LEARNINGS OF 2020 # 5 CONTD.

 

NEERAJ MAHAJAN

 Hi I am Neeraj Mahajan and I love writing. The beauty of writing lies in its ability to coax clarity in your thoughts before penning them down. I am surprised every single time I write as to how little I understood the ideas before writing opened up whole new vistas to me. It helps me grow daily, see things around me more clearly.  It is time to share more.

STOICISM

This idea has captured my imagination ever since I read it in the INCERTO series of Taleb. It stuck with me so much that I have dedicated to it my Blog name WANABI STOIC. It originated in great ancient Greek philosophy. A stoic is a person indifferent to Pleasure or Pain. What's the big deal about it? Tons! My problem is that modernity has delivered a sucker narrative on us and we have fallen for and become suckers for all that is soft and sophisticated. Fancy cars, iPhones, treadmills, instant pills, fast food, Facebook, ebooks even google. These though very useful, have consumed us. Don't get me wrong as I am not against them. I am worried about their multiple-order effects. They inflict soft living on us which is debilitating. We soft opt to message friends rather than call upon birthdays, we walk on machines instead of long open-air walks. Over-optimization has become rampant killing something in its deluge. I do, however, use all of the above but I am not consumed by them. I drive BMW but for short distances, I walk or cycle (like my grandfather did). I fast, lift weights rarely popping down pills my throat to cure myself as is the wont now. I use IG, FB, Twitter but I connect physically too with friends on regular basis. I use Google for word meanings but also keep Websters New World dictionary handy. To swim against the tide of prevailing culture requires a concerted effort, some pain, and a tough mindset. But the gains are huge. It has made me Antifragile( small downside big upside). Having spent all my life in Delhi, a notorious city for its cyclists and pedestrians, I understand the nuances of all this. Hedonism accentuation with all the above has permeated the fiber of our society with a very strong fragilizing( deep sensitivity to disorder) effect on us. Stoicism is a great technique to overcome it. Here the great Roman STOIC MARCUS AURELIUS SENECA and his central idea to stay happy is the savior. Seneca was a very wealthy man who kept his wealth. But to keep his AntiFragility( high upside low downside) from the quirks of ill fate, he mentally wrote it off all. He led a tough life. This technique made him immune to losses and randomness that happen in everyday life. He had only the upside. Fate couldn't touch him. Isn't it the regular losses, unreciprocated emotions that sting and rock our boat.? At least, it hurt me early on in my life. But now the intensity is less. So Stoicism is all about domestifying your emotions and not eliminating them. To sum it up, a Modern stoic is someone who transforms fear into Prudence, Pain into Information, Mistakes into Initiative, and Desire into Undertaking.

SURVIVORSHIP BIAS

It is pervasive. We deify heroes coz they are heroes. Their goodness and vices are emulated in varying proportions.. The problem with this bias is we discount the randomness associated with a survivor and causate its success. In complex systems epistemic opacity blinds us. Mistaking such a naive analysis of the past as something definitive blurs our senses and is often the main cause of Black Swans( rare unexpected events of huge impact). We often say Hard work leads to success, wealth and there are many living proofs of it. But have we noticed millions who failed despite very hard work and are hand to mouth? Or the ones who got rich with minimal effort?  I know so many. In the medical world, cancer treatment is trumpeted successful if the patient lives for another 3 to 5 years. But has anybody studied the untreated and undiagnosed cancer patients who lived long?  Another example, a chain smoker or tobacco user who lived up to the ripe age of 90 years prompts us to say everything is in our genes, so we will not die if we have strong genes, ignoring so many other factors. Study strong genotypes who died young because of smoking or chewing tobacco. The problem is as a society we only notice heroes, survivors, their qualities, and equate them with the formula of success. The silent evidence actually biases us to make things at times riskier than they actually are and vice versa. Instead, talk to losers, it will surprise us on the role of chance, uncertainty, randomness, and Lady Luck in life. 

This brings the discussion to the problem of silent evidence. Silent evidence is what events use to conceal their randomness. We all know the history is written by the winners and they are in a minority. Nobody trails losers, the overwhelming majority. If done with rigor, a lot of hidden secrets can be uncovered. We have to remember Statistics are invisible and injuries are anecdotes. Let's study Invisibles  It is a lifelong process of learning and discovering. The gravest manifestation of silent evidence is that it inflicts on us the Illusion of Stability. We see things less risky than they actually are because of the stability illusion particularly if we have cheated death in the past. We causate reasons for our survival and continue taking risks out of sheer ignorance and probability blindness completely sucking out randomness out of our lives We are often misled to believe we are Casanovas and Mr. Knowsall meets his Black Swan one fine day. Lets us always remember the Cemetery in the inferential part of our biological mechanism and Keep a DONT KNOW MIND.

As Always many thnx for reading my blog.

PHOTO CREDIT BY MIKE PALMOWSKI ON UNSPLASH