When was the last time that you got so immersed in an activity that you completely lost track of time? Maybe it was playing a video game, or listening to your favourite music, or perhaps at work. Similarly, a great book will often swallow up huge chunks of my day, commanding my undivided attention as I explore new and interesting ideas.
Sometimes, however, a book will fall into a slightly weirder category.
These types of books are so dense with insight that any given sentence could probably change your perception of the world. These are the kind of books that you read one page of before bed, only to lose three hours of sleep unravelling a single concept in your head. Sleep-deprivation aside, these are my favourite types of books.
Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb is one such instance of this. Come with me as we explore two interconnected conceptual rabbit-holes that I fell down this week.
Rabbit-Hole 1: Sleeping with the Phishes
Consider this quote:
“What is crucial here is that the downside doesn’t affect the interventionist. He continues his practice from the comfort of his thermally regulated suburban house with a two-car garage, a dog, and a small play area with pesticide-free grass for his overprotected 2.2 children.
Imagine people with similar mental handicaps, people who don’t understand asymmetry, piloting planes… [they] may kill many. But they will themselves end up at the bottom of, say, the Bermuda Triangle, and cease to represent a threat to other and mankind.”
Taleb’s underlying message here isn’t all that complicated; in fact, it could probably be predicted by the title of the book alone: people should not be separated from the consequences of their actions.
There are countless instances of this phenomenon occurring throughout society:
- Journalists who write intentionally misleading articles to drive traffic
- Influencers who become multimillionaires by acting as terrible role models for adolescents
- People who protest online for causes that they’ll forget about by next week
As with most things, however, I’m more fascinated by the applications of this thought process to the average individual, and how you and I can use this information to ensure that our actions have a tangible impact on the world.
Pathological Gamification
In the last few generations, one of the more controversial developments in entertainment have been video games. Many accusations have been thrown at this form of media since its inception, not least of which being that video games make kids lazy and that they’re a waste of time.
I’m not here to tell you whether or not video games are entirely useless, because—quite frankly—I don’t know. I am here, however, to point out some amusing irony surrounding this topic.
Consider some typical daily tasks of an office worker:
- Checking Email
- Writing Email
- Scheduling and attending meetings
- Photocopying documents for other employees or uploading them to shared folders
All of these activities have one thing in common: oftentimes, the extent of their usefulness is confined to a very small system. Scheduling meetings fills up your Google Calendar, checking email gets you to “inbox zero”, and walking around carrying documents makes you look and feel important.
The reality, however, is that most of these tasks have little to no impact in the real world. They act as arbitrary objectives to fill your day, making you feel productive even though you’ve achieved nothing.
When you complete a quest in a video game, you usually understand that you haven’t impacted the outside world in any way. When your job becomes a real-life game of pseudo-productivity, you are tricked into prioritizing the wrong metrics in the wrong areas of your life. The impacts of such a mindset over the course of your life are nothing short of terrifying.
Without monitoring, your “productivity” can very easily become a measure of your personal inefficiency. If you treat inefficiency as productivity, you become a generator of bureaucratic inertia; the more people that adopt this mentality, the more useless we collectively become.
What’s the Solution?
Well, first things first, a basic understanding of this kind of asymmetry allows you to spot it throughout everyday life. The next time you’re given advice by someone, consider what consequences that person will face if they’re wrong.
Similarly, consider if you yourself have become disconnected from meaningful accountability. If you work in a large company, never go too long without considering the real-world impact of what you’re doing. By remaining grounded in reality, you allow yourself to be more authentic, and—by extension— more accountable.
This brings us on to rabbit-hole number 2:
Rabbit-Hole 2: Back to our Roots
“… you cannot separate anything from contact with the ground.”
In a figurative sense, it’s tempting to assume that Taleb’s assertion is incorrect. Maybe it’s because we want to believe that our arbitrary paper-shuffling has some meaning in the real world, or maybe we’ve just never stopped to consider this in detail. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take much thought to realise that our idealised beliefs are demonstrably false.
In my studies, I’m required to learn large amounts of content on topics that—in a practical sense—can begin to seem incredibly complicated. In fact, if these topics existed in isolation, I would argue that they would be unjustifiably complicated. What gives this information its immense meaning is not only its interconnection with other topics, but with human beings and the world around us.
As you might have guessed, the same logic can be applied to the entire world.
Isolated information is nothing more than noise. Everything comes from something, and so to separate anything from everything is to make it useless. This returns us not only to the notion that we must connect ourselves to our actions through accountability, but that we must connect our actions to the truth through authenticity.
The Obvious Counterargument
Isn’t this hypocritical of me to say? After all, I sit at my desk for an hour a week and send out a digital article to the inbox of all my subscribers. Where’s the accountability in that?
When I tell you about an idea, it’s because I’ve thought about it enough to determine that it’s worth writing about. In order to waste your time, I have to first waste my own; if I give you bad advice, then I must first have fallen victim to its stupidity. I think through ideas deeply, then write about them, and publish my writing on the internet next to my real (but, admittedly, rather generic) name. The only remaining factor is trust.
Dermatology at its Finest
The answers to many important questions can be derived from this simple concept. If you can remain grounded, if expose yourself to the consequences of your work, if you can act in an authentic and competent manner, then you automatically differentiate yourself from almost everyone. If this comes at the price of a few scrapes and bruises, then sign me up.
Never stop thinking.
- Will