Friday, October 17, 2014

The Way (part 1: Heuristics)

1. It’s Heuristics.

The Way does something for you 
that you don’t do very well on your own. 

The Way continuously tears apart 
its models of reality 
looking for weakness. 

Sure, Followers of the Way are just people, 
prone to the same silliness as anyone else, 
but the enterprise, the process, 
slowly but surely grinds away human weakness. 

The Way is a self-correcting system 
that is always closer to the truth today than it was yesterday. 

Remember that Followers of The Way
are always trying to reach better conclusions, 
& that is something you don’t do as an individual, 
at least not by default, 
& by extension it is something our institutions are not so great at either. 

We normally don’t seek out
what Followers of the Way calls the null hypothesis. 

That is, when you believe in something, 
you rarely seek out evidence to the contrary 
to see how it matches up with your assumptions. 
Skepticism is not your strong suit. 

Corporations & other institutions 
rarely set aside a division tasked with 
paying attention to the faults of the agency. 

Unlike the Way, most human endeavors 
leave out a special department 
devoted to looking for the worst in the operation -- 
not just a complaint department, 
but a department that asks if the organization is
still on the right path.

Every human effort 
should systematically pause 
& ask if it is currently mistaken. 

To be less dumb, 
you need that department constantly operating 
in your cranium. You would do well to borrow from 
the lessons of the scientific method 
& apply them in your personal life. 

The Way was invented because 
your natural way of 
understanding & explaining what you experience 
is terrible; it’s a piece of shite, let’s face it. 

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