Game in the Brain

 Criteria and Metrics only matter to those who have defined them. A person’s key performance or results index/criteria may be different from another person, an organization’s metrics will be different with other organizations. 

While we may strive for objectivity, we have to accept the subjective nature of the foundation of our objectivity. 

The takeaway of such thinking is eliminating my personal criteria or metrics from the equations when the context is a system outside myself. 

I may have a metric/criteria that guide my true north – my goals, morals, and my ideas but that – while deeply personal is also essentially Only personal. I can define empathy, gratitude, a threshold for evil, good, honor, dishonor, for moral failing or virtue but in the end it is only for me. 

The Illusion of aggregate Social behavior is the appearance of a shared value – to project our personal values into a group of people who definitely don’t really share our values because they may not know it. To look at a community, organization, group of humans and to think “they are like me, and thus I can predict or understand it” is such a fundamental illusion of ego. 

I realize this because Empathy also allows us to know that we do not know another persons motives or intent – but we can be sure about how it affects us. That if it affects us negatively – then that is certain and true. The way a greater understanding of science and human nature has driven to seek Evidence contrary to our assumptions to lead us to doubt everything.

people who challenge their knowledge will have so much evidence to the contrary that they are only certain of uncertainty. If we pursue rooting out confirmation bias, through typically the positivism and experimentation method – then in our Core Emotional Narritive we have discovered so much contrary information that it displaces more of what we are certain about. 

Bonus: Definition of Guiding Principle – 

It is a principle that when I forget everything else I can recall and work my way back to the “right” path. And These are: Empathy (To understand human nature and people), Gratitude (To accept and find happiness with Adversity and Hardship), Priority (That in constant scarcity I can only allocate attention and resources in a Finite Capacity). 

Take away: 

1. not to assume my Values. 
2. that Groups are not ME or a Single Mind. We can much be its victims as the herd it protects. 
3. the muscle memory to look for evidence to test my assumptions leads to a life of finding this over and over again – reinforcing only that I don’t know shit. That may be doing something ethically and morally ambiguous depending on the amount of Information I am working with. That moral or ethical judgment are proportional to the Level of Knowledge, Care, and Attention we give. 
4. That my Tribe and Immediate relationships are what I can really depend on, their station and power or lack of power or station is what I can expect for my own life and that of my children. Raising them all up is the best I can do, and that’s not much.