Think Like a 5-Year Old
inc.com
inc.com
I am... very curious. I am all the time curious, I keep researching about everything.
Sometimes I just stop, and keep looking at something, wondering how it works.
One day for example, I remember that I was looking at the rain, seeing it splashing on a roof that I could see from where I was. I kept looking at how the raindrops shattered when hitting the hard surface.
My then-girlfriend approached me, and asked: "what you are looking so much?"
I explained to her my wonderings about the raindrops.
Her reply was: "this is useless, drop it."
The thing is, this was not a single incident, and not only with her, many times in my life, people tried to convince me to be LESS curious.
I wonder why.
I wonder why the sense or wonder, curiosity, wanting to learn, is viewed as childish or a thing to be hated, or as a time wasting activity.
"Why do I feel like my hand touches something even though, on an atomic level, I'm sure it's still separated by space?"
and
"What if none of this was real?"
have led my friends and family to assume I've gone crazy.
The worst part? For a long time I believed them, and I'm sure part of me still does..
But with relation to the article, it occurs to me that these questions began in my mind around age 5 or 6. I think this is pretty common, too, but kids are told to focus on "important" things.
That's why I regret how much I have pursued my curiousity about Human/artificial AI, evolutionary biology, the nature of religion, etc.
Sometimes, it's better to be a bit innocent and ignorant (also respectful and nice, otherwise the world can get into trouble with violent religious zealots) -- no one gets psychically hurt that way.
Can you elaborate?
Hint: the core of the problem (and core of many, if not most, philosopical problems) is "What is the definition of consciousness?"
www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/mandelbulb.html
All of those images are generated with very simple deterministic rules but they are still sublime.
I dare say if you really think you found solid, objective answers for, uhm, anything, I encourage you to look even closer and/or consider the bigger picture... at least for me, it always ends up being a huge mystery again :)
In essence, we can't see the quantum interaction of particles and their superpositions, we can only see the average produced by a large number of these actions and reactions. This gives a small, but nonetheless interesting, hole from which randomness can leak into the apparent deterministic systems we see.
I recently walked a similar road when thinking about human behavior as a product of genetics and outside inputs. For me, the angst was the view that "free will" might be fictional, and I had built a lot of my personal ethics onto that pillar. But it was curiosity that led me out of that nihilistic moment when I thought about the loophole above.
CS Lewis
I do, however, take issue with calling it curiosity. Curiosity is defined as a desire to learn something or know something. Even if you do want to know, the feeling you get from this hinges on not knowing-- if not, there's no harm in actually finding the answer, and there is harm in not finding it.
Asking questions like this is fine, but, to me, calling it curiosity isn't. This isn't because it's childish. It's because it's unreasonable. Curiosity and reason are supposed to work together.
I wonder why, I wonder why
I wonder why I wonder
I wonder *why* I wonder why
I wonder why I wonder -- RFBut man do people hate it when you're curious about their religion, politics or personal beliefs. Such a minefield ... don't "why" there unless you're ready to handle some very annoyed people.
A lot of people have a shallow or false curiosity on these subjects. Their intent is not to understand, but simply to discover a question that is difficult to answer in only a few sentences, and then declare victory. The net result is that nobody learns anything of value, nobody is enriched, but somebody feels annoyed that their friend didn't respect them enough to really listen.
True curiosity requires a willingness to explore both depth and breadth. This is more likely to require years than minutes.
Many people think of the neocortex as a big computational device. In reality the data structure contributes more to our intelligence. In half a second we can easily recognize a familiar object. In that time, a signal can traverse perhaps 100 neurons. A cpu takes several orders of magnitude more. It is much more likely that we are retrieving most reactions rather than computing them. I highly recommend Jeff Hawkins' book "On Intelligence" if you want to learn more about this fascinating subject.
But many of these cached computations have a timeout that we fail to honor. In fact everything that goes into the cache is information about a reality that no longer exists as it did. We nevertheless get so much utility from the old cache that it can be easy to forget to prune and update it. If it ain't broke don't fix it.
Which leads to another interesting thing about assumptions. Your assumptions are always wrong. They probably yield a good amount of utility for you, but on some level they are incomplete at the very least. All of the items you pull out of your cache are improvable.
Another way to look at it is that nearly all of our potential lies in the set of things that we currently reject.
In this case, the author might be interested in smoking a HUGE JOINT and stepping into his office. He might find the same sense of curiosity as the five year-old. Magic mushrooms could also do this, but, like the five year-old for the day, might be a bit "more than you bargained for".
Note: just as it's not a good idea for a five year-old to run a company, it is also not advisable to run a company while stoned/drunk/etc.
The point is not just the endless asking of questions, but rather not skipping the analysis of things you take for granted (or don't even realize you take for granted).
The point is not to be a 5 year old, the point is to ask questions like a 5 year old and use that to better inform how you act.
In fact, I think most (say) 50 year old people who are "set in their ways" would find it VERY difficult to see the world with "new eyes" without some very strong outside stimulus, whether it is drugs, meditation, or some traumatic event.
Really?
I've noticed weed makes a lot of people incurious and just sort of drift through things.
I have severe doubts that that makes as much difference as... well anything.
It's like whisky drunk vs. beer drunk, they're different because of the speed you take them in, their concentration absorption speeds and a variety of subjective feelings.
Now I know it's a little more complicated than the ethanol picture, with a variety of active compounds in different quantities, but I am very skeptical that a different strain of the plant can make the change from 'stumbling through life apathetically' to 'deep psychedelic self-realisation'.
Not that I'm convinced deep psychedelic self-realisation is much other than brainfart either.
All I was really trying to point out was that there are clearly different 'states' of high: introspective (to the point of paranoia), inquisitive, giggly, zoned, etc.
Just as there are different states of drunk: 'tipsy', 'hyper-active', 'depressed', 'blotto', etc.
So just as not everyone who hits a beer bong is going to streak across the quad to the gymnasium, not everyone who gets high is going to necessarily question the universe nor necessarily sit on the couch and watch the world pass by.
You can't gauge marijuana from the actions of a handful of stoners any more than you can gauge alcohol from the actions of a handful of stumbling drunks.
And it's all besides the point anyway. Giving somebody who rarely smokes, or never has smoked, a bowl of hardcore sativa is a really, really stupid idea unless you want to babysit them all night.
It's also weird to pretend that one class of herbal is radically different from another. There are differences, but they get exaggerated.
There have been some studies that show a huge spike in activity in the frontal lobe during the onset of cannabis effects. It's been suggested this contributes to interesting time effects noted by smokers, especially inexperienced ones: So much thought occurs compared to regular activity that passage of time seems to slow significantly.
Or a small amount of something half-decent ... a huge joint of that would practically make your eyes bleed.
And to be fair leadership is not about rediscovering child-like curiosity - it is about applying objective thinking rigorously and without ego - try looking at Poor Charlies' Almanck
I was picturing suddenly turning to one of my colleagues, giving him a good push, grabbing his computer and saying "MINE!".
Here are a couple of top Google results: http://www.managementexchange.com/blog/forget-empowerment-ai...
http://www.ict.swin.edu.au/personal/ebihari/
and even a version of The Art of War: http://www.worldmarkacademy.com/moodle/file.php/1/3.pdf
Is anybody still surprised that more than 66% of this country is overweight/obese?
I've noticed that here in Murka, increasingly, people can't be arsed to engage with their kids. Kids are expensive, gaudy accessories, as anyone with (particularly female) Facebook friends who go through that "LOOK AT MAH NEW BABBY" picture posting stage can see; but actually engaging with them and treating them like humans is... well, it's too much work and hassle.
So they shut them up with Cheetos or cookies or sketti or go-go juice and get on with what's really important, whatever that may be.
It was ever thus and shall never not be.
Never really had this with our son, will wait and see if it comes with second child - when we're out I'm in a semi-continuous state of explaining as much as I know about interesting things around us and asking questions - "well what do you think?".
I do wonder sometimes if my modus is destructive to curiosity but generally he's pretty questioning in terms of things.