“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”
— Richard Feynman
If Feynman, the great Nobel Physicist, was right, then we’re all in big trouble.
Why? Because for all our data centres, quantum chips, Olympic training bases and AI labs, we’re still terrible at the one thing that matters most for our future: using our brains to escape our own point of view.
That skill has a name: curiosity.
And curiosity, properly understood, is not a cute personality trait or a motivational poster. It’s one of the most advanced, fragile and easily sabotaged cognitive feats the human brain can perform.
It is also, increasingly, the line between human value and human redundancy.
Welcome to The Intelligence Trap.
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NOTE: This training program of 30 lessons is based on the Olympic coaches program previously mentioned. Permission is granted to freely copy this lesson and to pass it on to team members, family and friends.
The DFQ (important): Each of the 30 lessons has a Daily Feedback Question (DFQ). To qualify for your Diploma of x10 Thinking you must have submitted your answers to the 30 DFQs.
Today’s Lesson Two DFQ is:
In this context of the human brain, what do you think the great science thinker, Richard Feynman, may have meant by ‘you are the easiest person to fool‘.
(To qualify for your DipX10(SOT) certificate post your answer below).
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Click here to next lesson:
My brain and mind is a mish mash of perceptions, emotions, biases and memories. Cutting through this jungle of neurons and connections requires focus…and even then when practic9ng metacognition the brain is only observing itself…through its own lenses.
We are masters of self justification based upon a limited view through a prism of past prejudices and experiences.
Thinking deeply about anything is physiologically expensive and time consuming and as a result we are biologically hardwired to skim the surface of most challenges and decide to tackle the issue in the most expedient way to conserve energy and time. By doing this we effectively reduce the scale and importance of many of the challenges we face each day, thus diminishing / fooling ourselves into thinking it doesn’t matter if we rush through what ever it is freeing ourselves from taking the time and energy to actually deeply consider the challenges we face long enough to devise the most effective way to solve whatever challenge is in front of us. In this way our brains are continually fooling ourselves in our biological drive to conserve resources and our obsessive need for expedience.