Sterling Terrell

recovering economist

Inability To Confront Reality

Inability To Confront Reality

I despise it sometimes when I have to confront reality.

Maybe you have your thing too.

The reality of age, work, faith, finances?

With experience, many good things can come, but maybe the rut of habit and routine comes too.

Reality might be doing the work when you wish you didn’t have to.

Reality can also be being stuck and needing to try something you have never done before – which is terrifying.

What limits individuals as well as nations is the inability to confront reality, to see things for what they are. As we grow older, we become more rooted in the past. Habit takes over. Something that has worked for us before becomes a doctrine, a shell to protect us from reality. Repetition replaces creativity. We rarely realize we’re doing this, because it is almost impossible for us to see it happening in our own minds.

-Robert Greene, The 33 Strategies Of War

Are You Twisting Observed Facts?

Are You Twisting Observed Facts?
[This is part of the series: 31 Persuasion Tips That I Learned From Scott Adams]

Our perception of observed facts is not as simple as it should be.

For instance, we observe and record facts X and Y, right?

Right.

But how do we explain these “facts?”

We explain them through the filter of our worldview.

And immediately, our cognitive bias take over.

Said differently, we see what we want to see, and often filter out the rest with simple explanation.

And is our visual perception even an accurate picture of reality to begin with? (Watch the video in this link!)

Maybe. But, maybe not.

This is not a simple issue.

Maybe reality just predicts the future?

PERSUASION TIP 7: It is easy to fit completely different explanations to the observed facts. Don’t trust any interpretation of reality that isn’t able to predict.
-Scott Adams, Win Bigly
Sterling Terrell