Understand Understanding

When you are learning or reading something, best heuristic to know if you understand the topic is this: You do NOT take notes, highlights or try to memorise or summarize anymore.
Instead, you are expanding and improving on the ideas presented. You are creating and conjuring something new from those ideas and concepts.

Creation is sign of understanding. It is when you stop just copying and summarizing ideas and concepts and instead start to expand on them and use them to create something new. It’s when you start going level beyond what is just being said.

I noticed when I am reading a book and making highlights and just summarizing what I learned, it doesn’t seem to have much effects in my life or understanding of a topic.
But when I feel I really understood something and got some insight, I don’t take notes. I create notes! New ones, new ideas. I run off with a idea that I understood and I transform it and build on top of that something entirely new. I use it in entirely new fields. I feel like I understood its implicit roots that even author might have missed!

It is like when doing martial arts. You really understand it and have good skills once you are not just perfectly doing what your instructor shows you, but when you start creating your own techniques on top of those you learned from your instructor (assuming they actually work for you!).
Or when cooking, it is when you stop just perfectly following the recipe or even cooking principles, but rather build upon them and change them and create something entirely new that you really understood recipe or cooking principles.

It is a paradox because more you understand and master something, less you use it and more you change (customize to your specific goals) it.

It is also sign of usefulness and relevancy of such ideas and concepts. If you completely memorise and learn something, and have no use for those ideas and skills, then what happens is they will just sit in your head and will not lead anywhere. They won’t create anything new. Relevant ideas worth understanding and learning will move you somewhere and create something new.

So if what you are learning and reading isn’t helping you create something new and beyond what is being directly learned, then you either don’t understand it or it isn’t of use to you (at least not right now).

I found that once I really understood something, it creates implicit knowledge that is unique to me because it is combined with my previous knowledge. It’s knowledge that cannot be found in text and ideas of author itself. It is emerging between those ideas and my already existing ideas. This help me create and conjure up new ideas and knowledge. But for this to happen properly, I have to understand those ideas of author first. This doesn’t mean I have to agree with them. In fact, I often find that ideas that help me create something new are the ones I disagree with!

However, this can also produce misunderstandings. Meaning, it goes beyond what author of original ideas meant. But this isn’t always a wrong thing! That is, as long as it still helps me make some useful creation. But one has to be careful, because misunderstood idea can be taken only so far until it becomes detrimental in any further process. Misunderstood ideas have very limited usefulness and can be beneficial only by a chance.

Such misunderstandings can be helpful in short term as they can spark new idea and direction for you that it wouldn’t otherwise. But in a long term they can be detrimental. Good way to prevent such misunderstandings is to be very specific and explicit in your understanding and see where are limits of implications that you took away.

Another good heuristic of understanding idea or concept is when you see both good and bad in it. It’s pros and cons. All ideas, solutions and concepts have both. And more of them you can see, probably the better understanding of it you have. Knowing such limitations also help prevent misunderstandings and taking ideas beyond where they can be useful.

Using Perceived Status and Expectations to Improve Faster

Many of us are familiar with idea that teaching can help us learn better and faster. Quotes like this “When one teaches, two learn” – Robert Heinlein or Feynman Technique for learning are showcasing that. But why does this work so well?

I think at the core is status, expectations and responsibility. What we know and how well we perform is limited by what we think we are supposed to know. And as we all know, as a teacher you are supposed to know a lot!

You can perform only as good as your perceived status and expectations allow. For example, if you are put in position of a teacher you will perform better than if you are put into position of student. That is even though you might have exactly same skills and knowledge and try just as hard. Everything else being equal, you will perform better in any activity if you are teacher rather than a student.

Another aspect is responsibility. Given more responsibility, you are more likely to perform better. It is like when you have incompetent employee who can’t do what you tell him. But once you give him more responsibility, control and expect more from him, while showing that you trust them, then he suddenly becomes competent.Same goes for yourself. Give yourself trust, more responsibility and higher expectations and you will perform better.

Telling yourself (explicitly or implicitly) that you are just a beginner and aren’t supposed to be very good is just easy way out and fake modesty or fear of failure, which is setting yourself for failure and underperformance by default. Instead, try to hide the fact that you are the beginner and pretend like you are already a pro. Of course, you will most likely suck and won’t match level of real pros, but you will end up performing better than you would if you went into it with attitude of “I am not supposed to be good at this, yet”.

During this process you will inevitably hit a wall. You will stumble and fail at some point and that is what you are looking for. It is point for improvement because here you’ve just found the edge of your current abilities and knowledge. Now just go back and train, learn and practice at that edge until you don’t stumble there anymore.

It is when you are expected to do your best and you see yourself as someone who is supposed to do better than your current abilities allow that you either a.) discover edge of your current knowledge and hence what to work on, or b.) you find out that your current abilities are beyond what you thought they were!

But how does one stay humble during all this? Isn’t humbleness core principle of learning? We have to realise that this is just one tool and should be used appropriately. There is time to act like you are better than you actually are in order to improve and there are also times when you have to step back on level below of where you are and be more humble. Having more than just one tool in your toolbelt is always better as long as you know how to use them.

Some may worry about looking or being overconfident and too cocky when trying this technique. And it will probably happen. But how else can you find if you are overconfident unless you try to pretend to be better than you actually are?
Imagine you try to be overconfident, and try to do something you think you are currently not capable of doing.
Then you actually end up doing it successfully! In that case, you wasn’t overconfident. You were, in fact, underconfident! And only way to find out where your true abilities lie is to push yourself beyond what you think you are capable. If you are proven right, then you know where you stand and what to improve. If you are proven wrong, well, then try harder!

When performing and learning, pretend that your students are looking, not your teacher. When your teacher is looking you are automatically assuming inferior status in the room which makes you more prone to underperform to your true abilities. Opposite is true when someone who is below you is looking and expecting your perform superiorly. This usually brings best out of you.

So in summary, pretend to be teacher rather than a student if you want to perform better.

Destroying Insecurity and Boosting Confidence Through Your Interests and Values

I have hypothesis that diversifying your interests, values and desires makes you much less insecure and anxious while boosting your confidence.

Personal Example and How Idea Came to Being

In recent months I had huge increase in my confidence in all areas of my life. But I haven’t got any better at them. But my social, business, intellectual and athletic confidence is booming like never before. Anxiety and overthinking is gone, too. I care less, I am more happy and I seem to accomplish everything with so much ease. At first I thought I am just getting older so I care less and am getting naturally more secure and confident. But I wasn’t happy with that as full explanation. While I am sure there might be multiple factors at play, I think diversifying my interests, values and desires did the trick.

When I was starting my gym rat journey and saw all buff guys being more jacked and stronger than me, I felt insecure. When I got into business and at some business conference I saw everyone making more zeroes per month than I did per year, it made me feel insecure. When I started cooking and I saw and tasted dishes of other cooks, it made me feel insecure about my skills.

But then came tipping point. At some point, I became slightly above average in all of those things. Never the best, but good enough than whenever I came to my gym I was richest entrepreneur, best cook, best at BJJ, knew most about quantum physics etc. Even though I wasn’t strongest and best looking in my gym, I was most confident because gym wasn’t my single interest from which I derived my values and self-worth. I was looking at myself as a whole of all other skills and experiences. I stopped being too focused on one single domain. And this went for all other areas. I meet with multimillionaires but I am more confident in conversation than they are, because I don’t perceive myself as being worse at business than them, but as being more fit, better at BJJ, better at physics, better cook etc. etc.

What also probably accounted for such increase of confidence could be added recognition of diverse range of my new (mediocre) skills. It is funny to be worst at my BJJ class, but then being recognised as best grappler among my buddies who never did it. Or being that guy who knows lot about physics and business at my BJJ gym, while being barely among average in both fields. Being average, if you are average in enough interest things, can indeed make you the best. Or at least, most unique person in the room.

Confidence Comes from What We Value

How confident we feel seems to come from where we place our values. If we value wrong things that we can’t control or can’t “win, then we created situation where we cannot be confident. And worst is when all that confidence hinges on one single thing. But when our values and interests are diverse enough, it can create solid foundation of confidence on many fronts. Such diversity helps us see the contrast and gives us perspective, which makes it hard to feel insecure – insecurity is subjective feeling that is difficult to feel with more objective point of view that is forced upon us once we have broader view of the world (i.e. having more interests, values and desires).

So if your whole life is about business and it is your only interest then you will place all (or most) your values on successes from business. This makes you anxious about it and it makes you overthink, too. It will drive you into deriving most of your self-worth from your business accomplishments. Therefore your confidence and security will hinge on your relative business success (relative to arbitrary goals of yours, business people you follow etc.).

Both, confidence and insecurity come from where we look at and what we value most.

Trap of Becoming The Best (Or Placing Value On It)

Having one central value and/or interest will cause us to derive most of our perceived self-worth from it and how we compare in it with others. And there will always be someone better in any one given thing. Even the best ones are always changing so even if you manage to become best, it will be just matter of time until you can surpassed.

Paradox is that people doing best in their fields are most insecure because they are too focused on their field but there is always someone who is better than them creating feeling of insecurity.

I am seeing this often, although there are many exceptions. But I have seen this in myself, whenever I had single focus I was much more attached to it and insecure about it. But once I spread my interests and focus and where I place my values, I got more chill about it, more loose and I felt no insecurity if I screw something up or seen someone doing much better.

It’s Subjective Anyway…

Imagine you get strongest at your gym with best physique anyone can imagine just to learn that someone now thinks you are dumb meathead who is compensating for something. You became the best just to be look down upon by some other group of people. Or you become best physicist and win Nobel Prize, just to learn someone now perceives you as insecure compensating nerd. You can seek status and derive confidence and security from it only if you stay locked up in certain narrow group of people. Step outside of your circle, and you will find someone looking down on you, no matter what you accomplished.

Downsides

Some will correctly notice that by spreading yourself thin you will never achieve 100% focus and mastery in one field. While this is mostly true, you would be surprised how easy and quick it is to get yourself at above average level in something. Moreover, no matter how focused you are on your AI research, fitness journey, quantum gravity, startup etc. you can’t do it every waking hour! And in those spare hours you can relax by slowly and calmly learning something that interests you and eventually you become above average in it.

Trick is also in actually being interested in something else than your primary desire/value. This might be hard for some. But if you try enough things, I can pretty much guarantee you that you will find something. And every new thing usually leads to another. This will eventually create chain of interests on which you can build your confidence. And often it happens than different perspectives and insights from different interests greatly and unexpectedly amplifies progress and results in your primary thing. It’s no coincidence that most of my insights for business came from fitness industry, and most of my fitness progress came from understanding science etc. You will be able to draw analogies and intersect principles that create new lenses through which you can view the world. It is like seeing in extra dimensions that give you the edge.

So downside is that you may lose some focus from primary thing. But I think upsides make up for it. You might not become the best in your field, but you can become best at your life. There are few who dedicate themselves to one thing for their whole life, but I don’t think most of us want that.

Conclusion

Ultimately we all seem to know that tying our identity or self-worth to something we can’t control creates feelings of insecurity. How it could be otherwise? If your security depends on something you have no control over, then of course then cannot be any confidence. If there is single point of failure, if that one thing doesn’t go as desired, then there has to be anxiety.

But while we cannot have full control, especially over one single point of failure, we can have control over the whole. If we just place importance on diverse values and interests and avoid single point of failure by not attaching our desires, values and self-worth to one single thing, then out of this approach can emerge seamless confidence.

And will all that being said, this is only one part of very big and complex concepts like insecurity and confidence. For some people this might play a significant role and shift in change they seek, and for others, it can make no difference or even backfire. It is a tool that has to be used appropriately and will not apply at all times for everyone, but it is something to keep in mind, because it does exist and seems to work really well many times for many people.

Importance of Ideas and People We Disagree With

True Diversity as Source of Innovation and Resilience

It’s important to have true diversity among people. For there to be people who vehemently disagree with you, your methods, your ways, your goals. And you actually want that! Mere tolerance of them is not realising its true importance and how they benefit you.

You want people spread out on the spectrum, from one extreme to another, with most people somewhere around the middle.

Why would you want that if your way is, of course, “the right way”? One big reason is that such diversity creates most resilient, robust and balanced society that flourishes with new ideas, options and innovations. You like those things, options, innovations and not living in collapsed society or being dead, right?

And believe or not, there is rarely just one way to do things. You always want there to be extra options and ways. You might love going to work through forest, but in a case that there is a wildfire, you want there to be another way like a road through a city for example!

If we all go to the right, and there is no one going to the left, then in very unlikely event that going right way proves to be fatal (black swans are still a thing), then there will be no one remaining! But if we diversify, then we survive.

This doesn’t mean you should change your opinion (unless you are really compelled to). But you should want there to be someone who opposes your opinion, even if they are wrong.

True vs. Fake Diversity

Diversity among people isn’t based on race, ethnicity or gender or any arbitrary group like that because people aren’t their race, ethnicity or gender. What makes a person are ideas they enact on! That’s where true and productive and more enjoyable diversity comes from.
Compare it with fake diversity where you separate people based on gender or race. This is mere discrimination and/or virtue signalling, not a diversity because two people can be same in all other respects except for their race or gender, or whatever. In most contexts, diversifying among those variables makes no difference. But when diversifying among ideas, that makes almost always meaningful difference.

Diversifying Isn’t Always Ignorance

Diversifying in investing can be thought of as a sign of ignorance or lack of expertise and is at best considered way to preserve the wealth, not to grow it.This might be true also on individual level. More focused you are, larger the outcomes you can get.But on societal level, diversifying ways in which we go and put our efforts in is crucial, because we can’t afford any fatal risk as a society.

Some Examples

Example 1:
Another day I was listening to couple smart people arguing about monogamous vs. polygamous lifestyles. Which is right for our society to adopt? Now, that is a bad question, as you might have guessed by now.Answer is neither. You want there to be people distributed on both ends of the spectrum, with most somewhere around the middle. And you want to find partner who is on the spectrum exactly (or approximately) where you are.Evolutionary speaking, it is most advantageous to be monogamous in polygamous society and to be polygamous in monogamous society. But in practical sense, you want there to be people who meet their love at 11 and spend their whole lives together and then you want there people who start their sex lives at 11 and die at 100 while having a threesome (note that I am not advocating any of these options!).

Example 2:
Diet is less related but good and nicely controversial example. But I try to be quite narrow in this particular example. You might have heard that some fish might contain excessive amounts of mercury and other heavy metals. But they are also one of healthiest and most nutritious foods.

So what should you do (apart from most practical thing to test fish you frequently eat and your blood for heavy metals)?
Diversify! Don’t eat tuna all the time. Switch it up for sardines, salmon, herring, cod and so on. Moreover, even among tuna there is big diversity. Switch up brands, switch where it was caught, switch bluefin for skipjack tuna etc.
This way you get all the health benefits of eating fish while avoiding risk of heavy metal poisoning. 

Example 3:
GMOs. Are they good or bad? We don’t know yet! Simply, we can’t predict its long term effects with certainty. They might prove harmless and very useful or they might prove to be dangerous with bad side effects. In either case, you want there to be people who are for GMOs and eat them themselves to study its effect, and just to be safe if that goes wrong, you want there to be bunch of people who never even touched GMOs in their life. This makes whole experiment safe for the society and is completely justified and ethical as long as everyone is free to choose whether to eat or not eat GMOs.

Example 4:
Politics is another cool controversial example. Most people won’t agree on politics, but most people will agree that times and circumstances change. In such world where things change (our world being such), you want there to be different political parties and policies in place to account for different situations.

While I think world is much better off as being capitalistic, I want there to be socialists and countries than enact those ideas. I don’t like them, but I still want them to exist. Why do I prefer there to be bunch of socialists if I am capitalist pig, instead of running them over with tanks?
For one, I can see what not to do. But I can also know that in (in my opinion) unlikely case that capitalism fails, there is immediate alternative, even if it will be just temporary alternative before we figure out better one.

Another reason is that there are bunch of good things to be found even in things that are bad overall. If you can’t find them, then you just don’t understand them well enough. And by finding them, I can learn something and consider implementing it into my system. Also, if I am actually interested in real benefits and outcomes, instead of just enacting my “religion” (in this example religion being “capitalism”) and being dogmatic, I want there to be competing systems and theories.

And I want them being enacted by other people and see them in action so I can compare the results! I want to know if I am right, and best way to verify it is when someone does opposite of what I am doing and then compare their results with mine!Of course, I wouldn’t want majority of world hold opposing views of mine or opposing side to rule the world. But I want there to be at least few of them. Just in case. Few is good, many is bad, none is dangerous.

Moving Across The Spectrum

And another essential point is, that people at any point on spectrum don’t have to remain the same ones! It is like with top 1%. Most of the people in top 1% are different people every year! Same is with everything on the spectrum. As with prior example, usually in younger years it is better to explore with relationship and lean more on polygamous side. And as you get older and find your true tastes and preferences and values, you lean more to monogamous relationships.

It’s Not “Either” “Or”. Usually It’s Both, and Then Some

We tend to look at world in binary and absolute, black and white answers. It’s simple, but it doesn’t work like that in most cases.

When we look at relationship example to illustrate this, you can ask: “Should I lead polygamous or monogamous life?”. Or you can realise that you can do both at different times, or neither! There are many more options like just polygamy or monogamy. In fact, there are options for which there aren’t even names yet! You could be in open relationship, polyamorous, serial monogamy and many other variants between (or beyond if you are creative enough) that aren’t yet predefined by society.

Note that this isn’t same as compromise, which are often shortsighted and lead to lack of responsibility when things go wrong and tend to backfire in many other ways. This is about creating new options and going beyond, while compromises are about settling “in between” preferred or optimal options.

You Always Learn From Those Who Oppose You

Even if you disagree with them, and even if they are wrong, you still learn something from them. That is because since they are so different, they probably have vastly different exposure and experience. This provides them with knowledge (whether right or wrong) that you might have never heard of. And most things are context dependent and never 100% right or wrong. You might find that stupid idea of theirs is indeed dumb and you should avoid it, but then find out 1% of cases where it can be useful to you!Instead of looking how something is wrong, we can get more benefits by asking “Hmm, seems wrong, but when and where it could be right?”.

What If No One Disagrees?

Let’s be honest, consensus is mostly right. But biggest payoffs are in few cases where it is wrong and you find out about it.Whenever everyone (or most) agree on something, it is always good sign to question it. Mostly this will be futile, but it is good exercise to keep in mind because opportunities are found by asking questions you aren’t supposed to ask.

Also we have to distinguish fake consensus from real one.Think of consensus that killing people without reason is bad. You should question that. But once you do that, you (hopefully) find out that it is right consensus, therefore real one.Contrast it to some other things that aren’t even questioned but are taken for granted by most of the society.

For example, using shower gel or toothpaste. Did it ever occur to you to question this? To 99.99% of people it didn’t. Did our ancestors or hunter gatherer societies used them? If so, did they suffer consequences? If not, why are we using them and if we don’t we do suffer consequences? Is it possible to not use any shower gels and toothpaste and remain healthier teeth and smell better? If so, what does it explain and what can explain lack of this knowledge in our modern society? (I have dived deeper into this question and ran self-experimentation on it and was really surprised with results, but this is for another post another day.)

What About Nazis, Murderers, Pedophiles etc.?

Surely you don’t want killers and crazy people running around, right? Well, it’s not so simple. I wouldn’t want nazis, communists, murderers or pedophiles enact their ideas. But I want their ideas to visibly exist. Idea is not dangerous unless it is acted on. And knowing about bad ideas and being there some people who propose them and believe in them lets us see how unreasonable and bad those ideas are.
This in turn helps us beware of such ideas.

Contrast it to what would happen if we would suppress such ideas from being voiced: some would wonder “what happens if I give this a try?”. Those would usually be contrarian bold types, and we don’t want their courage and talents to be wasted in exploring ideas that they would dismiss if they would be visibly wrong.

I wanted to explore these ideas of having open mind, questioning our cherished ideas and importance of those we disagree with because I feel that there is lots emphasis on tolerance and open mind, rather than on the other benefits that can come from there being ideas and people we disagree (even hate), even if they are wrong.

More Useful Way of Answering “Mind vs. Body” Problem

Are you your brain, body, mind or consciousness? If so, where does your “free will” come from if everything is governed by laws of physics? Thorny as questions about minds, consciousness and physics are, answer to what person and free will are, and whether we are “brain” or “body” or “mind”, can have simple interpretation based on what we currently known and can be used for all our practical purposes.

You are not your brain, body, DNA, mind, consciousness. Nor are you governed by laws of physics. You are specific part of all those things. You are your body, mind, DNA, consciousness and laws of physics (and perhaps other phenomena, too) all combined. You are interplay between all those things. You are what emerges when all those things combine in a unique way.

You are just like a table. Table is not its legs. Nor its desk. It is what happens when 4 legs and 1 desk combine in specific way that table emerges.

This leads me to determined laws of physics and free will. Let’s assume that everything is predetermined based on laws of physics. Then where is your free will? It is in the laws of physics themselves! We are not separate from laws of physics. We are not governed by laws of physics. We are simply part of laws of physics. And if we are part of it and laws of physics are what “determines” everything, then we are the ones doing determining.

It is not my mind, DNA or laws of physics that govern what I do, because I’m those things! So in a sense you can say that my actions are determined by those things, but that just translates into my actions are determined by me.Think about it, as far as we know, if you take away my DNA, mind, body or laws of physics etc. then what remains? Nothing, there is nothing else that could be governed by those things!

Therefore People and Free Will are specific abstract phenomena that emerges from fundamental phenomena like DNA, laws of physics etc.

We shouldn’t postulate that we are separate from “our” DNA, body, mind or laws of physics because if you take those things away, there is no longer any “us”. It is those things that form us when they are joined in unique and specific way.

Is this perfectly accurate or true way of looking at the world and such a puzzling questions like free will and what people are? Unlikely, but to me it seems like most useful and valid way of looking at things until we find better explanations. Denying free will and blaming laws of physics or DNA for any of our actions doesn’t seem to be way, not postulating that we are in any way separate from those things.

In Praise (and Defence) of The People

The People are most significant phenomena in the universe. But lately I noticed some people saying how people are bad, evil, insignificant, unimportant and how we cause harm to everything around us. I have been a sucker for this idea, too. Probably most embarrassing belief from my past. I even remember saying things like “I hate people”. I’m introvert but, like seriously, WTF? I am one of them! Did I hate myself? I don’t think so, I think I just wasn’t thinking (just like all other people thinking this, but I don’t want to insult you in case you are still one of them).

Closer inspection reveals how stupid and wrong this idea is. In fact, it is not only wrong and stupid, it is evil. People turn out to be the most awesome and significant phenomena in the universe, not just for us, but for the whole of the universe!


Saying That Anything Would be Better Without People is Evil:
Some say that planet would be better off without humans. Ehm, so my dear human saying this, why you haven’t killed yourself yet?
Saying that universe would be better off without people or that they are bad or insignificant is evil. It encourages negativity, pessimism, stagnation and promotes and even justifies further evils.

People aren’t good nor bad, we are just very powerful and significant. We can cause lots of good and lots of evil, precisely because of that. We have abilities never seen before in whole history of evolution, and we are learning how to use them (which involves occasional errors). Our potential is much greater than we can imagine, and as I will explain, our rate of progress seems to be evidence of that.

By promoting idea that we are bad or not special we are just hindering and discouraging progress and improvements. The progress that would save your grandma from dying from cancer. Yes, people who broadcast such discouraging messages like “people are bad” or “people cause harm” indirectly killed your grandma (and mine, too, unfortunately).

Who wants to work on improving our wellbeing and the world, or anything for that matter, if we are so bad? Do we deserve any improvement if we are so bad? Such messages imply that: no. And so talented Jenny in high school resides to drugs and nihilism instead of working on cure for cancer, because what difference can one person make if everyone else is so bad and why should one good person care about rest that are so bad?

It seems to me that it is some new age virtue signalling to claim that people are bad. Does it make these people feel they are something above other people? Or is it just more comfortable to claim there is no future and everything is lost and throw hands in the air?

Want people stop doing evil things? Stop telling them they are evil!

Do You Value More Other Species or Your Children?
In some popular books there is mention of how wherever humans migrated there was wide extinction of other species. Yes, but there was also cultivation of another species (cows and chickens wouldn’t exist without us).
Those books also forget to mention that migration of any specie will cause extinction of some other species. Such migration will also cause alteration of and exploitation of that new environment by all species. All species try to survive and thrive on the expense of others and their environment.

Sure, humans do this on larger scale (which makes us so special BTW), but if we didn’t alter our environment at such large scale then other species would do so! Think about it, does it matter whether alteration is caused by one specie or many other species? Net change is going to be roughly same, although different.

By exploiting our environment and its resources we are merely preventing other life forms from doing so, we just do it better and more sustainably because despite what many would say, we take long term view, at least compared to other life forms on earth.
And that difference is crucial. Changes we make to environment are always net positive in the long run. Which cannot be said about changes other species do.

We might cause harm to some tropical bird species, but we will in turn improve lives of millions of people and prevent your newborn child from dying. If we can choose between building hospital vs. preserving natural environment of some bird, then go for the hospital (if you want to argue against this wait until you have stroke and nearest hospital suddenly morphs into natural bird park). I would say that is good trade off for the start (we are still very young species and certainly at the start of our technological progress), wouldn’t you?

Oh yeah, and don’t forget that no other specie is known to care about going extinct, except us. In fact, we are only ones who care about going extinct and other species going extinct! Causing extinction of something that doesn’t care going extinct can’t be bad (note that this is not same as causing suffering!) So whether you try to preserve or make other life forms go extinct, it is still just about you and your preferences, not theirs.


Only by Interfering with Nature We Can Save It. Only Humans Can Do This, Our Interference is Crucial for Life and The Earth:
If we don’t interfere with nature, all species will eventually go extinct! If we don’t interfere with nature, world will eventually go extinct and all oceans get evaporated by sun and eventually whole earth will.
Our technological progress might seem like it is causing harm, but it is only altering our environment in order to make enough progress to possibly save the whole earth.

Sacrifices we make are worth it, because without people interfering whole earth and  its life are doomed. We are only specie who has power to make cosmic level changes, who can save our planet and all its life. But for that we need to keep doing what we do, even if it takes some short term sacrifices and errors in its process.

All life is exploiting nature’s resources best to their ability, our abilities are just superior to theirs. Moreover, we have ability not only to exploit resources and environment around us but also to regenerate it! And we are already doing that, at least better than any other specie!

Sure, if you have better solution how to create utopia without any sacrifice or downside, great! But if you don’t, second best option is to do best we can given our current state of knowledge.

So remember that we are part of the nature and do our best to survive and thrive just as any other part of nature. We are just exponentially more powerful part of nature than any other and in addition to that, we help other parts of nature survive and thrive instead of thinking only about ourselves. We are not perfect at this, but as far as we know, we are the best.


People Can’t be Bad:
And when you say that humans are bad, always remember to ask: compared to whom or what? Lions kill too, are they bad? Oh, but you say “Lions don’t kill as much as humans do!”, they sure would if they could, they just can’t kill more. On other hand, we could kill much more if we wanted to, but we don’t!

Remember, if you can’t do something bad that doesn’t make you good! For you to be considered good you need ability to do evil or more evil that you are currently doing. Doing good or little evil if that is your only option makes you just weak, not good. Same goes for all other species that you don’t see committing any crimes. It is not because they are good, it is because they are weak and incompetent! Give any species our power and technology and they would cause much more evil and damage than humans.

In fact, it is not us who is doing harm to nature, but nature that is trying to harm us! Look around yourself, nature is very hostile place. More than 99% of the species that ever lived are extinct and if it wouldn’t be for our ideas, technology and inventions and interference with nature, we would be extinct long ago! Most places we inhabit would be deadly to us without our miraculous technology. And despite nature trying to kill us, we try to preserve it in return. Not that nature gives a damn, but someone like anti-humanist human Rufus would say “we are making nature worse off”, while nature couldn’t care less what we do with it while it is blindly killing us and all its life. 

“But people still do bad things!” I hear, someone who still didn’t get it, screaming. Yes, and food sometimes still gives us stomachache, but that doesn’t mean it is bad for us, or that there is better alternative.Could we do better? Could we cause less harm? Certainly! In fact, we are working on it. And attitude of “people are bad” is only harming it and slowing down progress! We are not perfect, but we are the best thing for life overall (notice that only ones who would object to this point are humans, no rare-specie bird or planet or anything else ever complained about people).

Without people, life is certainly doomed on the earth. That doesn’t guarantee that with people life will survive and thrive, for that we need to look forward and dismiss whole attitude of “people are bad” because that is only slowing us down and causing unproductive pessimism.

Okay, so far this looked more like “In Defence of The People” rather than “In Praise of The People”. So let’s now venture towards hallmarks of our awesomeness and see why we are so special and significant in this universe, instead of just exploring why we are not so bad. I hope these hallmarks will convince remaining skeptics.


Some hallmarks of why people are so unique and special include:

• Humans are only species that care of welfare of other species (you can send pictures of dog mom feeding little cat puppies to my email as I enjoy those but I am worried that won’t suffice as good counter-argument).
• Humans are only species that care about environment they live in and try to preserve it, not only for themselves, but also for future generations and other species!
• Only humans can override their selfishness and innate primal instincts. And don’t tell me that there are other animals that sacrifice themselves in order to save their kin, I know that and that is only encoded in their genes as blind instinct, it is nothing conjectured and deliberately chosen like it is within us.
• Only people can create ideas (or discover them?). You may say “yea, but ideas don’t do anything on their own and there are many bad ideas!”. Listen here, every creative act starts with an idea and is deliberately acted on only by people.
• Only we can be in awe and appreciation of our creations. We don’t just create and transform the world, we also reflect back on it and appreciate beauty and ingenuity of those creations! 
• Only people can have cosmic effect on the universe and change its fate. For example, Sun is inevitably getting larger and will eventually swallow whole earth, that is unless people do something to prevent it. And it is only people who can have power in principle to do so.
• Only we have memes. That is ideas that propagate non-biologically and aren’t encoded in our genes. That is remarkable when you think about it, because we are creating and passing on something that we didn’t have to start with! Where did it came from then?
• Rate of progress is made exponential only by humans. Just imagine how much progress we made in our wellbeing, technology, morality, science, and everything you can think of since the first homo-sapiens emerged. No other species made such a startling progress, not even close! Life of human 150,000 years ago was vastly different from that of you today. Heck, kings living just 500 years ago had it much worse than you today! Think about difference between crocodiles living 10 million years ago and today, no difference at all!
• We are more than our bodies and genes. Think about how inferior we are physically to other animals. We are slow, weak, have no special vision or senses. We are pretty much powerless on the first look, that is, until you venture inside of our brain. We are not defined by our hardware, we are defined by our software which overpowers all other hardwares on this planet, which is why we rule this planet despite our apparent inferiority compared to rest of the animal kingdom. Our specialness is not apparent, but it is most powerful despite (or maybe because?) it being hidden.
• And obviously, art, music, written language, technology, science, philosophy, sports, math, books, internet, economy and many more phenomena that exist in the universe only because of the people.
• Love and kindness are not only our instincts, they are our choices. Other animals can act alturistically, too. But their behaviour is set by their genes and it is only instinctive, hence predictive and can hardly be changed. With people, it’s different. We are unpredictable and we can choose love and kindness, just as we can choose to commit suicide, despite it not having any evolutionary or genetic benefits.
• There doesn’t seem to be limit on how much we can learn and progress. With other animals we have so far always found limit to what they can do and learn, but with us we are seeing exponential progress in all domains. We can learn anything given enough time and opportunity. This means that unless your “hardware” is damaged, anything that anyone can learn, you can also learn, which basically means that unless we are handicapped, we are all equal in our potential which seems to be infinite. This is idea of us being “universal computers/explainers” which I got from David Deutsch, for more on this see additional resources section on the bottom.
• Everything you love and enjoy exists only because of people. And you might say that you enjoy licking a rock and rock is not made by people! To that I can just say that 1. you are weird and 2. you enjoy human experience of human licking rock which was given rise by other humans producing you and your sense of enjoyment and ability to lick. Everything you love and enjoy comes through you and is allowed by prior existence of other humans. And at most, you can say that you love human perception of a rock, not rock itself. There is no love or joy in a rock, love and joy are created only by and within us, those aren’t properties of other objects.
• If you are able to perceive and contemplate your own “insignificance” then you are anything but!  That is because it’s one of most rare and significant phenomena in the universe: to perceive and contemplate and then subsequently cause changes in the universe that have never be seen before in history of universe (e.g. atomic bombs, spaceships, iPhones or mere ideas and abstractions such as concepts of “significance” or good and bad etc.).
• We are only creatures who implicitly (and of course also explicitly) ask “why?” and seeks and creates explanations.

Some would say that I am bringing up only good things and omitting the bad. To that, I would say that you are bringing up the bad and omitting the good. And it is that which we focus on that will grow. So which one will you focus on?

Moreover, aren’t we only specie that can, and do morally and pragmatically, question their own acts and thoughts and reflect back on them? Aren’t we only ones deciding and improving on what’s good and bad and can distinguish between them? So even by such disagreement you are proving your awesomeness, good job fellow human!


Fallibility of People:
Of course, some of our efforts will be bad ideas and cause harm to us, our environment and other life forms. But that is a price we have to pay to avoid stagnation, and stagnation has to be avoided at any cost because stagnation does guarantee doom, eventually!

And remember that it is often bad ideas and mistakes that pave the way to the great ideas and solutions. I can attest that from my own life, not just looking at our human history.
We will keep making mistakes and we will keep learning from them. It is OK to criticise those mistakes, but it is not OK to try to stop them and with it our progress. We have to keep moving forward and improving our ability to solve new problems that arise from our new solutions.
Carbon emissions are just better problem that emerged from solutions we created, nobody would want to go back to times when we didn’t cause any pollution because back then problems were much worse! If we never progressed so far as to cause carbon emissions we probably wouldn’t survive up until now.

Our mistakes are not something to condemn us for, but praise for. Only mistake to be avoided it to try to avoid all mistakes, which promotes stagnation, which is ultimately fatal mistake.

And this is not to say that mistakes we make are OK, they are just OK to make, but of course they are wrong, that’s why they are mistakes! We shouldn’t praise our mistakes, merely just courage to make them and then quickly correct them. We haven’t yet figure out way to improve without making mistakes. To get rid of mistakes, we have to go through them, and do it fast by promoting progress, innovation and creativity.


Importance of People:
I am certainly specie-biased, but I think people are most important specie ever evolved on earth. So we are worth much more than any other specie (not only to ourselves or from our point of view, but for other species, life and objective point of view, too). Think about it, we are only specie that has potential to save the whole earth and all its life. We are only specie who can affect all other life forms on earth and the earth itself and rest of the cosmos. We need to be taken care of and nurtured well. We are important. We hold fate of the universe in our hands and minds. We are unpredictable but with infinite potential. Let’s make best out of it.

Some ultra-sceptic human-hating human Rufus might still say that it is only people who place such importance on people. Well maybe, but who else is to judge importance of us? As far as we know, there is no one or nothing else even capable of such judgment! Of course, if there are intelligent aliens they would place such importance on themselves, but then wouldn’t they be in principle People, too? They would be different in their biology, but if they would be capable of such judgment, they would be same in their minds – and it is our minds that defines us, not our mere biology.

We are universe not only experiencing itself, but also affecting itself! We don’t just look and predict what happens to the universe, we can shape it.

This doesn’t mean that other things and species in the universe aren’t important, it just means that we are the most important and significant phenomena in the universe. And even if you would disagree, we can probably agree that we are only known “thing” that can appreciate significance of anything, or even invoke such concept in a first place! And if anything is to be most significant thing in the universe, who else is to decide it other than inventors of that concept?

In many ways we are still same as other known life forms, we still share same genetic history. But we are different in ways that are most significant and impactful on the objective and cosmic scale. That is what makes us most important species phenomena in the entire universe. We are same in things that don’t matter, but different in things that do.

We need to praise people for that of which we want them to do more of. If we shame ourselves for our fallacies, that will lead only to despair. But giving praise for that which we want even more of and do better will encourage further efforts of progress. Want better climate? Praise ourselves for progress we already made in climate! Want better morality? Praise ourselves for moral progress we made! Want better science and technology? Praise ourselves for progress we made from stones to device you are reading this text on written by someone on the opposite side of the planet!


International Day of The People:
I propose there should be international day of the people. There are celebrations of many different things, except that which is most important and gave rise to all other things being celebrated and all celebrations themselves: The People.

How is it that it never occurred to us to celebrate us? We are fundamental element of everything that we celebrate! The Day of The People should be most important day of the year, not Christmas, not New Year’s Eve or anything else because there wouldn’t be Christmas or New Year’s Eve without People in a first place!

On such day we would gather around the table and give credit where credit is due. Give ourselves little pat on the back, and instead of telling Jenny how everything is bad, or we are bad and insignificant, we would tell her about all our progress and potential we and she has. So that she decides that drugs aren’t that fun after all and goes on to save our grandmas by developing cure for cancer. And of course, we would have lot of laughs and eat huge tasty dinner like a pigs, because some things are still better done like animals.


Additional Resources:

Couple resources that inspired me and changed my view on how awesome and important people are in grand scheme of things.
If words don’t persuade you, you might appreciate this awesome youtube channel full of human awesomeness: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIJ0lLcABPdYGp7pRMGccAQ Stunts and performance of people is just astonishing. It never ceases to amaze me what we can learn and how far we can push, we can literally make art out of how we move our bodies.

Most influential book and ideas in last couple years for me was from David Deutsch, British Physicist who is much more than that, I think he is one of most important philosophers of our time. At first, his ideas are hard to grasp and seem like they are wrong. But they don’t let you sleep and more you think about them, more you realise they are correct and profound.
See his book “The Beginning of Infinity” if you want your world completely changed: https://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Infinity-Explanations-Transform-World/dp/0143121359Or start with talk David gave at TED about how “chemical scum” can see and explain distant quasars: https://www.ted.com/talks/david_deutsch_chemical_scum_that_dream_of_distant_quasars?language=en

If you tend to be skeptical about our future and think that things are getting worse or that people are making things worse, see book “The Factfulness” by Hans Rosling: https://www.amazon.com/Factfulness-Reasons-World-Things-Better/dp/1250107814 where he shows how nearly everyone is wrong about how good we are doing and how promising future seems to be. You can test yourself and your knowledge about how world is improving in short quiz: https://factfulnessquiz.com

And if you like anecdote of how awesome people are, I can tell you that whenever I am nice to other people they hit me even with more niceness. Whenever I show trust in people’s competence or morality, they manage to surprise me with their ability and consciences. This happens everywhere I go in the world, with strangers, friends or family. Be awesome, give awesomeness, trust in awesomeness of people and it will grow.

P.S. I am aware that some of the arguments in this rambling might be flawed, incomplete, inaccurate or not well supported in their details. But let’s not disregard strong idea because of weak arguments. Despite possibly flawed details, my confidence in the idea of this post is pretty high and I believe humanity would be better off if we gave ourselves more praise and admiration (while staying humble) and stop shaming ourselves.