Happy new year! I’m running an InterIntellect series on not-knowing every third Thursday of the month, starting January 19. I would like you to join me for some or all of the sessions. Each session happens online on Zoom and costs $15. I have 4 free spots for each session, so let me know if your desire to join exceeds your grasp.
To buy a ticket for the introduction session (Jan 19), go here.
The rest of this issue is
An overview of the series. You can buy a series ticket and find brief descriptions of each of the 14 sessions at the bottom of this InterIntellect page.
A description of the introduction session. You can buy a ticket to the first session at this InterIntellect page.
A little more about the book project. You can read the first few essays on not-knowing here.
An overview of the series.
Every day, either personally or professionally, we confront big and small situations where we must act with partial information. This means that we keep encountering situations of not-knowing in which we must still do something. The most important types of work humans can do are those that navigate significant not-knowing. We are most human when we are responding to not-knowing, because anything that it fully known and knowable becomes routine and replaceable easily by machines.
This is why we reward leaders who (in theory) lead their companies and countries through unpredictable situations, why we respect startup founders who work with not-yet-understood technology and markets to create new companies, and why we esteem researchers who work at the edge of the known to create new knowledge.
But the last few years of a global pandemic, extreme weather, geopolitical insecurity, and economic disruption (among so many other things!) show that there are different types of situations of not-knowing. And they are growing in number, scope, and impact. Every one of us will have to learn how to adapt to this.
Learning how to live on and live well in spite of not-knowing is a path to surviving and flourishing in an increasingly uncertain world. The problem is that we’re poorly prepared to even understand not-knowing, let alone know how to respond to it. The rapid ascent, sudden demise, and flood of coverage of Effective Altruism, FTX, and Alameda Research captures how poorly not-knowing is understood even among those whose profession it is to navigate it — such as many philosophers, venture capitalists, finance industry professionals, and financial journalists.
We urgently need better tools for thinking and action in situations of not-knowing. Each session in this discussion series will explore ways to tool up for not-knowing. One of the underlying assumptions is that the same framework and approach for thinking clearly about not-knowing applies in both personal and professional life — what changes is the context to which that framework and approach is applied.
This series may be a good fit if you’re facing personal or professional situations of not-knowing, and want more pragmatic ways to understand what they are, what causes them, and therefore how to make better decisions (and take better actions) to affect them.
Not-knowing raises questions about how to think and act, and from my own experience in the last 15 years, some questions for which this series may be relevant include:
“What can I do to think through my personal identity at a time when my assumptions about what a good career is have been swept away by Covid / inflation / disillusionment / etc?”
“What can I do to design an organization that can build really innovative products when the board just wants the company to hit quarterly sales targets?”
“What can I do to figure out where I should live for the next month/year/decade?”
“What can I do to better manage innovation work?”
“What can I do to become more comfortable with trying and learning new things?”
“What should I do to live an ethically responsible life with a long-termist view?”
You can buy a series ticket and find brief descriptions of each of the 14 sessions at the bottom of this InterIntellect page.
The introduction session (Jan 19).
The first session (January 19) is an introduction to the topic of not-knowing and why we should think about it. We’ll discuss
Why the world is becoming increasingly uncertain and unknowable as it becomes ever more complex and more interdependent.
How not-knowing is different from risk, uncertainty, complexity, chaos, and ambiguity (which all feed into not-knowing).
How fuzzy thinking about not-knowing causes people to make poor decisions, have inaccurate expectations, and generally be less happy and successful than they could be.
How thinking clearly about not-knowing gives us more freedom to act in situations of not-knowing.
Why thinking clearly about not-knowing is a path to both happiness and innovation.
You can buy a ticket to the first session at this InterIntellect page.
The book project.
I’m writing what may become a book about not-knowing. The discussion series is a forcing function, my way of tying myself to the mast to get it done. I plan on writing it in fragments, each fragment a self-contained essay, then seeing where things go. You can find the first handful of essays here, and the overview of the project here.