1,432 karma · joined March 18, 2020
Its very tricky though for multiple reasons. There is a wide spectrum of Needs so one has to develop a vocabulary or map of what exists before being able to answer the question well. Also Needs change with time and context. So the question has to be asked frequently. In relationships and groups that are important the needs of the other person or group also have to be monitored.
There are lots of such situations chimps find themselves in these days, where they have no training or instinct on how to react.
Over analyzing these behaviors and the language used when people are out of their depth takes focus away from the fact there are many issues the chimp troupe has no capacity to solve. Just acknowledging and accepting that reality and refocusing the mind on simpler things is what will reduce the bullshit.
As an extreme example take what happens in the military. If you are in a situation surrounded by all kinds of threats and 5 minutes away from possible death what will an untrained mind say? No one sits around analyzing it. Instead there is training to keep the mind focused on the simplest of things.
The way it worked out for me was contacting someone senior at a startup incubator and telling them I wanted some kind of consulting role (few hours a week) to explore more flexible work. They are always hard up for experienced people. That put me in touch with a bunch of startups and I picked one where they had a small project but no one free to work on. That was the door opener and being in a setting with multiple companies all around, it was easy to make contacts, hear what issues different companies had etc. Whenever it aligned with something I knew or was interested in techwise I would try to get involved or help them out.
If you are not a big networker like me the key is to put yourself in environments where you are constantly bumping into people who are telling you their problems :)
Good luck!
The efficiency with which the Attention Economy takes advantage of that need is what is really depressing.
Are Russia or China going to react any different from Iran or Pakistan? They currently think they are untouchable. That needs to change.
Thats said I really admire how ambitious they tried to be and all the stuff they have managed to produce with such few resources.
How many people stay on the same team for six to seven years these days to have long term effect on orgs or policy?
Just ask anyone to predict where they will be in six to seven years first or what their predictions were six to seven years back. Most have no clue because this is such a complex ever changing world for a 6 inch chimp brain to fully grok. But lets talk about where the entire chimp troupe will be in six to seven years.
I definately dont think a whole bunch of dangerous cobras are being creared.
We have 6 inch chimp brains. Some types of problems require 7 inch chimp brains or 2000 inch chimp brains or 7 million inch chimp brains.
The only thing you have to understand when you take 2 chimps and throw them into a room with such type of complex problems is blundering ensues.
The focus of all chimps is then drawn to the blundering, whose fault it is, who said what, who did what, who can be blamed, who needs to change etc etc etc but all that just takes focus away from the fact that the problem itself is too complex for a chimp.
This is the Theory of Bounded Rationality (which won a Nobel Prize for explaining why the world couldnt prevent world war 2 after experiencing the devastation of world war 1).
Not everything can be understood. Misunderstanding on the other hand is directly proportional to the complexity of the problem. And it doesn't get more complex that the Israel-Palestine issue.
The chimps will continue to blunder.
The Theory of Bounded Rationality recommends teaching kids that are facing complex problems to ditch them and instead work on simple ones.
But staying in that state for ever can be quite an unnatural thing, because both aren't running at their natural pace.
So communication is key. People need to hear that you appreciate when they slow down for you. They need to hear what made you want to speed up for them. They need to hear you arent holding them responsible to stay in sync with you forever but that you enjoy their company and the reasons why. They need to hear where you are heading and why you think its going to be fun. It becomes easier to reconnect with people when you spend time thinking about and verbalizing some of these things.
Its all about just being honest and saying simple things. You can do it.
Looks like Northop Grumann is targeting the Jeremy Kenyon Lockyer Corbells of the world.
The only reason Fuckerberg or Ellison or Murdoch or Google dont already own Wikipedia is Wikipedia has enough cash to tell them to fuck off. Not to mention dealing with all kinds of orgs, govt beauracrats, politicans all over the globe exerting pressures.
In this world if you dont have Financial Independence what path you chart out will never be under your control.
This article would have been useful if there were suggestions about how to go about fund raising better.
People who think the Like count determines the future need to just ask Obama and Trump how many Likes they collected and whether all that work translated into any actual outcomes.
Our chimp mind is not well suited to do SELF analysis for various reasons. The danger here, while you are stuck in some hole, is that the ever imaginative chimp mind comes up with self analysis that is pure bullshit. Then things get more and more tricky. The hole gets deeper and deeper.
You need people around you who can call out the bullshit and help you climb out of the hole you have wondered into. If you don't have an authority figure or someone you respect in your life who can do it then finding an experienced therapist will help.
Even monks have authority figures around them who keep them on track.
Mainly because they give you a map and a road map if you will to explore the subject. Long way to go to improve the map and ways to explore it based on individual personality and skill levels but that will happen with time.
Whether people are superficial corporate robots or without real friends or follow all kinds of meaningless ritual etc doesnt matter if they are driven. Why? Because thats who you end up relying on when competing against other people who are mindlessly driven.
How are you going to compete with people who are more driven than you - "the do whatever it takes" brigade? Ranting takes away focus and thought from answering that question honestly to yourself.
Its nature is to meddle. And thats what changes the world.
So people just yelled louder or yelled repeatedly to get things across with better reliability. And when channel capacity was exceeded with everyone yelling too much, no one knew it had exceeded and lot of energy and time was wasted with increasing errors in the system.
Doesn't that feel like a repeat with whats happening in social media and news media these days? Or is it just different things.