Untrue Beliefs
May 22, 2024
3-Item Status
Current location: Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
Reading: The Death Café Movement: Exploring the Horizons of Mortality by Jack Fong
Listening: Howl by She Drew the Gun
Quick Notes
Poll: Scroll down (just below the Interesting Links section) and you’ll find a poll. I’m thinking about adding a poll on various topics to each newsletter—give it a go and then let me know if you think it’s a worthy addition (or not) if you have an opinion on the matter (we’ll see how this goes, I haven’t used this tool before, so apologies in advance if something weird happens or the poll breaks in an annoying way)
Book: The first couple of reviews are in for my book! Thanks to those who bought a copy, and those are helping me get the book in front of more people by sharing/reviewing/giving it some (algorithmically relevant) stars (the HTT39 Amazon page)
(If you have a moment, reply with your own 3-item status and/or quick notes about what’s happening in your life.)
Untrue Beliefs
Some beliefs are technically untrue, but still useful.
I tend to believe I can do anything if I really want to, and if I’m willing to fully invest myself in it.
This is almost certainly not true, as we’ve all got different latent strengths and weaknesses, and there are surely plenty of things that are beyond even my most enthusiastic and committed reach. But it’s arguably beneficial that I believe I can do anything (and act as if I believe it), because otherwise I might be tempted to lazily dismiss difficult undertakings as being beyond my capabilities, which would in turn mean less pursuit (and at times, accomplishment) of difficult goals.
Some beliefs are untrue, but seem true for a long time because they go unnoticed or unchallenged.
A long time ago, I believed relationships basically all looked the same: a man and a woman get together, have kids, and that’s how things work.
I believed this throughout my early childhood because I hadn’t been exposed (personally or via pop culture) to anything substantially diverging from that norm, and in the rare cases I was, these variations tended to be portrayed as unnatural deviations: things to be concerned about or criticized.
Eventually, different sorts of people and couplings were portrayed positively (or at least neutrally) on TV, and more people began to feel comfortable being themselves in public, with all that entails. These changes eventually reached even my medium-sized, US Midwestern town, and that led to my reassessing and overhauling these long-held, but (until that moment) unchallenged assumptions.
Some of my current beliefs fall into the category of “possibly true, but need more evidence,” like my suspicion that microplastics are connected to a slew of contemporary concerns, including low fertility and issues connected to persistent inflammation (like some autoimmune diseases).
There’s research that seems to support portions of this assertion, but other components are possibly the result of pareidolia-like pattern-seeking, and may be examples of monocausotaxophilia—a strong desire to find a singular cause for complex problems that actually have many causes.
Considering that I tenaciously cling to untrue-but-useful beliefs, and looking back at the portfolio of beliefs I’ve discarded (“seemed true, but I guess not”) over the years, it would be disingenuous of me (and intentionally self-deluding) to categorize this assumption as anything but freewheeling speculation at this point, lacking a more serious basis for my intuitions.
But I also think it’s okay to hold such beliefs, as long as I can also maintain a moderating level of epistemic humility about them: seeking support for my hunches, but also reminding myself of my inherent fallibility and remaining as open as possible to alternative explanations and realities.
Pursuing knowledge and understanding, then, but defining myself as someone who’s open and adaptable, not someone who’s right all the time—perhaps especially in regards to my worldview and the beliefs that shape it.
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(My new book is about growing older with purpose and intent, and grabbing a copy is a great way to support my work!)
Interesting Links
Emoji History: The Missing Years
“During my research into vintage Japanese drawing software, I came across some devices that had built in sketch or handwritten memo functions. I bought a couple of them to see if they did anything cool or interesting. These sorts of devices are pre-internet, so there’s not much about them online, and they can’t be emulated, so the only way to find out what they do is to get first hand experience by reading the manual or, better, using one yourself. It’s difficult to find these devices in working condition, as most of them have screen polarisers that have gone bad over time, but if you’re lucky you can find one.”
“The museum’s founder, Rod Butterworth, a wee English transplant, points me to one of his “politically incorrect” paintings, of a bird and a brontosaurus in anachronistic synchrony. Dinosaurs and humans cohabited, he tells me, until a time just out of mind, the era of New World exploration.”
“While NASA is no stranger to complex mission architectures, Artemis goes beyond complex to the just plain incoherent. None of the puzzle pieces seem to come from the same box. Half the program requires breakthrough technologies that make the other half unnecessary. The rocket and spacecraft NASA spent two decades building can’t even reach the moon. And for reasons no one understands, there’s a new space station in the mix.”
(If you want more links to interesting things, consider subscribing to Aspiring Generalist.)
Outro
I’ll be taking a little trip out to LA and Seattle early next month, so this latter part of May is partially dedicated to getting extra work done so that I’m not scrambling to do productive things in the midst of all that to-and-fro’ing, when I’d prefer to be connecting with friends and family.
It’s a heavier lift than usual right now, then, but I personally find that having a larger pile of responsibilities to weed through sometimes makes the individual units of work less intense-seeming; maybe because I can batch-process some of them? Or maybe because they’re perceived in the context of that larger pile, rather than in isolation?
What are you working on at the moment? Planning anything big for June? Tell me about it, and/or take a moment to introduce yourself—I respond to every message I receive and would love to hear from you :)
Re: AI poll, I voted 'I don't know'. My opinion changes every day.
Sometimes I worry if I'll be out of a job because if AI can write and give us swathes of information, what do we need teachers and writers for? While current AI writing isn't as good as humans yet, I'm astounded by how far its progressed in the last 12 months. And even though writers and teachers teach us how to think, in addition to teaching content, I worry that much of society doesn't value this part of education. Learning isn't so much about knowing stuff, as it is learning how to think about stuff. I also feel like AI is evolving so fast that I can't hope to learn how to use it as a tool because I'm too busy trying to make a living with the work I do have, and to be honest, I wouldn't know where to start.
At the same time, I can see the possibility of AI elimintating human errors in medical or machine diagnoses, or doing complex calculations in a heartbeat, which would be supremely helpful. Or software like Delphi that allows you to "talk to" come of the world's greatest minds in an almost conversational way.
Perhaps I'm worrying over nothing. Maybe it's a hot topic for doom scrolling, but it'll end up being a technology like any other - the printing press, the computer, the car?
Also, I LOVE that painting!!!
Noticeably missing from the AI poll was "both a threat and an opportunity" which seems most likely. Thus I voted threat. My biggest objection to AI so far (articulated well by Chuck Wendig) is that all the training was done on existing IP with no permission or compensation, and now those same corporations can say "Instead of paying you half a million dollars to write a screen play (for example) we had the AI do it. We'll just pay you $15 an hour to rewrite the whole thing since what the AI spit out (trained on YOUR IP BTW) was such crap. Thanks word monkey!" I very obviously want AI to do the drudge work I don't want to do, so I can create art, and not Vice Versa.