This is the second article from the series 6 Degrees Of Integration. There is a list of all the articles that are part of this series at the end of the post.

Value Is Context-Dependent, Context Has An Inherent Inertia

In the first post we briefly discussed how value is entirely subjective, context-dependent and how context has an inherent inertia. Our intentions to modify the environment will always have a certain time to manifest (always longer than our cognitive process which gave birth to the intention) and that time depends on the value we have and how adapted that value is to that specific context.

The only things that we can modify instantly are how we feel and what we do about our current situation. Which obviously won’t change the situation instantly.

I also talked about 6 levels at which we can intervene in order to shorten the time between our intentions and their manifestations, based on the above model. In today’s post we’ll talk about the first level: you.

The first and the most important person you can influence in this world is… you. That sounds a bit strange (and somehow cheesy, I admit it) but it’s also unavoidably true. It’s easier to change your beliefs but it’s very hard to change the beliefs of somebody else.

In fact it’s impossible to change someone else’s beliefs because you can’t change anybody. You may give some hints, maybe some motivation, some inspiration, but if there will be change in somebody else as a consequence of your actions, you’re not the one responsible. It’s the other person, because without them taking action, nothing would have happened.

Alas, these decisions we take and which are drastically changing our views of the world, are not always the best decisions we can take. Sometimes, we do things that are altering our environment - our relationships, our money, our physical wellbeing - in ways that we don’t like.

Although we act in good faith and with the best intentions, sometimes we screw up.

And the most puzzling part of it all is that we simply don’t know why…

In my opinion, there are 2 fundamental causes for this: 1) we operate on a limited hardware and 2) we run a buggy piece of software.

Let me explain.

Limited Hardware

We have only 5 senses through which we get information about outside world and all of them are flawed. Our vision cannot get infrared or x-rays data, our hearing can’t go lower than 5hz or higher than 50khs, we cannot touch stuff that is too cold or too hot without destroying the sensor completely, our smell cannot detect poisonous gas and our taste is limited to only 5 groups. We’re incredibly limited.

On top of that, the depreciation of our bodies is continuous and irreversible (at the current level of medical research, that is). In the first part of our lives we seem to improve our bodies in some way (getting stronger, faster, etc) but after a short phase, we start to depreciate continuously, until extinction.

And yet, with that limited hardware we create a meaningful image of reality.

The trick here is that the image is “meaningful”. It’s not true.

We’re not seeing reality, we’re seeing only a few slices of it, but for us it has a certain meaning and we believe this is the only world that is “out there”.

Buggy Software

Our limited hardware is hosting an even more flawed operating system. It’s not enough that we get skewed data from our sensors, we also form completely bogus images by various cognitive traps we fall into.

The most common cognitive trick is that we cannot understand stuff that we weren’t previously exposed to. If you don’t know Korean, you may stare at a Korean book for years, you won’t understand a thing. You have no inherent process to understand things instantly, without learning them first, one way or another.

We form our internal representation of the world by combining and mixing various pieces of information that we previously learned and, from them, we infer on new stuff. In Buddhism, for instance, this is called “dependent arising”.

That’s how learning works: we always have to “translate” what we learn (the new stuff) into what we already know (the already learned and internalized stuff).

Debugging A Human Being

Because of the limited hardware and buggy software, the average result of the programs executed on this machine we call “me” is more often than not completely bogus. And yet, we are enforcing those results over and over. We believe that this is the truth.

If we would continue the computer metaphor, what we should to do in order to fix the results is a bit of debugging. A bit of human being debugging, to be more precise.

Because of the very nature of how we do things (namely inferring from other things) the debugging should be done at the lowest level possible. Just like in software debugging, we don’t need to have a lot of patching at the surface, if we manage to think the architecture well from the very beginning. So instead of a complex approach, with a lot of tasks to do in order to enforce a proper execution, I use just 2 operations.

But, as I said, these are at a very low level.

1. Don’t Believe Everything You See (or hear, feel, taste, etc)

If we would be aware all the time that we function on a limited hardware, a lot of our approach towards reality will change. Too often, though, we take for granted stuff we see and we believe it’s true. And that creates a lot of problems.

I will resort to another famous Buddhist example: the coiled rope and the snake. If you see, in dim light, somewhere in the corner of your room a coiled rope, you may infer that this rope is a snake.

If you think it’s a snake, you will behave in a certain way. If you believe it’s a rope, you will behave in a very different way.

The easiest way to know what it is out there is to just verify it yourself. You just go there and look closer. Another way would be to use multiple sources of information, like asking somebody else who’s in the same room. The bottom line is that you do not take for granted your first impression. You do not act immediately like you just saw a snake.

It’s a very deep alteration of our everyday approach and one that is difficult to implement in a clean way. Because we use a lot of shortcuts and we infer meaning from partial information all the time. Most of the time, these shortcuts are useful - for instance we don't need to learn English all the time we read an English book - but there are situations in which they're doing more damage than good. If we use these shortcuts consistently, forgetting to verify our sources and to enforce the reliability of our information, we will end up alienating ourselves. We will literally live in a world that doesn't exist outside, but only in our heads.

So, the habit of constantly checking the information, of not believing everything we see and hear, will make us more and more aware about the true nature of the context in which we are living.

That’s a very important part in the process of adaptation. If you remember, at the beginning of the article we decided we should do whatever we can in order to shorten the time of altering our context, which has an inherent inertia which slows down the propagation of our intentions.

So, one of the most important measures we can take is to know where we are, exactly. To know the current environment, without interference. And that stems by accepting the fact that we’re operating on a limited hardware and that we should always double-check, somehow, our initial impressions.

2. Don’t Believe Everything You Think

This is even more difficult to accept than the first one. The software that runs in the background powers everything: not only the interface, but also the core, the most profound representation of reality.

We forget that what we know is not set in stone, it’s just something we learned. And we also forget that we forget. Because of our limited hardware (which has an erratic memory storage, so to say) we can’t remember what we did yesterday at the same time, let aside what we did 10 years ago at the same time. We do not have access to all the information available in our storage containers. Hence, we’re not right all the time.

And yet we tend to act like we are. Even in small circumstances, like emitting an opinion about something or somebody, we act with full confidence that we are consistent. We forget that the basis of these opinions is nothing more than a giant house of cards, ready to fall down at the smallest breeze.

So the antidote here is to not believe what you think. Just be patient. Wait for the circumstances to become more clear. Take in as much information as you can. Ask around. Do your homework.

And, more than that, accept that you may be wrong a lot of time.

The effect of this will be that you will understand the real value of you actions. You will understand if what you do has a real impact or if it’s just in your mind. That, again, will dramatically increase our chances to adjust to the context. Once we know which works and which doesn’t, for real, we will be able to choose wiser.

We Are Not Alone

Both actions will have a very interesting impact.

Wether we’re talking about not believing what we see or about not believing what we think, we will eventually be “forced” into interaction. We will need a second opinion, we will have to talk to people, we will need to get in touch with somebody else.

We will learn how to depend on other people with all the drawbacks and benefits of it.

The next 4 levels are dealing with this interaction, from the most intimate levels (family and friends) up to the more formalized (guilds and clients).

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All the articles in this series:

1. 6 Degrees Of Integration - Introduction

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I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.

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