Foundational Knowledge

psych detox links to this

We’ve given each other some hard lessons lately

But we ain’t learnin’

We’re the same sad story that’s a fact

One step up and two steps back

It’s the same thing night on night

Who’s wrong baby who’s right?

Another fight and I slam the door on

Another battle in our dirty little war

When I look at myself, I don’t see

Me living the life I wanted to be

Somewhere along the line I slipped off track

Same old story, same old act

I’m caught moving one step up and two steps back

Being orientated toward what will be a good life in reality is the first obvious step. The next step is learning how to make it happen. Some seem to take for granted they - magically - know where their future oasis is and also know how to get there. Perhaps they do, time will tell.

Others know they don’t know - can’t know yet - and seek to learn.

Unless we always want to sub contract out our decisions we start with first principles and build, then colour in, from that foundation. Here be I, there be the environment. What am I? Am I a bird? Flap, flap. No, seems not as I’m still firmly on the ground. Pretensions aside, I do look suspiciously like an Ape, I wonder if our scientific knowledge could shed some light on this puzzle? What does the evidence say the reality is? If we’re not building our model of reality from actual evidence, what are we building it from?

"If I had an hour to solve a problem, I'd spend 55 minutes defining it and 5 minutes solving it.” Einstein

We have to get to solid ground first. What do I mean by this word I'm using? Do I even know, and if I don't know why am I using it? Return to solid ground and many problems resolve themselves in the sense that there was only a problem because of our perspective. Sort out the confusion upstream and many of the downstream problems no longer exist.

Pure logical thinking cannot yield us any knowledge of the empirical world; all knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it. Propositions arrived at by purely logical means are completely empty as regards reality. Einstein

We always have to start from first principles, always have to get the foundations in first. A conclusion/belief is like the tip of a pyramid in that there’s layers underneath, each one built on the other and dependant on what’s underneath. Built bottom up which, obviously, is the only way it can be built. Ideology is easily recognised as there’s no pyramid, there’s nothing solid underneath the belief/conclusion except perhaps more subjective values. The belief, that clearly others taught them to believe, is just floating there, just randomly exists.

‘ I believe 15 is true’.

Possibly, but how did you arrive at that conclusion?

‘Well, underneath it is a 7 and an 8 thus 15’

‘Maybe, but how did you conclude the 7?’

‘ I don’t know, but I do know good, noble people believe the 7 and 8 is true therefore 15 is true’

That’s ideology and, as I wrote decades ago, ideology may feel warm and fuzzy but we tend to pay a high price longterm.

Ideology is a porcupine

An ugly animal indeed

If one you own,

Set it free, allow it to roam

Should it return

Hug it warily

For the more you squeeze

The more you will bleed

1990 ish

Engineers don’t have the luxury to incorporate ideology as their bridge stays up, or it doesn’t. Their many conclusions/ beliefs/ decisions were correct, or at least worked, or didn’t.

While we may want to learn directly ourselves, in practice, none of us have the time, or foundational knowledge, to run a fine toothed comb through all the relevant sciences. It’s not like we’re doing the studies and the research ourselves and we can’t wait till we’re 60 to decide what we’re going to do with our lives. Necessarily, we’re piggy backing off conclusions/facts others have arrived at.

However, there’s an infinite avalanche of ‘facts’ and we need at least some ability to filter the wheat from the chaff. Experience provides one filter; no one still believes at age 50 what they believed at age 20. The other critical filter is the basics, is knowing what you, and therefore those you’re going to spend your life interacting with, actually are and what our operating system is. We could guess, but we’ll guess according to what currently feels good. It’s exactly because what we’d learn would cause us discomfort that people avoid learning about themselves. Rationally, it would seem self knowledge would be the obvious thing to learn, but we’re not particularly rational beings.

“Everything good is costly, and the development of the personality is one of the most costly of all things. It will cost you your innocence, your illusions, your certainty.” Carl Jung

With at least a basic knowledge of our own species we’re providing our brain with the desperately needed foundational knowledge it can build on.

Aside from happiness, we have to survive etc and it’s a competitive world out there. It should be obvious that if you understand others you have an advantage. That if most others are charging at the matadors cape, but you’re not, you have options they don’t. That it’s better to be the matador than be the bull.