“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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i always asked why? as a child………because i wanted to understand……i still do and use it deliberately to ensure we are clear on our intentions and direction of travel as a business…….
Curiosity is a superpower and we know that it is correlated to success and happiness. For me, it is the fastest route to curiosity is empathy and in an increasingly automated world, where tecnology can replicate and do almost anything humans can, they can not demonstrate empathy. Seeking to understand and operating to learn will be the only human qualities left to us and in this sense, curiosity will be the way we maintain our humanity.
We see the world from a singular point of view. We are biased by our own experiences. We also need to be attentive to the fact that our thoughts are not real. Our perceptions of reality are merely that.
Maybe one’s own preconceptions and egoic need to be right can blind us from greater possibility and unknown truth?
The brain is lumpen organic matter sitting in a bone box from which all direct light and sensation is excluded. The brain does not experience anything directly, but hallucinates what we experience as reality by continually filtering billions of senseate cues with lived experience, and social convention. The this perception is overlaid with a mix of expectation, preference and predjudice.
Therefore, everything we know or think we know is imagined or made up and all interpretation is susceptible to misleading cues, or cues which feed into a pre-disposition meaning, unless we are unusually diligent we can easily be fooled.
From day one they are borne, human beings begin to absorb, decode and interpret information. This is essential for development, communication, survival. Inevitably, biases pertain on each and every one of us. Bias and subjectivity, even if we honestly think we are in fact objective and unbiased, are almost always present. Richard Feynman, one of the biggest thinkers of humanity, made this insightful comment which may mean different things to different people. To me, his statement shows what this great thinker advocated for: to learn something, one has to be able to explain it simply, free of complications, breaking it down in small pieces and be able to transfer the knowledge to another. Such thinking process changes one’s point of view, reveals weaknesses and transcends the level of understanding, therefore it also renders one able to see things as they truly are, and not as they appear to be in his individual mind.
It is easy to assume that we know exactly what is happening in our own minds, and that because of this we cannot fool or deceive ourselves. Richard Feynman’s comment upends this assumption. Not only does he suggest that we can indeed fool ourselves, he is also going a step further by saying that it is very easy to do. If this is the case then there must be one or more characteristics in our thinking processes that influences our ability to effectively monitor how we think and what we think about. By making this comment Richard Feynman is inviting us to become more self-aware of how we think and how we reach our conclusions. Becoming more self-aware in our thinking will, in turn, enable us to improve the quality and effectiveness of our thinking.
I find the hardest part of leading with purpose is acknowledging that your opinion is just one of so so many. Whilst being decisive is critical, Feynman ensures we should remind ourselves that our knowledge is surface level at best and remaining open to the idea that we may be wrong will continue to progress our outcomes, and, as a result our leadership experience and the respect that comes with leading with humility.
Feynman knew our reasoning mostly confirms what we already believe. The brain doesn’t seek truth — it seeks coherence. You’re easiest to fool because you trust yourself most, and rarely notice.