You are Not your Thoughts

Introduction to the Persuasion Series

I describe effective persuasion as I understand it. I make wide-reaching claims about how humans make decisions. I won’t provide evidence. I think of personal exploration, or, in other words, the utilization of the scientific method upon one’s own life, as the supreme method of validation. However, I will lead with guide-posts for possible follow-up research.

I Learned a Lot from These

First is Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow by Kahnemann and Tversky. As well as related materials. Malcolm Gladwell wrote some books for the masses. Introductory tracts are good. Learn everything you can.

Second is The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. Notably none of these people strongly align with my own worldviews. That’s okay. You should learn what’s useful from people regardless of their foibles.

Third are the lectures of Jordan Peterson (available on YouTube). You might have well poisoning when it comes to Peterson. Fame doesn’t suit him. Peterson is a megalomaniac liar who degraded rapidly. I learned massive amounts of useful knowledge from the “old” Peterson, a skittish academic. His pre-fame lectures contribute foundational ideas to my understanding of psychology. Hence the name “Lobster.”

Last is Alan Watts. He’s the most important of the lot. If you are truly capable of understanding him it will be clear why that is so. Don’t worry overmuch about the mysticism. I will apply his wisdom in a highly “scientific” manner.

That being taken care of, let us begin.

There’s Genius Within You to be Unleashed

You are not your thoughts. The things that drive what you do largely occur outside the purview of active thinking. Everyone knows this because of “10,000 hours” and “unthinking mastery.” I’m a pianist from a young age so I’m intimately familiar with how these abilities manifest and feel. When you’re proficient at a Beethoven Sonata, you don’t think about where to place your fingers. It happens. The “you that isn’t your thoughts” does it. The moment you start thinking is the moment you run into trouble. If you are experienced in competition or performance, you know exactly what I mean by that.

You should extrapolate that phenomenon to all of your life. This is the default “you,” not a fluke contained within a particular scenario. Your conscious mind processes less than 1% of all perceptual stimuli entering your nervous system. The “you that is not your thoughts” handles all that.

The “you that is not your thoughts” is way more powerful than “the you that is your thoughts.” Your thoughts are a piddling pip-squeak in comparison to the you that is not your thoughts. As the “10,000 hours” idea implies, human genius comes from the you that is not your thoughts. Your thoughts occasionally guide in a particular direction but once there, the you that is not your thoughts does the heavy lifting.

What’s another thing the “10,000 hours” idea implies? It suggests there is value in intentionally “training” the unthinking you to develop or hone skills. This is the fundament of the benefits of “practice.” You don’t know how the “you who is not your thoughts” does it. But by guiding yourself into actions in the proper way, you can grow genius in yourself. The “how” of it occurs entirely outside your conscious comprehension. This is the essence of “getting reps.”

I, Robot

I’ll leave you with one analogy I find useful. That is the mind as a “neural net.” AI is all the rage these days, but for me it’s just another course: Computer Science 3008, “Artificial Intelligence.” I’ll spare you the finer details. You initiate a computer algorithm (number one) which creates another algorithm (number two). The created algorithm (number two) is the “AI.” The creator algorithm (number one) is the “Maker.” The Maker then takes in massive amounts of “training data” and with each data point the Maker iterates the “AI” so that the “AI” becomes better and better. Sound familiar? It’s a lot like the “10,000 hours” humans need for mastery.

The “you that is not your thoughts” is infinitely more impressive than our so-called AI systems. Kind of goes without saying. But a simpler model for a process can still give you insight. A common worry for AI is “garbage in, garbage out.” If the data you feed the Maker contains lies and misinterpretations of the world, the ensuing AI will suffer as a result.

So too with the you that is not your thoughts. At least 99% of your perceptual inputs is “training” the “you who is not your thoughts” in a way that will show up in future behavior. How do I put this theory into practice? I am extremely selective about who I let put words in front of my eyes. In the internet age this is vitally important. You have access to unthinkable amounts of information. Much of it “trains” the “you who is not your thoughts.” Worse, you won’t even notice. Be careful what you allow to direct your attention.

Let’s stop for now. This material is fundamental to the entire matter. Some of you already know all of it. Others might benefit from further study. See you underwater.

Find the next article of the Persuasion Series here.