https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=iY7hAdSf9FU
So today I want to sort of outline something that I’ve noticed. It’s a pattern that I see and I like to call it the scientific construction. And it’s something you can look out for and be aware of and then take appropriate actions. I’m not making judgment calls about whether or not these things are good or bad. I’m just saying watch out for them. And so I like to go over this and figure out sort of what I’m talking about and how you can recognize these things. And then once you’re tuned to them, once you’re aware of them, you can make some decisions about what you want to do about them, if anything. And so that’s what I’d like to explore with you in this little video. So when I say scientific construction, what am I talking about? Well, there’s a way in which we engage that we’re told if you do something, you’ll get a particular result. And right. So there’s like a system for attaining something. And, you know, it’s usually say it’s a good thing. And so if you do that, this is what’s going to happen. Now, I’m specifically talking about the positive case here, not the negative. Like, oh, if you do that, then it’s always going to result in you dying. Right. Like that’s that’s that’s different. But it’s related. So what you do is you you propose something as a good. All right. This is a good thing. Whatever this is, it’s good. And you clearly define it. This is exactly what it is. It is good. Then you build a system for attaining it. This doesn’t have to be a real system, by the way. So pick up artists do this all the time. Right. They say, oh, you know, going out to bars and picking up chicks is great. It’s a good thing. This is exactly what we mean when we say that. Right. And then they’ve got the system for attaining it. Well, this is what you tell them if they answer with this. Right. And then, you know, you convince people that if they did that. You know, you’ll definitely sleep with that woman. Right. And this is a common construction that people are using. It’s like a little formula. It’s a pattern that people are playing out all the time. Propose something that’s good. Define it clearly. Right. Build a system for attaining it. It doesn’t have to be a real system. It can just be a sequence or whatever. And then convince people that if they did it, that result would be what, you know, what what they expect and or what you defined. And so one example of this is and there’s lots of reasons for this that I’m probably not not going to get too deep into. But there was a time when people rightly, according to the science quote that they were doing, which wasn’t very good science, by the way, didn’t really account for like market forces and how the world actually works and reality and little things. If you’ve got a degree, you’d make more money. And and that would be fulfilling to you because success is defined by people with degrees. And, you know, it’s a hell of a proposal. Right. You get a degree, get a better job. You make a million dollars more in your lifetime or whatever hook they’ve got. Right. And all you have to do to to to do this, it’s very clearly defined. You’re going to you’re going to get a degree of this type, this type, this whatever type of degree, whatever field. It’s very clearly defined. And that’s going to give you these results. Right. You build a system for attaining it. The system is you go to school, you study, you get, you know, you get student love. You get student loans. Right. You pay them off. Right. It’s going to be very good. Of course, if you make a million dollars, but you spend, you know, a quarter of a million dollars on your student loans. Hmm. Not beginning to look like the same deal it was before. And then you can convince everybody that if they did that, it would be great. There’s lots of problems here. One of them is that that construction in particular was based on a stupid calculation done by very stupid people who want to to convince everybody that they were smart. It doesn’t take into account the fact that if there are more college grads on the market, the value of a college grad goes down because that’s how the world works. We may not like that, but it is what it is. So then when everybody does it, it gets bad. The other problem is that the result that you’re talking about, you can point to, oh, look, this guy did it and it worked. That may have only happened once. It may not be reproducible or replicatable at all. This happens with a lot of things. The pickup artists, like I said before, they do this stuff all the time. They look, I picked up like six women and you know, one every every night of the week. It took Sunday off, whatever craziness they go into. And maybe people get lucky all the time. Nassim Taleb talks about this in his books, which if you haven’t read, you gotta read the Nassim Taleb stuff. So great. Read all his books. Except his very first one. His very first one is about futures trading. It’s no good. Very hard to understand. People get lucky all the time and trying to figure out what they did to get lucky is dangerous. And people do this trick all the time. They reverse the seven habits of highly effective people, not saying anything bad about the book or anything like that. Perfectly reasonable. But expecting the result of being highly effective is a bit of a stretch. Right. Because those habits were common among some pool, very small pool, by the way, of people, right, who probably had other things in common that you don’t know about. And so those habits with those commonalities formed success. However you’re measuring it doesn’t matter. Maybe. But maybe you’re not starting where they’re starting. Maybe you don’t have the problems that they had that those habits fix. Right. There’s all sorts of ways in which those formulas can go wrong because they’re reverse engineered. The other thing is that people tend to narrativize with post hoc rationalization and they’ll say, oh, the reason why I do this every day is because whatever. And. When they when they’re pressed on like, well, how did you do that? They sometimes just make something up, not saying they do it on purpose. Our subconscious mind does this for us automatically. But, you know, somebody can produce a perfect good out of it. Say, ha, this is success is a good thing. Right. You don’t have to find success. Another trick. Not defining words. They say, here’s what I mean by success. Right. You’ll have more money, more girls, more whatever. Right. Here’s why it’s good. Right. So you can you can quote define it clearly without actually talking about what this may or may not be because success might be different to different people, for example. It’s not terribly useful word. We’ll we’ll go into the word salad at some point. I promise I’m going to do more work on that video, but it’ll be posted here as soon as I do it. And then build a system, you know, again, doesn’t have to be a physical system. It can just be a process or whatever for attaining it and then trying to convince everybody. And so. And then they point to an example. Right. Look, it happened here. It can happen again. Maybe, you know, comic can hit the earth tomorrow, too, though, with maybe the same the same statistical likelihood for all I know. And that, you know, these are the constructions you have to watch out for. If someone’s saying something is a perfect good and they’re defining it clearly without using, you know, enough detail or you or using details that may not apply because something like success, you can’t apply the success to a group. It’s not possible. Success means different things to different people for different reasons. It’s a very it’s a very fuzzy word. It’s a very, very fuzzy word. So if I tell you you’re going to meet with success, if you just do this one thing, you’re going to be disappointed because I don’t know what success means to you. And maybe you don’t even know what success means to you. That’s possible. That happens all the time, too. And but I just promised you success. And then I said, well, you know, success means that you’re going to be happy and you’re going to make more money and things are not going to be a problem for you anymore. And you have to worry about whatever. Right. All those things may sound like success, but I’m not actually saying anything. And I can give you a system for how to enact that version of success. And if I just convince people, done. But that’s what you have to watch out for. Are they talking about a perfect good? Are they defining it quote clearly? Are they giving you a system for attaining it and then trying to convince a bunch of people that what would happen if they did it? Something to watch out for. It might be true. I’m not saying that that that that it’s always false or it’s always a trick, but it’s something to watch out for. It’s something to not be fooled by. It’s it’s something to be careful about. And science does this a lot. It is all the time. And that’s the problem is that it’s kind of everywhere. It’s very hard to get around. And. You know, it’s a formula that they like to use. It’s used a lot in industry. Right. Like, oh, take this programming boot camp. You’ll learn this programming language. This programming language is used here, here and here by, you know, whatever prestigious companies or industries or whatever. Then we’ll get you a job. Look at these guys who got a job. And now they’re making, you know, one hundred thirty thousand dollars a year or whatever. And they’re well on their way. Right. It’s like, oh, a path to victory. But that’s really a scientific construction. And the fact that it worked for one or two or three or four, however many people doesn’t tell you anything because you don’t know how many people failed at it. Maybe they failed to be able to implement the system. Right. A lot of people can’t can’t learn to program. There’s a lot of people like that or can’t learn to program well enough. You know, all of these things are factors that people don’t consider and they need to be considered because they are really important. And that’s what I want you to watch out for. I don’t want you to be fooled and partially for selfish reasons, because ultimately, if you’re fooled by that, you’re not spending the amount of time I would like on my videos and giving me the thing I’m most grateful for. Which is your time and attention.