The reality of living in the matrix was exposed 24 years ago, and since then, there have been people who run the world and those who inhabit it. This is not about the powerful elite or some conspiracy theory, but about science, and those who believe it and those who don’t.
In 2002, a Nobel Prize split the world in two: those who integrated this new knowledge, and those who either didn’t know it or didn’t know what to do about it.
It was a truth that shook the foundation of economics: humans aren’t rational decision makers, but do so mostly unconsciously, mostly in ways that are predictably irrational. This is the reality of living in the matrix.
If you wanted to know what people were going to do, you needed to look to the experiments, not to logic.
One of the experiments showed that most people accept the truth about predictable irrationality, yet believe themselves to be immune. Especially if they are accomplished, highly educated professionals.
You don’t react to protecting yourself against something if you think you are immune.
But the truth is that you are not. No one is. No human, anyway.
And yes, I’ve met those who believe that indeed, not them. The people that work for them, sure, and definitely those above them, and those at home, but not them.
Deniers of their fallibility continue living in the matrix.
To Each Their Own
That’s okay. The same experiments show that the disbelief in one’s humanness doesn’t affect those who are depressed. That is, those who are depressed do not deny their predictable irrationality.
Perhaps it helps the depressed explain their predicament. Perhaps depression deflates the ego that is certain of the products of the mind. The depressed have to doubt those products, for their own survival. The curtain drops, and they get to see the mind as separate.
Or at least that’s how I stopped living in the matrix.
For someone who had taught statistics to executives, only to see it all fall apart, always, every time, these predictable irrationalities gave me a way to explain the pitfalls.
I lined up the experimental behaviours with the mistakes and hijacks I’d witnessed. These executives, with their strange logic, suddenly became explainable.
Almost laughable, if it wasn’t for the resources that were wasted, the jobs that were lost, the businesses that went under, the careers that were ruined, the relationships that were thrown under the bus, the lies, darn lies, and statistics of it all.
So predictable, finally.
Preventing Disasters
In my profession, if you can predict it, you can prevent it.
If I can predict the irrationalities that people take on their way from point A to point B in a thought process, then we can prevent them. We can prevent the disasters necessitating the reparation and the spin, and the chaos, the shame, the blame, and the gamification of pretending that alignment exists in this thing we’re calling an organization.
It’s a choice, and if only the depressed are with me, let me help you to replace confusion with clarity, procrastination with confidence, and murkiness with a motivating vision for the future.
Personally, I’m relieved at how this simple gate filters out the narcissists who believe they are perfect. The arrogant also turn away, thank goodness, because even if they did anything wrong, no one could have improved on their results. Gone are the psychopaths, the sadists, and all the kinds of people I’ve had to work with and for in the past that I’d never want to meet again.
I’m retired after all, to choose my company, my direction, and what feedback I’ll take.
Accepting Humanness
If you are still reading, then you are likely open to your imperfection and willing to take whatever qualified help you can get.
I was working as a chemical engineer newly indoctrinated as a Six Sigma Black Belt when this new information should have rocked the world, and now I know why it didn’t.
Still, that year, my CEO called to ask me what I was doing differently, because he had to take my name off the graph just to register all the others.
Three keys to what I was doing differently were the depression I was in at the time, my lack of a reputation or social currency to protect, and a genuine lack of opinions competing against the truth of the raw data and calculated facts.
Today, I am thankful for the question because it drew my attention to what everyone else was doing. Until then, I’d only focused on myself and my trainers. With that attention, I was able to connect the dots between observations and experiments from behavioural and evolutionary psychologists.
Curating Individual Worlds
Predictable irrationalities look glaringly weird to the outsider, but the problem is that we don’t let the outsiders in.
We curate people, facts, reality, and while we all do it individually, there is a common thread that you’d want to know if you are doing anything important.
Like leading a team.
Like managing a project.
Or living a life.
Living a life is one thing with two parts: the ebb and the flow, the pulling and the contracting, followed by the pushing and expanding. Resilience and perseverance.
Resilience imagined, the reflecting and regrouping, and the questionable products of the mind that arise in these efforts.
Practical perseverance, the pursuit and commitment to keep going, and the unreliable products of the mind that arise in these efforts.
Changing for the Better
It’s up to you. Red or blue? The truth will set you free, but some people will take that key and throw it as far away as possible.
The truth comes with costs. It always causes pain. These aren’t small things.
The question becomes how uncomfortable are you? If you are highly uncomfortable, you will take the risk, maybe thinking, how could it be worse?
People choose the devil they know over the one they don’t. Familiar, if uncomfortable. To break that, you must really be uncomfortable. Depressed, maybe. Tariffed to the hilt, maybe. About to be exposed as an imposter, maybe.
Stuck and seeing no options.
Well, here’s one, my tried and true, and if you have a human brain, then you’ll likely experience different questions that lead to different insights and better results.
Today might just be the day when everything changes for the better, and most especially for you, your loved ones, and your entire life.
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