In life-living : you want to be NAIVE. You don’t want to be cynical. You don’t even want to be sceptical
Of course you don’t want to be too naive. You don’t want to hit an absorbing barrier: you don’t want to die, you don’t want to go broke, you don’t want to damage your health, you don’t want to get committed for life, etc.
But you don’t want to be SCEPTICAL either
Do you know what is the great IRONY OF SCEPTICISM?
That an attitude of scepticism is itself UN-SCEPTICAL, NAIVE, ARROGANT
How?
You are being “sceptical” by finding all the many ways in which something will NOT work
You actually are correct
Your criticism will likely be valid, your refutations and objections real
Except you’re disregarding one thing: THE UNKNOWN
The UNKNOWN — which neither the naive optimist, nor you, the “realistic sceptic” — has ANY CHANCE OF KNOWING (by definition, it’s UN-known)
And thus, while you are being SCEPTICAL and disregarding all those ideas and plans: someone else just goes ahead and TRIES THINGS
And what you predicted would fail — DOES fail
Of course nothing EVER goes according to plan
And of course he course-corrects
And as he does: some bad fortune happens,
AND some GOOD fortune happens,
and at the end he solves his problem
In ways NEITHER YOU, NOR HIM, COULD HAVE PREDICTED
And this is how the NAIVE actually gets something done,
he actually learns something along the way
and he actually KNOWS something, at the end. He KNOWS IT because he MADE IT WORK. This is the very definition of knowing.
And you? The sceptic?
You are the one naive now. Because he made the man fly, he made him communicate telepathically, he made him super-intelligent, he sent him to stars, he rose a bona fide fucking babel tower(s),
And you are the one naive now: you who said that it was all IMPOSSIBLE
Maybe you could prove that the then knowledge was insufficient to make any of that work — but you couldn’t have known what was possible with the knowledge yet to be discovered,
DISCOVERED by the naive, crazy visionary
So when I hear a conspiracy theory,
or someone boasting of his BS-detectors,
or someone “debunking” someone else,
or any TALKER criticising the DOER,
media and politicians and academics and armchair philosophers — criticising the entrepreneurs and engineers and inventors,
i LAUGH at it
1000 THINKERS and 1000 TALKERS are NOT WORTH 1 SINGLE DOER
now, again
of course don’t get yourself killed,
don’t bankrupt your business,
don’t lose your investors money,
and foremost: don’t leave this place worse then it is,
ALWAYS consider the long term consequences of your actions
the externalities
foremost — the NEGATIVE UNKNOWN UNKNOWNS,
always remember the precautionary principle,
but you know what?
likely none of that is your problem
because your insignificant life has no bearings on planet earth,
and nothing you do puts you in ANY danger of dying,
therefore NO RISK you refuse to take is NOT WORTH TAKING,
therefore your scepticism is entirely nonsense
and the Naive outperforms you in every aspect of life
The Naive outperforms you in every aspect of life,
He’s less knowledgeable, less smart, less critical, less intelligent, likely less educated, less ambitious even, less sophisticated,
but if he’s optimistic, if he’s inspired, if he’s willing to put in the work — he will do things that the SCEPTIC is rejecting,
he will do things that the PROUD ONE is rejecting,
and he will dramatically outperform
he will so dramatically outperform — that it looks like he is cheating
It looks like he has cheatcodes, unfair advantages
And he does
STUMBLING upon a gold-mine is obviously an incident of getting lucky
But first you must go and search for it
And first you must believe that it’s there
NAIVELY
Be naive
Child-like
because you have NO IDEA WHAT IS POSSIBLE
you’re NOT NEARLY iterating enough,
you’re doing the same thing every day — OF COURSE you’re getting the same outcomes
You should be iterating like crazy,
ESPECIALLY in XXI century,
you have NO IDEA WHAT IS POSSIBLE — therefore you must STUMBLE upon those POSSIBILITIES — by EXPLORING RELENTLESSLY, AS WIDELY AS POSSIBLE
My rule is “1 and 1000 kicks”
Bruce Lee: “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”
I disagree
Try 1000 kicks once
Because this way you discover a new method, a new solution, a new technique, a new idea
Then practice it 1000 times — and actually master it
Be naive
Let go of thinking of yourself as so smart
Of looking smart
Of being right
Of never failing
Be like a child learning to walk: free, uninhibited, enthusiastic, curious, tireless
Only DOING matters
And you can do so much more if you can only open your mind