If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask… for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes. ~Albert Einstein
Posing the right question sounds easy, but we so often get the questions wrong because our biases or blind spots come in the way. In so doing, we chase the wrong questions for our various endeavors (and indeed for our life). Which inevitably results in dissatisfaction because even if we get the answer, we are left wanting for more.
Charlie Munger is known for his slow, patient approach to investing. His talks emphasize the importance of preparation and of careful multi-disciplinary research to arrive at decisions and solve problems. Key to his discourse is not relying on external validation but building confidence in your own methods and research. A hard-won clarity that his investments often reflect comes from intensive analysis and preparation to distill down the questions to its essence. Essentially, sifting through the myriad complex questions and webs of information that befall anyone navigating an unknown sphere of operation, and arriving at the ‘checklist’ of questions that serve as a latticework for taking decisions. An informed heuristics if you may, but one built on contextual, cross-disciplinary, and focused analyses.
Reframing a question involves taking a step back and questioning the question itself. The doyens of scientific thinking emphasize the need to follow a first-principles thinking to ensure you are eliminating everything other than what you know to be absolutely true and proceeding from there. This is a framework to eliminate the various psychological biases that may hinder our ability to separate the sound from the noise. Reframing requires probing deeper into the question and its cause and effects to the nth order and restating the question, which if Einstein is to be believed then makes getting to the answer a child’s play.
Refactoring is different. Refactoring comes from the coding world – that of changing the underlying code without changing its behavior. Ported to the psychological discipline, it involves changing the way a situation or experience or idea is viewed in terms of its constituent parts. It does not focus on the outcome or the goal as much as the “agent” behind it. Refactoring brings more of a systems-thinking approach to looking at things as it considers the fact that causation can be driven by a larger number of factors than what initially meets the eye and as such asks for refactoring the components across spatial, time, or logical boundaries to look at something in a new light. A cross-disciplinary approach again works like magic when it comes to refactoring primarily through looking via a new lens that has been developed via known and accepted factors in a separate field or discipline. E.g., explaining how LLMs work can be viewed through a) computer science and engineering (modularization, micro-services, containerization), through data science (transfer learning, explain ability, interpretability), through moral science (ethics, social science), etc. based on how you are approaching a thorny AI problem.
Inversion is likely a subset of refactoring in that you are inverting either a) the assumptions, or b) the goals in order you could see something in a new light. In this case, the factors do not change but the interplay between these factors can be revisited by inverting the goals and objectives. Charlie Munger uses it rhetorically in his Harvard Commencement Speech where he talks about how the graduating students can ensure they maximize misery. Also, his quip: “All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there” is well-known example of distilling a complex idea (avoiding stupidity is easier than seeking brilliance) via inversion (in this case, if you want to die go take drugs or chemicals).
I am skimming through “The Pathless Path” by Paul Millerd primarily because it came recommended via various channels on Twitter (cannot recollect where though). The pathless path is a path that you don’t know exist yet because you don’t have the visibility to look into it because your blind spots and your model of the world prevent you from doing so. And yet, you may want to risk taking this path because it’s not necessary to take the default path. The pathless path is unique to you and requires you to reframe the question of what work means to you. Is work about renting out your time to an organization in the hopes of rising through the ranks and becoming someone important and powerful. Is work about risking your capital and your energy to follow your entrepreneurial dreams and become someone important and powerful. Or is work about working on this planet, on this society, on this neighborhood, on this family and making a positive difference wherever you could?
I watched a movie ‘12th Fail’ by Vidhu Vinod Chopra on Hulu last week and one comment from Manoj stuck with me. In his interview, when asked what he would do if he were not selected, he replies that “haar nahin manana hai (accepting defeat is not an option)”. And when pressed as to what would that mean given this was his last attempt, his reply is trite but surprising when he says that his goal is not to become an IPS officer but to do something for the betterment of India and that he would find another way to march towards this goal (he gives the example of becoming a teacher in the local school where he comes from to dissuade students from cheating which results in a vicious cycle of illiterate people getting exploited by crafty politicians for the degradation of the nation as a whole. It’s a reframing of the goal and also IMO a manifestation of separating the map (becoming an IPS officer) from the territory (do good). Or maybe I am stretching it.
If stuck in a rut, it’s useful to think about redesigning our life choices by considering reframing the challenges we are facing, or refactoring the elements we consider are inhibiting our progress, and invert the problem to ensure we are covering our tracks before arriving at a decision.
Jargogled Impressions. 