The Importance Of Deep, Long Term Thinking And How to Get It ?

 

NEERAJ MAHAJAN

Did you ever ponder over your past? Do you have unfulfilled dreams ? Do they they remain elusive ? What exactly went wrong? I do  , and  persist with deep thinking. Over time, a realization has dawned that inter alia, short term shallow thinking was the malaise that afflicted most my thoughts. As we think, so shall we act and become, says the epic Bhagwat Geeta. And, this piece is on the indispensability of long term thinking and how to do it and dream big.

 As to what denigrates our thoughts, here's my thing:

TOURISTIFICATION & AVERSION TO UNCERTAINTY

Uncertainty is the bane of human mind. Most abhor it.  Don't agree ? Try postponing action on an important matter indefinitely. Your mind will be drained in no time. This is akin to Procrastinating. But we were told it was bad ! False.

What is uncertainty ? It is when you don't know the outcome of your actions, the future ; To a mother it is about her Childs future; to a businessman it is survival and growth of his business, to a lover it is about finding a soul mate and to a politician whether she will win the next elections ? 

There is another types of uncertainty that purported to be applied in real life situations by academicians.. It is called the ludic Fallacy and is phony. The ludic fallacy links uncertainty to a  Casino or a game of throwing dice where it is little .

Many people who never take risks in real life enjoy Casinos as if it were real. They are suckers for these games blissful in the ignorance that real life risks, randomness has been sucked out from them. Big Casino winners are anecdotes while millions of losers suffer in silence. Says Taleb, " Computable risks are absent from real life situations. They are just laboratory contraptions" in a game.

As to Procrastination, it helps us gain time and lets things take their natural course. In an increasingly opaque world, it gives us a chance to change our minds and perspectives before committing to irreversible policies. 

It works best in Unnatural duties and procedures.  As per  NN Taleb in Antifragile " very few can grasp that one should lead a life in which procrastination is as good as a naturalistic risk based form of decision making".

The ancient Romans revered those who endured uncertainty and delayed, resisted intervention. This helped preempt black swan events. 

Roman Fabius Maximus was a  procrastinator General who drove rivals crazy by delaying action . They couldn't endure uncertainty in a battle ground and capitulated.. This saved a lot of blood shed and spared countless human lives. Embrace uncertainty and treat it as a your best friend. Should you do it, you shall reap reward  in crystal clear thinking as facts gather and simmer over time to help decide what is best for you.

As to touristification, means planning your life in a way as to ignore randomness of things. Your life doesn't exist in isolation so as to be a victim of any rigid plan. With uncertainty all around, no body knows where they are headed in life. It doesn't mean have no plans. Do Plan, but change your mind often as new things unfold before you. Be a flaneur, not a tourist. That's the way nature exploits optionality.

OPTIONALITY = ANTIFRAGILITY + RATIONALITY.

Remember YOGI BERRAS Prophetic words, " you got to be careful if you don't know where you are headed for you may not get there". Embrace uncertainty for long term thinking.

 OVER CAUSATION&RANDOMNESS

Causality is an analgesic illusion that we use day and night to understand things which we do not in reality as most of our thinking is deluded. 

With so much randomness all around, that our brains cant handle, it compresses info by assigning them a cause. As it is mostly wrong, we have the wrong notion that we understand past. And with a dose of serotonins in our brains we try to be Casanovas and predict future. The problems aggravates as that's wrong too inviting black swans.

The problem is huge. Try and ask a normally reticent person about why a particular thing happened ? He will turn loquacious and causate on it .Rarely you will hear the magic words I don't know. Why ?

It is because causality panders to our intrinsic weakness to seek and give explanations for things that are masked in silent evidence. That too in a very unrigorous fashion. A research by Albert and Raiffa showed that we are 22 times too comfortable with what we know.

And the last thing we need while dealing with uncertainty is to focus. It may read counter intuitive but focusing will not only end up sucking us but also lead to prediction hassles that we just cant do.

The problem with silent evidence is that nature uses randomness to manifest itself and most of it is masked in silent evidence. You need rigor to unearth it . And if you causate, you will completely miss the point and this will lead to epistemic opacity. If you cant think properly, you cant see properly and vice versa.

THINKING IN MULTIPLE ORDER EFFECTS

Quite often I have observed folks don't understand the above. Decisions are taken by accounting for their immediate consequences. As a common example, you share a secret with someone before extracting a promise that they wont share it with any one. This is the failure of thinking in terms of second order effects. Know the Monkey analogy to appreciate this better.

A nation as poor as Pakistan did not impose a lock down during covid outbreak . PM Imran khan understood multiple order effects of his decision to impose a lockdown as that would have killed millions of its impoverished citizens for sure while Corona deaths were still probabilistic. 

Reverse happened in equally poor India as she imposed a strict pan India lockdown at 4 hours notice pushing millions into poverty and into cemetery thousands who were forced to trek to their villages in panic. A horrendous failure of thinking in terms of second order effects.

Next time if you make fun of some one behind their backs, remember this : Some one may be doing this behind your back and you would kill him for that. So please refrain..

Did America analyze long term effects of its Afghan withdrawal ? I am sure a super power it is and she did. Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, Afghan all ended in US disasters though. Time will reveal the answer .Learn to think of consequences , side effects of all your decisions and actions. Make mental models, write them , think through all sticky decisions in life before acting. It will declutter your thoughts and give them a long term perspective.

As always many thanks for reading me. Email me @neerajmahajan0770@gmail.com if you have any interesting ideas or a feedback. I shall revert asap.

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