Pages

Wednesday, August 19, 2020

Blazing through forks

I thought of a metaphor for life -- life is about choosing forks in a road you're traveling on.

Imagine that you're traveling on a road and you reach a fork. You've got to decide which side of the fork you'll take. Now imagine that you have a drone with a camera on it and you can view the video on your phone. So you send your drone to see both paths you could take. Then after collecting that info, you analyze and then decide which path you'll take.

But what most people do in most cases is to not use their drone and just choose a path without thinking about it. Sometimes that's ok and sometimes it's even necessary. Let's say there's a lion running after you. But in most cases you should not choose a path without sending your drone because there's no hurry.

People should learn how to:

  • recognize these forks. Often times people don't even notice the forks. They just blaze right through them as if there were no forks.
    • example: I say X. Somebody replies with "You're wrong because Y" while having skipped the step of checking that they understood X correctly.
  • switch modes -- from the mode of blazing through forks to the mode of stopping to think about what forks there are and which paths to take.
    • example: two people are having an IRL discussion where they are talking fast and there are lots of disagreements. When they notice disagreements, they should go slower. They should stop to think about steps they've skipped (forks they didn't notice).
  • discuss (with themselves and others) about whether or not there is a fork and which path to take.

No comments:

Post a Comment