No one has a monopoly on truth, and science continues to advance. Yesterday's heresies may be tomorrow's conventional wisdom.
- Dean Ornish
One of the most powerful tools in our arsenal is what I call "The Science Of Hindsight". The past does not predict the future, but it sure can tell us a lot about ourselves. Many of us can look back at times, decades ago, when we were absolutely certain about how the world works and laugh at, despite our unshakeable certainty, how wrong we were.
Your monkey mind will tell you that you are no longer so naive, and this time, your level of certainty is valid. The science of hindsight will say "well hold on a minute, there was a time we were certain of a thing and were wrong, so maybe we should keep an open mind. Just in case". The monkey mind deals in absolutes and certainties, and the science of hindsight deals in probabilities and risks and if you're willing to study it, provides clues.
An excerpt from "How To Fly A Horse":
"In 1846, large numbers of women and babies were dying during childbirth in Vienna. The cause of death was puerperal fever, a disease that swells and then kills its victims. Vienna's General hospital had two maternity clinics. Mothers and newborns were dying in only one of them. Pregnant women waited outside the hospital, begging not to be taken to the deadly clinic, often giving birth in the streets if they were refused. More women and babies survived labor in the streets than in the {deadly} clinic. All the deaths came at the hands of doctors. In the other clinic, midwives delivered the babies"
Vienna General was a teaching hospital where doctors would learn their trade by cutting into corpses and, in between, they would deliver babies. A Hungarian Doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis started wondering if perhaps the women were somehow getting sick and dying from something organic transferred from the corpses to the women in labor.
Dr. Semmelweise was ridiculed.
More from How To Fly A Horse:
"But, from a clinical point of view, Semmelweis had convincing data to support his hypothesis. At a time when doctors did not scrub in or out of the operating room and were so proud of the blood on their gowns that they let it build up throughout their careers, Semmelweis persuaded the doctors of Vienna to wash their hands before delivering babies, and the results were immediate. In April 1847, 57 women died giving birth in Vienna General's deadly First Clinic - 18 percent of all patients. In the middle of May, Summelweis introduced hand washing. In June, 6 women died, a death rate of 2 percent, the same as the untroubled Second Clinic. The death rate stayed low, and in some months fell to zero. In the following two years, Semmelweis saved the lives of around 500 women and an unknown number of children."
"This was not enough to overcome the skepticism. Charles Delucena Meigs, an American obstetrician, typified the outrage. He told his students that a doctor's hands could not possibly carry disease because doctors are gentlemen and 'gentlemen's hands are clean."
A rising star in the medical community, Dr. Semmelweis had his ideas rejected and shunned from the medical community. Conventional wisdom, at the time, made the very idea of what we now call "microbes" or "germs" ridiculous.
Everyone, especially the experts, was so certain that washing your hands before delivering babies was preposterous that Dr. Semmelweis was shunned from the community and died in a mental institution.
Conventional Wisdom.
The monkey mind tells us: Well that was then. They didn't understand germ theory, but now we do. So NOW our conventional wisdom is perfect.
The science of hindsight reveals: Well, we've certainly made progress, but thousands of mothers died because we never questioned conventional wisdom. Perhaps we should leave a little room for something that doesn't make sense to us, yet.
“If you have a 10% chance of a 100x return, you should take that bet every time even if it’s going to feel bad 9 out of 10 times.”
- Jeff Bezos
What Jeff Bezos is referring to here is the concept of "asymmetry". I am a huge fan of asymmetric bets, but I believe we need to rethink this quote, which I wrote about and made a video about here.
"Burn the boats if you want to take the island"
- Cortez (and then a bunch of Tony Robbins types)
Ugh. This will have a post of its own someday. Context is important here because this quote is taken out of context. It reads and is used as "if you want to succeed, take the biggest risk" which is actually the exact opposite of the wisdom of the story.
Here's what your favorite motivational speaker forgets to mention:
Cortez was told that if they returned home without taking the island, they would be put to death upon their arrival. Returning home without taking the island meant certain death for all of them.
The riskiest option, in terms of survival, was to return home without taking the island.
Burning the boats was not taking more risk in order to win bigger, it was eliminating the biggest risk; the certainty that he and all of his men were put to death.
Conventional Wisdom.
The monkey mind tells us: "We have to risk it all to become great"
The science of hindsight reveals that the path to greatness requires taking risks, but as little risk as possible to achieve the desired outcome.
"Treat others as you want to be treated"
The Golden Rule
Uh. What world would I have to live in to assume that other people want to be treated like I do? Put an introvert and an extrovert in a room together and tell them to treat each other like they want to be treated and they'll be miserable and likely piss each other off.
One step further, we could say "treat others as THEY want to be treated" but I'm not a mind reader and my crystal ball is broken.
Both make sense to our monkey mind because our monkey mind forgets that everyone has different preferences and that each person has their own unique disposition.
I believe there is a far better rule to adopt as "conventional wisdom", Taleb's Silver Rule: "Do not treat others in a way you would not want to be treated". It's "via negativa" style, don't assume other people like what you like, don't try and guess what they like, just don't do them harm.
Short video on the silver rule here.
Of course, you might disagree.
GOOD.
It's mindlessly accepting someone's version of conventional wisdom and refusing to consider new information, evidence, or perspective that led to the death of so many new mothers.
Onward.
Nic
PS. If you're coming to the Wolf Den Event Friday, I'll see you there!
Nic Peterson
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