🧙🏿‍♂️We Need to Learn More...

How ignorance of our emotions, nature, and intelligence is limiting our growth

I know I know! It’s Saturday night… it’s basically time for the Week 3 newsletter. I should have dropped this days ago, but I got stuck… so sorry. Nonetheless, I’m very excited to share all of these ideas. Enjoy!

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TLDR:

• Emotions are far more… just more. We need to learn to identify and deal with them more maturely.

• Human nature does not go against anarchy. Our selfishness is largely influenced by the type of society we have. A culture of generosity can, will, and has encouraged incredibly compassionate behavior.

• Social media is not social. How can we design better digital social spaces inspired by physical environments?

• IQ measures a type of intelligence that is weaponized by psychopaths and narcissists to rig the game. Let’s consider what ‘success’ means in our society and how to foster pro-social intelligence instead.

📚 What I’m Learning:

Emotions

As a part of the Emotion Wheel project (updates below) I delved into learning about emotions and which wheel to use. I learned a bit about the history of emotion research, Plutchik’s Wheel, Geneva Wheel, and Cohen’s iteration of Michael’s Wheel.

Some of the most interesting takeaways for me are as follows:

• Plutchik discovered 8 core emotions that are shared between other animals! He showed that we all share common physiological reactions which he used as the base emotions. He also observed that many emotions are a combination of different base emotions.

• This Alan Watkins video had some very interesting things to say about cognitive and emotional development. I haven’t had the chance to explore deeper and check out the research for myself, so please take all of this with a pile of salt, but I found it super interesting nonetheless:

  • At age 1 or so, kids realize they exist and thus learn to differentiate/identify themselves in the world.

  • At age 3-6, kids gain a ‘conceptual self’ where they identify that they have their own autonomy separate from other people.

  • 6-9 year olds develop ‘concrete competence’ where they learn the rules of the world. He claims that people tend to stay here due to not being allowed to question those rules very much in adolescence. Furthermore, those rules are taught (usually coercively) not just by the parents, but by schools, jobs, laws, and much of society. So people are constantly being (forcibly) taught how the world works but rarely able to ask why the world works that way.

  • He says that people also don’t learn how to identify their emotions very well due to this lack of development. Most people only have a handful of words to describe their emotions or feelings. (He differentiates ‘emotions’ as ‘energy in motion’ or composite biological signals, but ‘feelings’ as how we become aware of and identify those signals)

  • Many people fail to differentiate between their emotions because they lack a vocabulary or even an awareness of said emotions, and so often use vague feelings to describe them. This is the importance of emotion wheels in helping people identify their feelings.

  • However, he goes a step further and says there are roughly 34,000 emotions!

  • However, most people don’t learn how to deal with their emotions because they either numb their feelings through some kind of anesthetic (e.g. drugs, alcohol, etc), or distract themselves from those feelings (e.g. becoming obsessed with surface-level activities such as fitness, sex, materialism, work, etc). In short, people look ‘out there’ for the causes of our feelings and the meaning of our life instead of looking inside.

  • In order to develop further, we need to learn to identify our own emotions, and realize that other people don’t cause your feelings (ie nobody can ‘make’ you angry or sad, etc. External stimuli cause physiological reactions, but it is your awareness of these signals which determine how you respond to a situation). Once we can figure out ‘where we are’ in the constellation of those thousands of emotions, we can better identify them and separate our external reactions from our internal emotions.

  • At this point he basically starts pitching his app, which seems interesting but kinda makes the whole presentation seem like nothing more than a sales pitch. Fortunately, there is still some valuable information there, and many folks in the comments point out how you can do this yourself by simply practicing mindfulness (breathing, meditating, walking, etc).

  • Of course, there is probably much much more to all of this, such as Piaget’s development theory that I just discovered while writing this… but I will learn more in the coming weeks.

Anarchy

I finally started the first chapter in the anarchy.works primer. It starts with questions about human nature. The first is ‘Aren’t people naturally selfish?’ Spoiler: No we are not. At least not usually outside of capitalism and elitism.

You can see my thoughts on it in my video, but I really want to pull out a few things:

1. “Human survival depends on generosity.” Yes, people can and often are selfish, but throughout most of human history, (and even now) we looked out for our community as well. It was in our best interest to ensure everyone in our community is doing well too. 

2. Many cultures used gift-based economies for hundreds if not thousands of years. This is not the same as bartering. They regularly gifted things to others in their community and even to outside communities. In fact, the first cities were built to facilitate gatherings of tribes participating in seasonal gift-giving rituals.
   It was natural to give what you can, and to not ask for what you did not need. 

3. There are current examples of gift-giving cultures, such as Really Really Free Markets where people set up flea markets without prices! People simply take what they want, give what they want, and share knowledge/skills all with no expectation or desire for money.

4. Social taboos are far more effective than poverty-shaming for gift-based societies to discourage moochers. It’s also far more humane, as you naturally inspire compassion for people who do not have what they need… unlike in capitalist societies where people love to insist that poor people ‘deserve’ their lot, or just need to work harder to ‘bootstrap’ themselves out of poverty.

5. Many ‘chiefs’ in indigenous societies had no coercive powers and were expected to be more generous than everyone else! “They worked harder and had less personal wealth than others. One study found that a common reason for the people to depose or expel a chief was if the chief was not considered generous enough.”... I’m sure many people may resonate with this.

This concept is called ‘Reverse Dominance Hierarchy’. Highly suggest reading up on it!

Many Americans/Capitalists may consider this idea blasphemous… but I would ask you to consider the fact that our positions of power are magnets for narcissists and psychopaths. People who can be very persuasive and charismatic, but simply don’t have much capacity for empathy, compassion, or selflessness. These are the people who don’t see a problem with climbing the ladder then raising it up behind them. Do we really think such a society is ideal?

🧠 Big Ideas (What I’m Thinking):

Designing Better Social Media

We all know social media is problematic. But why? Is it because of anonymity? Human nature? Data abuse? Something else? I wager that it is by design… which includes all of those considerations.

Designing software goes beyond just the visual part of the interface, it also includes what the software (or any system/service) actually does. Unfortunately, many people (including the tech companies themselves) assume that engineers decide what software does. But what they are actually doing is trying to figure out how to get the computer to do what the humans want it to do (or discovering things that computers can do that humans did not know they can do).

Ideally, designers figure out what should be built, and engineers figure out how to build it. But this is almost switched! In most companies, designers are just there to visualize what the executives, marketers, or engineers want built.

This is problematic, because it's the designers who usually make it their business to learn psychology, do research, and perform tests to see how customers feel about the experience (rather than just blindly optimizing for ‘engagement’ or profit or growth).

There are a myriad more problems… but here are some ideas on how we might be able to design social media platforms that are actually pro-social and enjoyable:

>> Based on physical public spaces

New_Public has a bunch of amazing research about what makes healthy public digital spaces. I highly suggest you checking their research for yourself, but in short, they have 14 signals within 4 building blocks:

Their research showed that pretty much no social media platform, messaging app, or search engine rates particularly well on any of these, much less all of them.

When they first presented this research just over a year ago, they had many stories of people who use physical public spaces as inspiration for building digital ones. I have been thinking about that for a long time, but this week the thought came up once again in one of my audiojournal entries.

Particularly, I was thinking about the role of what I call ‘keystones’ in public spaces. What makes a space usable and engaging? Many social media sites have an intrinsic assumption that the point of a space can simply be to ‘socialize’... thus they are built primarily around what seem to be functions for socialization (ie making and engaging with posts or content). 

But in the physical world, I don't think we ever go to a place simply to ‘socialize’. Even if we have that intent, there are no places built for that purpose. Every place that you’d go to ‘socialize’ is built around a keystone function, such as to play/walk at the park, or drinking in a bar, or shopping in a mall. Event halls and lounges are the closest you might get, but those are also built around the idea of putting on events or experiencing a certain ambiance. 

It seems that humans don’t need an excuse or a ‘place’ to socialize… we do that anywhere we’d like so long as certain conditions are met (such as feeling safe, engaged, etc).

Socializing is an action we do nearly subconsciously. Thus we don’t need a specific place to facilitate that action. That would be like having a specific place to go for breathing.

If anything, each physical space we go to constrains or encourages a certain type of socialization. Malls are meant for a kind of ‘show off’ or gallery socialization where you interact mostly with the people you go to the mall with, and much of the ‘social’ experience with others are the ‘look at me’ type of thing… kind of like Instagram. It’s more surface level, but could make for a good time with your friend group.

Bars and clubs facilitate a type of socialization centered around a let down of your ‘serious side’ or inhibitions due to the use of alcohol, music, and food. It’s a more fun experience that can be risky, but also entertaining. You often go there to meet strangers just as much as to have a good time with your friends.

Parks, houses, libraries, museums, events, etc… these all encourage or discourage different types of social behaviours.

What if we fashioned our digital spaces more like our physical ones? Instead of going to a ‘social media’ site to share information and see what people are up to… we go to a digital space centered on a specific type of media.

What would be the ‘keystone function’ of the space, and how would it contextualize the types of socialization that you could have there?

How can you allow people (specifically creators of those instanced spaces) to customize the experience to their community needs?

A quick thought experiment

YouTube is a good place to start with this. It already is very much centered around the sharing and creation of videos. The closest thing to this in physical space is of course movie theaters. 

You can socialize in theaters, but it's discouraged to talk during a movie. But many folks do enjoy talking about movies before or after (and annoyingly, during). You can also get concessions because movies are long and you might get hungry while you watch (and it's profitable). You also have bathrooms. Some even have arcades. So if we were to improve youtube by fashioning it after theaters, what would we change and what would we keep?

Well for one, most YouTube videos are not as long as movies, plus you are engaging with these videos wherever and whenever you want. So there’s no need to sell concessions or have bathrooms… And yet… if you want to have other forms of profits, perhaps you can consider selling some kind of ‘digital concession’ (ie emojis like Twitch does). Also, if you want to facilitate some kind of digital waste removal (like dumb comments) maybe a bathroom equivalent could actually make sense… or maybe not, as it would have to be self-driven instead of moderated. And if we want a separate place to play minigames, there could be an arcade zone.

This is just a quick stab at this idea. But I think taking the time to study physical spaces and (re)design digital ‘social’ spaces based on those cues would make for a better online experience.

>> Designing on principle

All of this speaks to the importance of designing with a principle in mind. If that principle is just profit… then the ‘social’ features will only be second-rate and exploitative. 

If you claim the space is for ‘socializing’ but you don’t follow up on that with an understanding of how your space puts the social experience into a certain context… then you’re just going to build something that doesn’t facilitate positive experiences very much.

You need a sense of ethics to guide your context-setting, as you will have the power to decide the general gist of your space’s social experience. If your team does not truly care or accept that responsibility, abuse is bound to happen.

You need a philosophical stance, at least informally. When you operate a physical store, you know what you’re getting into: if you open up a bar, you know you are going to attract a certain crowd then if you are opening up a library or an arcade. Furthermore, you can set a theme or constrict your audience further by specifying the type of bar (or library, arcade, etc) that you want to operate. 

Likewise, you need to have a solid idea of who you want to be on your platform and what you want them to be able to do. You hear about ‘target audience’ all the time, but the software lens kind of obfuscates what is meant by that. It's not strictly about who is paying or using the platform or even the problem you are solving for them (yes that’s important, but there's more).

You also need to think about the type of behaviours you are enabling or discouraging. 

Again, if you are opening (or going to) a bar, you know that the behaviour there is completely different than a library.

We need that type of distinction for digital spaces. For instance, what type of behaviour is acceptable on YouTube that is not on Twitter? How can we develop spaces that are more purposeful/explicit in their use?

Relatedly, you need a command of psychology. In particular, you need to understand the way in which your platform manipulates the human mind. It does not necessarily have to be a formal understanding (though that will certainly help), but it does need to be there. 

Back to the bar example, we have an intuitive/societal knowledge that alcohol brings out a different part of people. We know that it can be good or bad, so your bar will need to have licenses to serve that alcohol, it may need security to handle malcontents, and you’ll have to clean up the mess… 

Furthermore, if you are experienced with bars you will know what music creates what ambiance, what alcohol is good for what crowds, and so on. Likewise, digital spaces need to be more aware of how and why to use specific features.

>> Taking cues from nature

How is our behaviour naturally constrained or influenced by our environment? What can we learn from evolution, ecological systems, and nature about how to encourage or discourage certain traits?

Beyond the physical spaces we have built for ourselves… I think we should also consider how nature also constrains our behaviour. We feel different viewing water than we do viewing grasslands. Even being in/around a river is different from an ocean. Walking amidst beautiful cherry blossoms is very different from walking in a dark forest. What can we learn from this? What can we take into our virtual spaces from nature?

The closest we have to this environmental context on the internet is color theory, typography, and other user interface theming. They work, but its not at all as comprehensive as the physical world.

Here are some questions to consider. How might we:

• Design the ‘environment’ of digital spaces to more closely reflect the incredibly rich ecosystems we have evolved to actually live in?

• Build digital spaces with the same or similar feel as sunbeams shining through leaves in a calm forest with a burbling stream nearby; songbirds in the wind susurrating through the trees on a cool breeze?

• Inspire ‘awe’ with digital spaces as you get by the epic vistas of a mountain range or an endless ocean or open savannah?

• Turn our bots and algorithms into animals interacting with each other in a wilderness that we can delve into and be with or study more directly?

With that in mind, another idea that excites me is making misinformation toxic. We have learned and evolved to stay away from certain dangers through a myriad of responses to said danger. Some chemicals that are harmful, like methane, smell really bad, so we keep away. Some insects that are really poisonous have bright colors, so we stay away. Some animals that will kill us have sharp claws and teeth, so we stay away (or at least interact with all of these cautiously). 

How can we visualize bad, dangerous, or otherwise ‘toxic’ things in our information space so that we know to stay away or handle them with caution? I’m really not sure… but I think it's worth thinking very deeply about.

Empathic AI

Creating robots/AI that empower humans to be the best version of themselves… Lex Fridman shared more about his dreams and I was absolutely amazed, inspired, and excited that he had Very similar dreams to myself!! He mentioned quite a few things that I myself have mentioned in the past (such as here and here) about creating technology that allows each individual to set their own goals for the type of content they see, the level of challenge they expose themselves to, and a deep amount of introspection/self awareness they are empowered to do.

This newsletter is already ridiculously long, so I’ll have to reserve this for a later date.

We need to study non-eurocentric examples of intelligence/IQ 

I have finally listened to Jordan Peterson’s interview with SB Kaufman. I have been putting it off because I’ve heard and seen some really… concerning takes from Peterson. He seems like an incredibly intelligent person, but who tends to weaponize his intellect (subconsciously or otherwise) to push forward his own opinions and/or assumptions about the world without actually considering other perspectives.
I came to this conclusion after seeing this: Jordan Peterson doesn’t understand postmodernism.

As well as a number of people who have talked about ‘escaping the cult of Peterson’ or similar type of things. 

I know that has already pre-conditioned me towards a certain way, so I’ll be honest in saying that I was already a bit on guard when I clicked over to the interview. Nonetheless, there is a LOT there… he and Kaufman discussed quite a few very interesting ideas. I would like to do a point-by-point podcast or something sharing what I have learned or had more questions about one day. I think engaging in these sorts of ideas is extremely beneficial and important for one’s growth.

That being said, I talked about my problems with Jordan Peterson in this audiojournal. 

But I want to share a bit about the great conversation I had with my partner about the societal problem of using euro-centric IQ as the paragon of intelligence. 

Peterson says that IQ is the best predictor of success and learning aptitude. He admits that it is not a perfect test and doesn’t shed light on all types of intelligence, but he insists that IQ is the best that we can do right now. But for someone that has studied intelligence, I wonder why he doesn’t talk about types of intelligence that other ethnicities and cultures seem to excel at beyond what IQ seems to explain. Or how poverty, malnutrition, and expectation can lower IQ.

A great example of this is the various African cultures that seem to exhibit an intuitive understanding of fractals, binary code, and abstract spirituality. Many other cultures such as various east asian, native american, and other indegnous cultures exhibit their own unique intelligences that don’t seem to be adequately described by western ideas of ‘logic’ and ‘reasoning’. I explore this side of the discussion in my podcast above. More concretely, this research shows that different cultures value (and thus encourage) different types of intelligence. Such as how many African and Asian cultures value various types of social skills above purely ‘cognitive’. 

In the conversation with my partner, we discussed a completely different side to this problem. It was related to the other thing Peterson was saying in his podcast. He seems to be against the idea of power structures, or at least about the idea of much of our society being a result of oppressors having the power to dictate …

If I understand his argument (at 1:06:32) correctly, he thinks that the people in power got there not through aggression but through reciprocity. That “you’re more likely to be successful if you are productive and reciprocal.” 

My problem with this theory is that it completely neglects the fact that positions of power tend to attract people with higher levels of psychopathy and sociopathy. And, that reciprocity itself can (and often is) abused or manipulated to attain power over people.

This is directly related to IQ, because many psychopathic people also tend to be highly intelligent. But they use that intelligence to learn social patterns (such as reciprocity) and manipulate it to their liking.

My partner and I have been rewatching Death Note and it is a great example of this problem. Obviously this is a work of fiction, but it is startlingly similar to real-life stories of serial killers who use all the same tools.

Light Yagami is an incredibly intelligent person. Once he gets the Death Note and realizes its potential, he uses it to kill criminals. He very quickly proclaims that he will become the ‘God of the New World’. Already, this is very similar to a lot of people who gain some power over others, and think themselves worthy or deserving of said power. Because they are obviously more intelligent than the average person (and even other more intelligent people), they think themselves better than others. 

However, they also understand (theoretically) how other people work. Throughout the show, Light uses principles of reciprocity, politeness, or charm to get people to do and believe what he wants them to do or believe. This is also something real life serial killers do, such as Ted Bundy and Charles Manson… 

Very often you hear the phrase ‘they dont look like a violent person’ or whatever when it comes to these people. Because, unfortunately, folks who are not as intelligent take things at face value. And much of our society assumes they will know evil when they see it. You won’t. Not unless it’s a very stupid or simple kind of ‘evil’.

So the question is, if IQ is a good predictor of ‘success’... why is that? Does the more cognitive intelligence that IQ measures really predict competence and generosity or is it too limited and biased towards people who can (and will) abuse, manipulate, and maneuver themselves to get what they want more easily (or likely a mix of both)? 

Thus is the problem of using these indicators of success… if we are not looking at the full picture, then we are just allowing our society to be co-opted by people who are better at ‘playing the game’. And it’s not a game that fosters deep empathy.

Of course, proponents of IQ and the illusion of meritocracy love to say ‘but the alternative is worse’. They claim that if we do away with tests and such, you are just opening the door for truly incompetent people to rise into positions of power (whether it be in everyday professions, or high leadership positions). I agree that it would certainly be worse.

But why are these the only two options? Why do we keep insisting that we have to choose between ‘the lesser of two evils’? I don’t accept that.

I think we need to look at the entire system. We need to audit the whole ‘game’ and completely redesign it. For instance, instead of letting ‘everybody’ into college or only the ‘best of the best’... let's reconsider whether or not we even need college. We probably do need some type of higher education or training for specialized professions. But why can’t that be broken up into apprenticeship programs where the ‘tests’ to get in are more demonstrative and based on whether or not you can actually do the work? Why can’t we have more freely available education, like CS50 classes that are free for anyone to take, but you just pay for the certification exams? Why can’t we have more project-based exams where you build or do real-world work and then measure the results? Why do we not measure and value inter/intra-personal intelligence just as rigorously and encourage success to be a result of compassion-based competence?

Obviously, this will take far more than a random person like myself brainstorming these ideas (though I have been thinking about this for a long time). But I think we need to seriously consider more radical changes to our society that address the more fundamental problems. Intelligence is fundamentally vague. Even measurements of it, though valuable, are not necessarily comprehensive. I think we have based too much of our society on illusions that IQ/ general intelligence is the best we can do. 

It might be the best we have *right now*, but we should be making rigorous efforts to show its limitations, to realize how it can be (and often is) weaponized/biased, and to figure out better ways to measure folks who are neurodivergent or who have other strengths.

Let’s figure out how to create a society in which any and everyone can achieve ‘success’ so long as they want to go for it.

💼 My Projects:

Emotion Wheel - I created this spreadsheet with easy to read tables of different emotion wheels. I am not sure if I will turn this into an interactive app afterall… at least no time soon, because there is just so much that goes into emotions than what I thought. But maybe it will be a good practice if I design it one small piece at a time.

I’ll talk about my other projects next week (probably).

😰 Failures and Concerns (What I’m worried about):

I AM LATE WITH THESE NEWSLETTERS.

🎶 Favorite Songs/Artists This Week:

• Lil Nas X - Industry Baby
  ICONIC!!! I’ve been listening to this at least three times a day! He CANNOT be stopped!

• Mick Jenkins - Truffle
  This a bop, the video is incredible, and the lyrics are 

• Carly X - Lyrical Flexcercise Vol 4
  She got bars and flow!! Love to see it.

• Riot - Overkill
  Forgot how epic this Beat Saber song is! I doubt I’ll ever be able to play it on Expert+, but won’t stop me from trying! I will also really miss playing Warriors by Imagine Dragons, Victorious by Panic! At the Disco, Rattlesnake by Rogue and Boundless by Aero Chord 🙏🏿

😎 Other Stuff

• I did NOT expect Tetris Effect to be so incredibly immersive!! I should have known they’d use VR to take the mesmerizing game to the next level. Sad that I waited so long to play it. I won’t have long before I need to return the headset :/

• VR Videos are amazing! If you have a VR headset (and even if you don’t), I highly suggest checking out one of these 360 videos by Disrupt.

🔌 Always Be Plugging:

• Thoughts of a TechnoWizard - Check out my (almost) daily audiojournal if you want to hear my unrefined, raw ‘train(wreck) of thought’

• A More Delightful Future - Listen to interviews with incredible people designing emergent technologies.

• Becoming a TechnoWizard - Watch me learn about all manner of things on my quest to build a better, more magical world on my YouTube.

• Path of a Trillionaire/TechnoWizard - Feel free to support me on Patreon! If you think this is a lot, watch what I do when I have some actual money in my pockets!!

• The Journal of TechnoWizardry - If you like this newsletter, please share!!