🤨 TREE 581: Reality is unknowable

TREEpeat 101

Here’s a fun reason: Your consciousness lags between 80 milliseconds and a second behind reality. Everything you are aware of has already happened. You live inescapably in the past.

Here’s a consequential reason: Your only way to observe the world is with yourself at the centre. Your only way to process your observations is through the filters of your knowledge, experience and biases. You are, in one way or another, objectively wrong about virtually everything.

For most of daily living, the things you’re wrong about are minor and don’t matter. For things like relationships, values and big life choices, being wrong can really screw thing up.

Fortunately, we humans have tools for getting closer to understanding reality. Here are three big ones:

Own your beliefs with humility. Be ready to change them when you learn you are wrong.

Develop your empathy and imagination so you can better understand others’ view of the world.

Learn about and work around your cognitive biases.

Cowboy Bob and Hoofy Jones roamed the wild west delivering justice with polite smiles and lots of hot lead.

I’ve been on a Qveen Herby thing lately. Her music is so much fun. Over the weekend I wondered if she had been interviewed on a podcast. Turns out, she has a podcast with her producer. This episode is a super interesting look into how independent music gets made. (Spotify link. If you use a different podcast app, search ‘House of Herby’ and look for the episode titled ‘The Creative Process’.)

Grow slowly
Jeff