For all purposes, you know something to be TRUE — if it WORKS.

e.g. you know it’s true that your cart is useful — it helps you move logs

It works and you TESTED it.

But what do you do when you can’t test it?

 

Well then you look for that which is already tested.

Already proven

And if it’s not proven — then at least it’s likely

 

And what if you have to create new knowledge out of those observations?

Well then what’s relevant is that it’s LOGICAL and COHERENT

 

A LOT of problems are like this

business, society, relationships, politics, life

It’s a lot of different information, with various degree of veracity, and various compatibility of one with another

 

INTELLIGENCE helps in achieving coherence

This is why intelligent people are even wrong intelligently

Because whatever information they cobbled together to arrive at their untrue conclusion — they did so on average in a more congruent, logical, sensible way

Doesn’t mean it’s right

 

INFORMATION, of course, helps in NOT being wrong in the first place

CORRECT information, that is

INCORRECT information all but GUARANTEES being wrong — even if the following reasoning is correct

(a rare edge case is when incorrect information plus incorrect reasoning result in accidentally correct conclusion, but that’s besides the point, since it’s accidental)

 

Thus your accuracy will be a function of:

-taking the highest quality information, data

-then intelligently reasoning over it, to arrive at new conclusions

 

There’s one last problem however,

HOW do you know your INFORMATION is correct?

And then, HOW do you REASON accurate conclusions when dealing with information of VARIED ACCURACY?

 

So before you even put your reasoning to work on true information — you must first acquire true information

Which itself is a problem of using REASON and INFORMATION — to decide WHAT SOURCE, WHAT INFORMATION — is TRUE in the first place

Thus we are in an unfortunate loop

 

The good news is, we break that loop with ACTION and TESTING

You can’t test every abstract problem under the sun, as we already decided,

But those that you CAN test, is how you can arrive at certain FUNDAMENTAL truths

And if those are indeed true — then you can use them to compare OTHER “truths”, other sources of information — against them

Are those sources congruent, with those truths you KNOW to be true?

The more congruent they are — the higher probability of veracity you can assign to those sources, those informations

 

Of course, you better be sure that those fundamental truths of yours are actually true

That’s why I always say:

STFU, get rid of your opinions, humble up, and go DO REAL THINGS IN REAL LIFE — and so learn some FUNDAMENTAL TRUTHS about this LIFE and WORLD

ITERATING EVERY DAY,

TANGIBLY IMPROVING SOMETHING CONCRETE, EVERY DAY

 

Now,

if you’ve done that, you know some truths,

which in turn allows you to select the more reliable sources, and test new emerging information against those truths,

There’s one last problem left,

HOW do you REASON accurate conclusions when dealing with information of VARIED ACCURACY? With UNCERTAINTY? Probability, but uncertainty?

 

Well,

IDEALLY you don’t have to

Became a 10 things certain to work 90% of the time, will in aggregate ultimately only work…

=0.910 = ~35% of the time,

and 20 things? 12%

It QUICKLY becomes a losing game, the more ELEMENTS yo need to rely on

So ideally,

Ideally you don’t deal with probability

Ideally you make what you can AS CERTAIN as possible

 

And how do you do that?

Let’s see how we got here, again:

-first you TESTED things in real life, and built a robust way to ORIENT in the world

-then encountering new, more abstract problems — you test various ideas against your truths, to determine their coherence

-you arrive at PROBABLE set of beliefs

-what if NOW, we can take that SET of beliefs — and start testing again?

So instead ALWAYS attempting to test everything,

AND instead of merely selecting a fucking source and believing everything from it blindly

AND instead of REASONING over any garbage data available to you, overthinking,

Why not use ALL of it,

And now that you had a slightly superior, more likely ideas about this new subject,

NOW again attempt to test it?

 

And mind you, most things still can’t be tested

There’s so many debates we have in the world, and it’s ANYONE’S CALL whose right

Maybe no one is right

 

Most things we will still be in the dark,

Idiots will claim to have the answers, but you will see the lack of congruence, or the dubiousness of data

But nevertheless this framework is immensely powerful

Most man, wise or stupid, informed or ignorant — will fail one or more of those steps

–Overeducated people prefer answers over doubt and critical thinking

-Overthinkers prefer rambling and ranting instead of reading a proper fucking book

-Intellectuals prefer reading and talking instead of actually doing something

-Doers and businessman and engineers prefer to make it work at all costs, but with less concern for finding a deeper, broader, and more formal of an explanation, understanding

 

If you could combine all those qualities — you’d be exceptionally wise

Exceptionally accurate

Exceptionally effective