a perfect example for mental liquidity. I think we should be very forgiving about this for two reasons: first, Einstein was one of the people establishing quantum mechanics. He also got the Nobel Price for his work on the photoelectric effect. Second, even the brightest minds have only a narrow time frame until mental ability starts to decline. So we cannot expect a brain to dig deep into general relativity and at the same time something completely different like QM. Surprisingly, Einstein even contributed to QM in old age by trying to poke holes into the theory that later proved to be true (e.g., spooky effects at a distance).

willtemperley• 3 years ago

Be a goldfish: Ted Lasso, 2020.

tartakovsky• 3 years ago

conradev• 3 years ago

Most fields have lots of rules, theories, ideas, and hunches. But laws – things that are unimpeachable and cannot ever change – are extremely rare.

This sounds like a rehash of Popperian epistemology. We should look forward to disproving existing theories (finding new problems), because it leads to new, better theories.

robg• 3 years ago

It’s easy to forget how difficult learning is, for us as individuals and as flocks in formation. Pick any topic and it’s likely it took you years to learn well. So simply switching out beliefs embedded in that topic requires overwriting years of patterns and synapses in sync.

Where Kuhn is so helpful in understanding that even scientists have immense difficulty, if not vigorous myopia, stuck with wrong beliefs. Paradigm shifts with funerals is easier over decades than getting scientists to evolve their models.

MichaelZuo• 3 years ago

It's so much so that I would almost define intelligence as the ability to "switch out beliefs".

lanstin2• 3 years ago

The geologists that died disbelieving in plate tectonics weren’t free of intelligence. The very systems that allow us to find patterns are also liable to get stuck with seeing certain patterns.

Not only is it impossible with current human knowledge to construct an infallible theory that predicts everything we encounter, it is also impossible with current human physiology never to cling to wrong ideas in the face of counter evidence. When examining our rationality, we must not only admit our data are incomplete and our theories flawed, but we ourselves might be thinking foolishly.

lcuff• 3 years ago

This article matches my own life experience: Rather than what have you changed your mind about in the past decade, I use 'in your whole life'. Speaking personally, there are only two big things I've changed my mind about. I'm working on a third... I wish the article had included something in the vein expressed by Charlie Munger, which is a 'how-to' for intellectual integrity.

"I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don't know the other side's argument better than they do.”

krm01• 3 years ago

One of the biggest beliefs I keep struggling with is the need to be perfect. I've been jamming away for many many weekends on a side project that literally was done. I just kept adding tiny tweaks left and right, until I literally just now launched it (https://amee.la).

Nothing ground breaking, and in the end nothing that needed to have so much perfectionism around.

The belief of having to need something perfect is one of the strongest I see among founders here on HN and elsewhere. It's almost always bad. I have zero examples where that ended up being good. Yet, even though the facts are clear, it's extremely hard to overcome.

nicbou• 3 years ago

There's no kill like overkill. I've been overdoing a project for the last 5 years and I thoroughly enjoy it. The site is live and pays my bills so why not?

That being said, this comment feels more like self-promotion than conversation. Don't do that.

ben_vueJS• 3 years ago

This has been a mental barrier for me as well. I’m not sure if it’s in the realm of belief or rather fear of failure. Personally more inclined to say it’s the latter.

haswell2• 3 years ago

I’d argue that the fear of failure still boils down to underlying beliefs about:

- What it actually means to fail

- That failure is inherently bad

- What will happen next after failure occurs

- What it says about me when fail

- What others will think about me when I fail

- That I can’t recover from failure

etc.

If you grow up hearing that failure is bad/wrong/implies something about you as a person, it might never occur to you that another framing is that life is a series of experiments, and failure can be one of the best ways to zero in on success (in some cases, this may be the only possible way).

As far as I can tell, it’s beliefs all the way down, and adjusting certain beliefs can fundamentally transform experience relative to all downstream implications of that belief.

deepzn2• 3 years ago

Reminds of reading what Reid hoffman said... https://twitter.com/reidhoffman/status/847142924240379904?la...

hgsgm2• 3 years ago

"Don't post blind links to slow loading websites" --Reid Hoffman

deepzn2• 3 years ago

direct link to post: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/arent-any-typos-essay-we-laun...

2h• 3 years ago

FYI the whole "lets type out some text" style is really, REALLY annoying. please just give the plain, non animated text on the screen. use whatever fonts or colors you want, BUT DON'T make the text type itself or jump around the screen.

detourdog• 3 years ago

If you actually shipped the extra weeks was probably worthwhile. My side project effort can be measured in decades with little real progress yet. I really think this year might see some movement.

mattgreenrocks• 3 years ago

Am partially convinced that overexposure to the comment section can encourage perfectionism in those that are already disposed.

And the comment section is rarely a representative sample of your target audience.

moneywoes2• 3 years ago

Is this project just a funnel for your SaaS as a graphic design? Reminds me of that Twitter user who popularized that model.

If so does it matter if it’s perfect when yore goal is just to boost top of funnel for the agency?

david_allison• 3 years ago

Unsolicited feedback:

* Your input box doesn't look like a text box

* The 'enter' key doesn't work in the text box

* 'Refresh' neither looks like a refresh icon, nor has a label

* The fade on the right of the gallery implies you can scroll, but this isn't possible

* The generated logo + icon pair wasn't immediately noticeable (the first image is the icon without text, and the first icon isn't guaranteed to be noticeable), possibly generate image with text + logo on a transparent background and put it above the 4 sample images.

interlinked• 3 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opbF9Nz_Emg

cassepipe• 3 years ago

Haha, that's a bit of a cruel response to someone who just wrote he had a "perfection" problem. You probably had OP to waste the entire week now. WebDesign is a total time sink

On desktop, you can actually scroll right now

xwowsersx• 3 years ago

Yeah, we are all susceptible to this. The tweaks were not worth the time because they didn't move the needle on the core offering. At the end of the day, this succeeds or fails based on how good the logos are. In my few minutes of trying this out, the generated logos were random, seemingly unrelated to the names, and just generally very unoriginal and low quality. I don't want to sound discouraging because this is a cool project, but just to say that spending time perfecting pixels and whatever else that doesn't have to do with the underlying functionality is probably not time well spent at this point.

ianbutler• 3 years ago

I like this, quick suggestion, I'd add an ability to take one of the generated logos and refine from that same logo.

JakkTrent6• 3 years ago

This is a great suggestion

usefulcat• 3 years ago

When I do this, rather than thinking of it as some kind of mistake or failing, I think of it as an experiment or learning experience.

JakkTrent6• 3 years ago

Haha, what was happening to you the past couple weekends is just part of the whole process - now that you've experienced that, and beyond to releasing your side project, you won't allow yourself to that as easily next time.

I get really OCD at times and to avoid that I started focusing on "most basic functionality" and forced myself to launch when that experience was possible - from there everything I get caught up in is still an improvement.

I've done exactly that tho and I well overcooked a project holding it back til I had it just right.

Hopefully you didn't hate the experience and your better for it.

I liked the idea of the site immediately - logos can really suck and this site is perfect when a logo doesn't really matter enough to spend time on.

I'm sure your very limited in scope by trademarks and copyrights but a little more variety would be great. Colors would be awesome - choosing 2-3 would be better, that's with everything the same.

More background images or use my own option. Seriously tho - not a bad start at all. Fantastic side project.

I had no issues with the UI and was plugging away almost immediately.

I'll check it out again for sure.

SnowHill9902• 3 years ago

Stay humble.

Invictus02• 3 years ago

Mental flexibility would be a better term but of course finance people rarely perceive much outside their own bubble.

davidthewatson• 3 years ago

I disagree.

Liquidity implies the frame of fluid dynamics, just like data liquidity.

Bringing physics to science is as useful in the mind as it is in software.

Invictus02• 3 years ago

The author has a degree in economics and you think he's talking about fluid dynamics? lol

xyzelement4• 3 years ago

Perhaps unexpectedly, I find that thoughtful engagement with religion (Judaism in my case) has helped me become much more liquid on other topics.

When you accept on faith a handful of principles that deal with an unknowable domain, it becomes much easier to be less attached to the other stuff.

haswell2• 3 years ago

I grew up under a toxic form of fundamentalist Christianity that left deep scars and made me pretty allergic to religion.

For me, I’ve found success and deep value in exploring non-sectarian Buddhist philosophy, which points directly at the problems caused by attachment to ideas and things, and does a good job of deconstructing thought processes that most of us engage in without realizing.

To me, this is less about choosing to accept certain principles on faith as much as it is about recognizing/acknowledging that this is what we already do in most aspects of our lives.

To anyone who can find value in traditional religious contemplation while avoiding the downsides, more power to you. The point of my comment isn’t to say there’s nothing to be found there, but if the version of religiosity you’re familiar with is the toxic kind, there are other paths to follow that get at some arguably important insights without some of the baggage that can be difficult to avoid.

(I realize Buddhism has religious roots, but there is a long history of exploring the underlying insights in a non-religious context e.g. Zen, and the analytical framework associated with traditions like Dzogchen and Vipassana are applicable without any of the metaphysical underpinnings).

xyzelement4• 3 years ago

(I am the person you are responding to) I grew up completely ignorant of religion and my first foray into that was the study of yogic tradition. Once I got a taste of what exists, I was very lucky to realize my ancestral faith has incredible depth, beyond that which is even understood by those say they are kinda religious (ie, many people who say they are religion X don't know how much there is to X)

On the toxic part, sorry to hear that. I think anything can be toxic originally to the value of the concept. (ie someone may have a horrible experience with a coach but that doesn't take away from the value of fitness in general) but it sounds like you have a pattern that works well for you.

wwweston2• 3 years ago

I find that thoughtful engagement with religion (Judaism in my case)

I've heard Judaism characterized as very accepting of discourse and reinterpretation of itself. Does this strike you as accurate? If so, it sounds like a kind of mental liquidity...

When you accept on faith a handful of principles that deal with an unknowable domain

Sounds like mathematics, in which practitioners become used to both the process of relying on a set of axioms and selecting them for the purposes of exploring or constraining systems, which makes one aware that there's a certain degree of choice or even potentially arbitrariness to it...

xyzelement4• 3 years ago

I agree with you on both counts.

For example, the study of the Talmud is an example of both mental training in debating an issue from several perspectives, and the installment of the idea that this is part of the religion.

You can also look up "Jewish responsa" on Wikipedia as a diving point into this.

Mutlut2• 3 years ago

You just might discovered yourself what others did without thinking: Following some given path to stop worring and using it as 'this can't be wrong because its old and others are doing it and enabling me'.

Perhaps community fits even better.

I personally am free enough to design my own life without boundaris.

xyzelement4• 3 years ago

Your current self-description and opinion of religion is where I was prior to moving onto my current state. Looking backwards, going beyond this represented breaking a boundary for me.

I am not trying to persuade you and I am holding back from expounding on what I mean at length here, just sharing the perspective.

zone411• 3 years ago

"Mental fluidity," "mental flexibility," or "cognitive flexibility" seem like better terms.

layer8• 3 years ago

Creedoplasticity? Pisteuoplasticity?

gms7777• 3 years ago

or "mental/cognitive plasticity"

nmstoker• 3 years ago

My thoughts exactly: this is generally referred to in the literature as mental/brain plasticity.

Coining a new term when a perfectly good one exists is unfortunate but happens, as see with the author here.

Edit: here's a link to neuroplasticity (aka brain plasticity):

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity

javajosh4• 3 years ago

The prerequisite for "mental liquidity" is articulated by Aristotle: "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." If you entertain the thought, this gives you the chance to try out a new belief network. If you find your belief network would be strengthened by its inclusion, then you adopt it. Otherwise, you reject it. In this way, ones interconnected set of beliefs grows monotonically stronger. And this is right and good.

EDIT: got downvoted! I would love love love to know why! Not offended, just curious.

Etrnl_President• 3 years ago

“One can not learn what one thinks one already knows” —Epictetus

kubanczyk• 3 years ago

You cannot say belief. Say hypothesis while leaving rest of your argument intact. If you value that kind of score in your life.

javajosh4• 3 years ago

What is a belief it not the highest-ranked hypothesis of all possible options? Obviously beliefs are more complex than that, since we have a default set installed in us as children, and only a subset of humans are taught the rational methods of improving those beliefs over time. I consider myself a member of that subset.

(Quoting Aristotle always puts me in the mood to rank things.)

saiya-jin• 3 years ago

And this is right and good.

I disagree (without down-voting). This is basically 1-man echo chamber, you take what you like (it doesn't matter how many eloquent words you use to describe this, result is same), reject what would challenge your beliefs and would make them weaker. That's the opposite of critical thinking so needed in real world, and prime source why the current world, particularly west, is so torn to pieces about shit like russia, trump, guns, migrants and so on.

Stuff in life is complex, always, almost at fractal level. You keep learning, if you actually want, about new viewpoints that will challenge your current ones, every effin' day. Maybe at the end conclusion is don't trust anybody, people are generally a-holes etc. That's still fine as long as it represents truth.

javajosh4• 3 years ago

It seems like you misread what I was saying. I am not advocating a "1-man echo chamber" - that would be a person who never changes their beliefs. When I say "weaker" and "stronger" I am referring to the whole of the belief network, not individual beliefs. This means, generally, that every change reduces inconsistency and increases cohesion of the entire network. The ignorant people in the world pay no attention to consistency, only to feeling, which makes their network intrinsically weak, and they become emotional and ultimately resort to violence rather than resolve to improve their beliefs. (The internet makes this kind of interaction more common, even encouraged, since it drives "engagement" - one of the great tragedies of our time.)

Stuff in life is complex, people are assholes, but even assholes have good ideas sometimes. I recommend listening to everyone who speaks for themselves in good faith. Anyone can cook!

testacct222• 3 years ago

reject what would challenge your beliefs and would make them weaker.

Most unresolved disagreements I know of are because the groups disagree on some unprovable underlying assumption. Switching positions on it doesn't make the beliefs stronger or weaker

Being able to believe something and stick to it, regardless of challenges from competing interests or forms of coercion: that's more valuable in practice than being more reconciliatory

byteware• 3 years ago

I am curious how one would measure if their "belief network would be strengthened"

ABCLAW• 3 years ago

There's a common issue in philosophy and epistemology over how we come to know things. We wanted to know what 'knowledge' was, and settled upon the concept of a 'justified true belief' for a fairly long period of time.

However, one day, a philosopher found a situation in which a justified true belief was incorrect. This is the Gettier problem.

What you describe is something akin to a network of baysian conditionals attached to certain proposition, which upon confrontation with new information update their relative weights. We know with certainty that this process has significant benefits in general (it's certainly better than most systems not internalizing new information), but can and does create false reasoning.

In short, it's good but not sufficient to create knowledge. The problem of individuals creating ideological filter bubbles around themselves is very related to the idea that their evidentiary priors become more and more rigid as they note confirmatory evidence over time that justifies their views over time. The issue isn't that they stop intaking new information, but that their priors and the new information are interpreted based upon that belief network.

Thankfully, as a super-organism, we have a great solution for that mental ossification. We die. New people who have less evidentiary accumulation can address the issue with new priors and often that's all that's needed for huge breakthroughs.

neerajsi3• 3 years ago

Thanks for your point about death.

Death forces our species wide belief set to go through the constrained channel of education and communication, the same way that our bodily attributes go through the constrained channel of our germ-line genes.

This process lossily compresses the signals, which allows for drift or attenuation when the next generation reconstructs the beliefs and associated behaviors. Transmission also applies stress that acts as a filter to weed out beliefs that are no longer adaptive.

lo_zamoyski2• 3 years ago

The Gettier problem is overrated.

The question is "what is knowledge?", not "do we know that we know p?". And I see no issue with the definition of knowledge as justified, true belief. Now, if I believe p, and you ask me whether I know p, I may say yes. But whether I actually know p will depend on whether my justification is valid (that it really is a justification and a sufficient one) and whether it is true, which has nothing to do with whether anyone knows whether the justification is valid and the belief is true. It's a separate question, and conflating the two questions leads to an infinite regress of skepticism. So the definition of knowledge qua knowledge still stands.

I would also suggest you try to apply your general approach to the very theory you are proposing. I see an opportunity for retorsion arguments.

MrPatan• 3 years ago

The mind that doesn't want to risk entertaining "wrong" truths can't stand being reminded of the fact.

trentnix• 3 years ago

I've heard it also said "strong opinions, weakly held". Unlike "mental liquidity", it doesn't require explanation.

zug_zug• 3 years ago

I disagree, I just heard this phrase from you the first time just now, and I don't think it's self-explanatory.

It's unclear to me in what respect the opinions are "strong" if not one's conviction in them. To my mind a strong opinion is an opinion one is confident in.

Also it's unclear to me if/how/why this is better than "less opinions". Like is it better to have a "strong opinion weakly held" on topic X versus "My opinion is pending scientific research will answer this"?

A nitpick -- I actually have a pretty big distaste for maxims that have some cutesy rhyming/wordplay to them (in this case it's X y, !X z, X = strong).

chefandy• 3 years ago

I'm not interested in delving into pedantry, so I'll stop after this. My intuitive understanding of this phrase is that strong or weak opinions are generally a measure of magnitude more than stability, while strongly or weakly held opinions are a matter of stability rather than magnitude. Someone might have a milder opinion of something, like "Pepperoni pizza is fine" vs. a stronger stance, such as "Pepperoni pizza is the BEST pizza." How easily that opinion is changed does not necessarily correlate. Perhaps the person who thinks pepperoni pizza is the best has never tried salami pizza and will be an instant convert. Maybe they're the worlds BIGGEST pepperoni fan. Maybe the person with the weaker opinion on pepperoni might be very very unlikely to change it because they don't care enough about pizza in general to consider it much. Maybe they love pizza, but are one bite of pepperoni pizza away from saying "bleh, hand me a slice of mushroom."

dasil003• 3 years ago

I agree it's not self-explanatory. All such pithy statements are only insightful based on hard-won experience behind them—the map is not the territory, after all ;)

As far as "strong opinions, weakly held", this is one of my favorites at work in a large scale product engineering environment. It goes beyond "mental liquidity" as described in the OA (which is really just about the "weakly held" part). The "strong opinions" part is that often times groups will succumb to analysis paralysis or unwillingness to make a decision due to group dynamics. Having a strong opinion (ideally backed by knowledge and expertise) is a way to push through and bring clarity. The risk is there is a personality type prone to blustering overconfidence that will push a group in a certain direction without reasonable justification. Ideally what you want is a critical mass of smart, decisive, but open-minded people who are quick to assimilate new evidence into their viewpoint.

dgs_sgd• 3 years ago

To my mind a strong opinion is an opinion one is confident in.

That's the correct interpretation of "strong opinions", as I understand the phrase.

The "weakly held" part means that you are willing to adjust your opinion in the face of contradictory evidence, which is difficult to do for deeply held beliefs.

wwweston2• 3 years ago

A question I love to ask people is, “What have you changed your mind about in the last decade?” I use “decade” because it pushes you into thinking about big things, not who you think will win the Super Bowl.

This is a great question. And "decade" is a good time frame not only because of size but because it's a long enough time frame there's a better chance people will have good answers.

The Dee Hock quotes (“A belief is not dangerous until it turns absolute” and “We are built with an almost infinite capacity to believe things because the beliefs are advantageous for us to hold, rather than because they are even remotely related to the truth”) are great too.

cubefox2• 3 years ago

The best way to test your "mental liquidity" is to think about some hypotheses that are outside the "Overton window" or even outright taboo.

"What if ***** were true? Surely it can't be true. If it were, that would be terrible."

That's motivated reasoning. Remember that the truth of any hypothesis is not influenced by how much you want it to be true, or false. Some hypotheses are deeply uncomfortable, but you should nonetheless strive to believe the truth. Or rather, what is best supported by the evidence. Even if it hurts.

noduerme• 3 years ago

Actually, most people shouldn't do that in most cases, because they aren't qualified to understand the evidence presented to them. Nor are the hypotheses they're testing their own. Valuable hypotheses arise from evidence - not vice versa. This is why juries in complex cases need so much time to be walked through subject matter by expert witnesses, and why standards of evidence are applied to what they are and aren't allowed to hear, and why the conclusions they may or may not draw are circumscribed to the cases being made by lawyers as allowed by judges. When people search the internet for evidence to support their most uncomfortable hypotheses, they'll always find it. That's how we get masses of people who believe in conspiracy theories and satanic panics, with the certainty of those who incorrectly believe they've done their own "research".

Taking up the most uncomfortable (i.e. "forbidden") hypothesis and giving it the weight required to attempt to prove it to yourself is not a systematic way of finding truth; it's a way of deceiving yourself into believing in the simplistic frameworks of other people's paranoid conspiracy theories.

cubefox2• 3 years ago

The above was only a case against wishful thinking and rationalization. Of course expert testimony is still some form of evidence. The point is not to willfully ignore or reinterpret the evidence because you don't like the direction it is pointing at.

It is worth citing the Litany of Gendlin:

What is true is already so.

Owning up to it doesn't make it worse.

Not being open about it doesn't make it go away.

And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with.

Anything untrue isn't there to be lived.

People can stand what is true,

for they are already enduring it.

hgsgm2• 3 years ago

Better: "What if were not true?"

Don't jump to new (wrong) conclusions, break out of your mental prison of conclusions.

moneywoes2• 3 years ago

AI taking away jobs is one. Previously though more jobs would be created but now my beliefs have fundamentally shifted

hcarvalhoalves• 3 years ago

Changing your mind is hard because it’s easier to fool yourself into believing a falsehood than admit a mistake.

Different angle: it's not simply "fooling" oneself, but it's because ideas are one way or another built on top of an ideological foundation.

Einstein rejecting quantum theory on the basis the universe shouldn't have a random component to it is also rejecting the idea of having to re-examine all philosophy past Descartes and Newton, which aligned so well with society's viewpoint at the time - a deterministic, cause-consequence universe, where things have logical explanations and where hard work is rewarded.

hammock• 3 years ago

Of course we must reference Berlins fable the Fox and the Hedgehog here.

A great essay in this area is Venk’s Cactus and the Weasel. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2014/02/20/the-cactus-and-the-wea...

turnsout• 3 years ago

Mental Liquidity is another way of thinking about "Psychological Flexibility," which is the subject of a huge amount of clinical research. There's an entire therapeutic framework called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) which came out of this research.

Check out this article [0] for a description of ACT from a founder's perspective.

[0] https://every.to/no-small-plans/how-to-do-hard-things

Borrible• 3 years ago

Take a die with six to twenty sides and assign a belief system/worldview to each number. Roll the dice twice, first for the belief system/worldview, the other for the number of months you live by it. Of course, you can vary the parameter according to your taste and courage. But it is important to persevere, so you better start small. I call it Rhinehartian chaotic paradigm shift. Dice Man goes chaos magic.

HellDunkel2• 3 years ago

I just finished the Einstein biography by Walter I. and found Einsteins stubbornness quite entertaining. He knew about this trait, accepted it as an effect of ageing and even was making jokes about it. He simply disliked some facts about quantum m. and allowed himself to pursue a rather fruitless endeavour for many years. He knew that this kind of stubbornness would kill the career of a younger scientist but he could afford to do so. In that sense he contributed to science.

neerajsi3• 3 years ago

You're quite right. Science requires the skepticism to apply the stress to theories needed to make them strong. I'm assuming Einstein tried to raise objections using evidence to the contrary and alternative explanations.

n4r9• 3 years ago

Along with Podolsky and Rosen he formulated one of the original quantum thought experiments to challenge the accepted conventions: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Podolsky%E2...

This in turn inspired Bell's theorem, and eventually quantum information theory.

edanm• 3 years ago

A bit tangential, but, is the biography worth reading? I've enjoyed other Walter I books in the past, fwiw.

HellDunkel2• 3 years ago

Absolutely- it's exceptionally well written and a pleasure to read.

sedivy94• 3 years ago

A term I’ve come to like more is “cognitive flexibility”.

yowlingcat• 3 years ago

In my experience, This attribute is an absolutely critical part of successfully building culture at an early stage startup, and you have to be ruthless about culling those who are not willing to give it a try nevermind master it.

lostdog• 3 years ago

What kind of deliberate practice can help if morove your mental liquidity?

jrflowers2• 3 years ago

Be careful what beliefs you let become part of your identity.

“I have a tight enough knowledge and grasp of my beliefs to intentionally control my sense of identity” is a fascinating belief to turn into an identity.

neerajsi3• 3 years ago

This might be relevant: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-authorship

According to the Kegan theory, it's possible. I'd be fascinated to see it if anyone knows of a study that demonstrates self authorship in a population of real people.

jrflowers2• 3 years ago

I’ve yet to hear anything akin to self authorship from someone that didn’t have a book/seminar/consultancy to sell.

It’s a somewhat amusing thought that there is this human phenomenon wherein we can transcend nature, nurture, the id, the ego, the superego, biology and chemistry — and overwhelmingly those that achieve this enlightened state coincidentally tend to end up as self-help bloggers and motivational speakers.

jonasenordin• 3 years ago

Brings to mind Robert Pirsig's 'value rigidity' concept: 'an inability to revalue what one sees because of commitment to previous values.' I don't remember if there was a term for the opposite, but 'flexibility' seems to be right.

golemotron• 3 years ago

It seems like this is a term for the ability to avoid sunk cost fallacy ( https://www.scribbr.com/fallacies/sunk-cost-fallacy/ )

The link contains a number of reasons why people get trapped in sunk cost fallacy.

technological• 3 years ago

I think it is hard to change your beliefs is because of the discomfort that is associated with that change.

photochemsyn• 3 years ago

One approach to preserving mental fluidity is to not get emotionally attached to ideas. This was expressed by Richard Feynman in his 1979 lectures on quantum electrodynamics, available here:

http://www.vega.org.uk/video/subseries/8

Q: "Do you like the idea that our picture of the world has to be based on a calculation which involves probability?"
A: "...if I get right down to it, I don't say I like it and I don't say I don't like it. I got very highly trained over the years to be a scientist and there's a certain way you have to look at things. When I give a talk I simplify a little bit, I cheat a little bit to make it sound like I don't like it. What I mean is it's peculiar. But I never think, this is what I like and this is what I don't like, I think this is what it is and this is what it isn't. And whether I like it or I don't like it is really irrelevant and believe it or not I have extracted it out of my mind. I do not even ask myself whether I like it or I don't like it because it's a complete irrelevance."

I think that's critical, because if you become emotionally involved with promoting an abstract idea, it becomes part of your personal identity or self-image, and then changing your mind about it in the face of new evidence becomes very difficult if not impossible.

In another lecture, Feynman also said something about not telling Nature how it should behave, as that would be an act of hubris or words to that effect, you just have to accept what the evidence points to, like it or not.

(Changing your mind about what's morally acceptable, socially taboo, aesthetically pleasing etc. is an entirely different subject, science can't really help much with such questions.)

ChrisMarshallNY• 3 years ago

I have had to have an open mind.

Long story. Lots of tears. Get your hanky.

It's served me well, in my technical work.

I now do a lot of stuff that I used to scoff at.

wayeq• 3 years ago

Albert Einstein hated the idea of quantum physics.

Einstein came up with most of what physicists now recognize as the essential features of quantum physics. He was not anti quantum, he just believed randomness could not be a fundamental feature of nature.

lo_zamoyski2• 3 years ago

N.b.. Rob Koon's book[0] may be of interest to some of the more philosophically inclined. He argues that the proper interpretation of QM is in light of hylomorphic dualism.

[0] https://a.co/d/6eq227u

bsder• 3 years ago

Einstein also had a bunch of real, substantial objections.

One of the big ones had to do with whether the "fields" formulation was valid and primary. One of the issues is that if you follow the fields formulations that Einstein believed in out to conclusion you get things like "atomic oribtals never decay".

Which, of course, is obviously wrong. And an example of one of the reasons why Bohr is considered to have won his debates with Einstein.

Except

Einstein was right! We now know that when you isolate an atom, it's atomic orbital decay gets slower and slower the more you isolate it.

The problem at the time was that all of the experiments that could be run were statistical aggregations and obscured the nature of single state quantum systems.

cortesoft• 3 years ago

It might sound crazy, but I think a good rule of thumb is that your strongest convictions have the highest chance of being wrong or incomplete, if only because they are the hardest beliefs to challenge, update, and abandon when necessary.

I strongly disagree with this, unless we are only talking about beliefs that are about facts of the universe.

For example, my strongest belief is that all people have an equal right to exist and pursue their own purpose... this is not a belief about the facts of the universe, but about my own morality. I don't think it has a chance to be 'wrong'

JakkTrent6• 3 years ago

I believe that knowing and believe are two different things ;)

Belief is far stronger - that's why people do things all the time they themselves at one point "knew" they couldn't do.

If you start with a flawed belief - things won't improve from there. You'll ending "knowing" a whole lot of stuff that reinforces your flawed belief - simply glossing/ignoring/downplaying the facts that don't support... this becomes a bit of feedback loop after awhile.

So either learn to let go of your beliefs and adapt or at least don't firmly establish beliefs until after you know enough stuff to decide for yourself what to believe.

I reevaluate mine all the time and I'm not wrong on of my strong convictions - albeit from my point of view, which I've made as broad as possible but I'm still human.

My highest beliefs today are built upon a foundation of information, learning and mistakes - I may state a belief with a single sentence but I can write books about why I've arrived at that belief.

I don't that's morality - I sometimes do things I "know" to be immoral, when the justification warrants it, I've never knowingly decided to believe something I know is wrong - even if I was forced, I'd only pretend to believe at best.

In college I'd cheat on a test tho if I thought it the only way I'd pass - bc I believed passing was more important than the test... maybe it's a bad example of immorality.

Anyways, I completely agree with Cortesoft - I'm settling on the understanding that all people everywhere are fundamentally important, collectively and individually.

Allowing and empowering all people to live their best lives is in all of our best interest. I've gone further even than equal right to existence and yet I'm supremely confident.

I think this rant also rather effectively demonstrates exactly what the OP was saying about our strongest convictions.

An incorrect fundamental belief - like say I believed the earth was flat, that belief would be implicit in all that I believe after that, just part of my world view and muddling up everything I think about anything - I wouldn't even be aware of that.

Mental liquidity. Fantastic.

Otherwise knowledge can be an immovable trap that becomes harder to avoid/escape the more stuff you know.

Scientists are great examples of this - if it can't be scientifically methoidized it doesn't exist and therefore must be explainable within the framework they already know, bc that's always right ;)

julianeon• 3 years ago

Arguably that's not a belief, not as he's using it. That's an emotional commitment.

Example: I love my wife. This is an emotional commitment. It can't be 'wrong' in a factual sense - that's the wrong rubric for it. So it's not really a belief in that sense either.

A belief should be amenable to facts, evidence, or some sort of feedback. If it isn't it's ultimately not a belief. It's excluded from the kinds of decision-making and reasoning he's describing.

DiscourseFan3• 3 years ago

my strongest belief is that all people have an equal right to exist and pursue their own purpose

Everyone who says this naturally excludes pedophiles, nazis, or any other "undesirables" in their given society, whoever is deemed to be socially unacceptable in the current moral framework.

nobody9999• 3 years ago

Everyone who says this naturally excludes pedophiles, nazis, or any other "undesirables" in their given society, whoever is deemed to be socially unacceptable in the current moral framework.

I get your point, but I disagree.

I won't say (because it isn't true) that "my strongest belief is that all people have an equal right to exist and pursue their own purpose."

However, as you point out there are those who are "deemed to be socially unacceptable in the current moral framework." I agree that subjective standards have no place in the law -- anywhere.

I do believe that all sentient beings have agency. But in a free, open society, such agency needs to be constrained in order to promote social cohesion.

That said, we shouldn't attempt to restrict what someone believes. Rather, we should restrict the actions of others to infringe on the rights of others within a society.

To use your examples, there's nothing "wrong", per se, with being a "pedophile" (that is, a person who is attracted to/sexually desires pre-pubescent children), but actually abusing children to satisfy those desires infringes on the rights of those children and should be (and in most places already is) restricted/criminalized.

As far as "nazis" are concerned, again holding beliefs in accord with nazi-ism/white supremacy isn't "wrong", but taking action in support of such beliefs may well be wrong (e.g., shooting up a church full of African-Americans or a synagogue full of Jews, etc.) when it infringes on the rights of others.

To put a fine point on this, there's nothing inherently wrong/evil/bad about believing that sex with four year-olds or killing jews and people of color is right and good. Personally, I find such beliefs to be repugnant, but that doesn't give me (and shouldn't give the government either) the right to restrict those people from holding/sharing such beliefs.

At the same time, should someone act on those beliefs (e.g., abusing children, killing Jews or blacks, etc.), the government should absolutely at least attempt to stop (and/or detain/incarcerate) folks who are actually infringing on the rights of others.

DiscourseFan3• 3 years ago

I think about these questions very often, but I don't feel like going on a long rant about it from a philosophical perspective. I will instead give an anecdote:

I think from my teens to my early 20s my political stance changed dramatically, and at any one point in time I would think that whatever I held to be true I would continue to in the future. But what always changed my belief system was not encountering some new piece of information that changed my idea or made me "update my priors" (in the crude Bayesian system, a most despicable philosophy of our era). It was always something that radically changed how it was that I understood the world around me, something that made my way of thinking about things shift so dramatically that I had to abandon my old ideas. I think everyone should read Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud for that reason, even if you think they are heinous and evil, because they radically question the logic and order of society and knowledge, and their writings are deeply disturbing to many for that reason.

What changes people's perspectives is generally what people want to avoid (to the author's point). And the more you want to avoid something or "prove it wrong," oftentimes the more it changes the way you think about the world.

gestatingAI2• 3 years ago

Interesting. May I ask why you consider Bayesian updates a “despicable philosophy” ?

It was always something that radically changed how it was that I understood the world around me, something that made my way of thinking about things shift so dramatically that I had to abandon my old ideas.

If you have examples, I would much appreciate it, although I do not mean to pry.

DiscourseFan3• 3 years ago

May I ask why you consider Bayesian updates a “despicable philosophy”?

For the reason I said in that quote: Bayesian updates require upholding the same structure and considering things in networks of pre-established probabilities. This is very useful for say sportsbetting, or the weather, but in ones day to day life, especially in political circumstances, things often happen that are completely unpredictable because the socially normative prediction algorithms are always set to re-enforce the normative operations of society, making any radical change inconceivably impossible.

If you have examples, I would much appreciate it, although I do not mean to pry.

I moved towards the Left because it seemed to me that the basis of so called "reasonable" ideologies like libertarianism and general laissez-fare market conditions always held within them notions of "fairness" and that people would "get what they deserved." It seemed to me that this is language more appropriate for disciplining a child, than ordering our society. In a sense, what was conceived of as "rational" by those who supported the systems of power was revealed to me to be nothing more than ideology which justified that power.

Mental Liquidity

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