Finding truth

Here’s a great screen for high quality, enduring thinking:

Does the thinker obsessively love and pursue truth? Above their ego? Above what they want to be true?

Are they intrinsically motivated by understanding reality as it really is, or do they prioritize other things?

Getting wisdom

We believe there is a fabric-pattern to reality, and that we can learn some of it. That thought is compelling.

The best definition of wisdom we’ve found comes from Gerhard von Rad:

Wisdom is competence with regard to the realities of life.

The combination of these two ideas suggests that absolute truth exists, and that effectiveness in life requires aligning one’s understanding and actions with how the world really works. Not how they want it to work, or believe it works. How it really works.

A correct understanding of how the world really works is truth. Aligning one’s actions to truth is wisdom.

This is obvious in the physical sciences. No matter how much one may want or believe the Earth’s gravitational constant to be higher or lower, it is what it is. Aligning one’s understanding and actions with this gravitational constant produces results. Ignoring it risks peril. Imagine launching a rocket into space assuming a lower gravitational constant. It would never get there.

This is less obvious when studying humanity. It is much easier to find evidence of our theories of how the world works, and much harder to prove or disprove them. In the physical sciences we can conduct well crafted, highly repeatable experiments to gain wisdom. In the social sciences controlled experiments are very challenging and sometimes impossible, with measurement issues, moral considerations and many interfering factors.

So, how can we pursue wisdom through studying the fabric pattern of reality in humanity?

First, we must accept that social reality is messy, and we cannot learn its entire fabric-pattern. But we can learn some of it. That thought is compelling.

There is a substantial amount of truth, hiding in plain sight, from the past, from the present, and within our own lives. We pursue it, and seek to internalize it as wisdom.

Wisdom in the past

Histories are full of wisdom. Ben Franklin learned the impossibility of moral perfection and the benefits of its pursuit. Peter Bernstein showed that understanding risk is as much about mental openness as it is about math.

It was about this time I conceiv’d the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection. Ben Franklin

Superb fiction illuminates wisdom through its characters.

It is a far, far better thing I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known. Sydney Carton, from Dicken’s A Tale of Two Cities

There is an entire genre devoted to wisdom: wisdom literature. Surprisingly absent from many pursuits of truth, we have found this to be the deepest well of wisdom.

The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding. Cherish her, and she will exalt you; embrace her, and she will honor you. Proverbs 4

There is substantial wisdom stored through generations. Some requires breaking from a strict western scientific epistemology (i.e., that truth is only found through double-blind studies). That break does not invalidate the wisdom. We found much of this when we lived in Southeast Asia (e.g., drinking certain hot liquids actually has a cooling effect on the body).

Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients, or ingredients you can’t pronounce. Michael Pollan, from The Food Rules (i.e., generational wisdom about food)

One of our favorite questions for our elders is, “What do you wish you had known when you were younger, that your younger self would have listened to?” Gems like “relationships are the currency of life” and treatises like A Gift to My Children spring from this.

Wisdom in the present

There is substantial wisdom to be found in the present.

The field of behavioral economics is full of gems like the famous marshmallow experiment.

Complexity theory as studied at the Santa Fe Institute and elsewhere, and applied in areas such as reaction functions and complexity investing are rich veins of wisdom.

Intersections between the physical and social sciences are often clarifying sources of wisdom — e.g., what successful medical care requires vs. what social care theorizes. This is not to minimize the value of either, but to recognize that the realities of one help anchor the other. Body and mind require cohesion.

The best long-term entrepreneurs are often at the forefront of the pursuit of practical wisdom (Paul Graham’s essays come to mind). The reason is simple: their success is directly tied to creating products and services that deeply resonate with customers. An accurate understanding of reality as it really is is the shortest path to do so.

Communities such as The Latticework and In Practise are devoted to studying the fabric-pattern of reality in certain areas and distilling it into wisdom.

Collections of quotes and questions can be great summary libraries.

Wisdom in your life

Finally, some wisdom can only be earned.

That’s tough. Some good news: there are some reasonable ways to accelerate it.

If you want guidance, make a decision. Tim Keller

The most obvious way to accelerate the earning of wisdom is: seek it! There are precious few people actively applying themselves to seeking wisdom. Those that are reap obvious rewards: degrees of calmness, patience, contentment, understanding, and peace enviable to those without them.

Paying attention to cognitive dissonance is imperative. We will be massively wrong at times as we seek to better understand the fabric-pattern of reality and internalize it as wisdom. Substantial time spent seeking to disprove what we believe is an obvious shortcut to evolving towards better understanding and application. We will be fooled; best to minimize the duration of our foolishness.

Obsessing about incongruities is also imperative. Broken mental models — e.g., those that eventually fail to accurately articulate reality — are fantastic signals. Logical inconsistencies are another (e.g., persons claiming to own the truth while aggressively hiding information; e.g., persons whose main form of argument is ad hominem attacks).

Avoiding deception

A major difficulty in the pursuit of truth and wisdom is the immense deception standing between us and it.

Over the past half-century or so post-modernism has been the largest source of deception. There cannot be both a fabric-pattern to reality and relative truth. One must decide, with awareness that relative truth means a plurality of truths, a plurality of truths means inconsistency in truth, and inconsistency in truth suggests a lack of truth.

A helpful guide in this area is the practice of consistently and rigorously defining one’s terms, as opposed to debating definitions. Much of what passes for public “debate” today is just argument over definitions. Pursuit of truth can only proceed from a set of defined terms from which people can reason.

Ego is an ever-present deception. There are many incongruities between short-term rewards (e.g., looking smart) and long-term rewards (e.g., being right). It is unfortunate that the social rewards to those termed “experts” generally far exceed those termed “seekers of truth”, though the latter likely gather more truth in the long-run. All media with a daily cadence would be substantially different if this were reversed. We can’t change it, but we can understand what deceptions will often spring from such motives.

As I grow older, I pay less attention to what people say. I just watch what they do. Andrew Carnegie

Fame is a great corruptor of truth, especially amongst those who are famous for a truth claim. It is nearly impossible for a Nobel laureate to later realize and admit their prize-winning work untrue. It is so much easier to remain the expert. Those who obsessively love and pursue truth place it above what they want to be true. A reasonable signal for a wise person is a person deserving of fame and actively avoiding it. This is not to suggest that all famous people lack truth, but to highlight that fame makes the pursuit of truth more difficult.

Fame and ego take further hits when one is willing to be honest about the path to greatness. Honest accounts of substantial achievements show the path to greatness as one of many unplanned and unexpected stepping stones en route to the end state. If the path to greatness were obvious then it should be more common. If the path to greatness could be taught, the teaching institution would cost a (literal) fortune. That greatness is rare and its path inconsistent requires extreme humility in our ability to achieve it, and extreme humility of those that do. Those both great and wise admit that there were many, many stepping stones along their path over which they had little influence or control.

In this context, Socrates’ belief that he knew nothing is unsurprising.

Living life backwards

Collectively these realities suggest that how we live life is far more important that what we end up accomplishing in it, and that leads us to pursue truth and internalize wisdom.

A correct understanding of how the world really works is truth. Aligning one’s actions to truth is wisdom.

The most effective means we have found is through living life backwards. We often imagine our thinking from our deathbed. What will matter then? What will we be proud of? What will we regret?

This lens is immensely clarifying. We have never met wise people who wished they expressed less love and joy in their lives, or wished they spent less time and effort on wonderful relationships, or were content not making peace with the finite nature of life, or not having a perspective on what may happen after death.

This has led us to seek wisdom, articulate our values, live them out, create feedback loops, and refine and repeat the process.

Last updated: 2022 (v2)

Prior versions: 2014 (v1)