Frameworks and Selling (?)
Most people have miserable lives.
Our lives reflect to us the frameworks we have for understanding the world, and our actions therein. Living with a framework that does not accurately reflect your reality will lead to constant misery, whereas merely changing your perspective can dissolve a lot of problems; For instance, if you realize at your core the sheer necessity of exercise to your functioning as a human being, you do not need people motivating you to go to the gym.
This is why constantly questioning our basic assumptions is so critical. You do not know what you do not know, and the marginal utility of changing something even trivial about our perspective can be infinite.
One such framework, that I have been suspecting is wrongly configured in my head is the concept of selling. Due to my cultural conditioning, there is a negative moral weight associated with selling; I often see it as a battle between the buyer and the seller, a bargain to get more from the exchange without providing the same.
I have recently been reading some Alex Hormozi, and also following people in a similar entrepreneurial sphere.
A value exchange for them is an opportunity to make both sides in the exchange feel like it was worthwhile for them. This feeling of mutual trust is the lifeblood of any relationship, as if both parties feel like they benefited, the game can continue infinitely.
There is immense incentive to accept such a definition, because adopting such a framework is conducive to success in the way the system is organized, however there are three critiques I have before I accept this (I would love to hear all of your arguments too).
It relies on me accepting the fact that the system is beyond/not worth changing. If I accept that fundamentally the relationship between humans is going to be mediated by an exchange in value, then the other steps logically follow and I can justify my selling. However, there is no justification for that assumption other than the fact that it is economically viable for me to accept it (to deal with the cognitive dissonance and apply my faculties towards selling more).
There is some duplicity inherent in the value exchange, as what we want to be mutually beneficial is not the exchange in itself, but the perceived value of the exchange. Now, to some degree, the “Use Value” of an object argument in Marxism seems to me like an ideal of some “authenticity” of the object; In reality, the object’s value would never be devoid of the material conditions of its production and what owning that object would say about you in society. But even apart from that more nuanced discussion, reading about sales psychology has taught me that there are literally tricks you can use (and people frequently do use) to close deals by artificially increasing perceived value. I do not know how to reconcile that in my current moral framework.
Even if you argue for value exchange, you still have to argue for money as a medium of value exchange. In particular, most people require the moral neutrality of money, but it is a bit difficult to argue if we are not being naive and accept the fact that money conditions our psychology in a very deep way, changing how we perceive the world and interact with the people in it very deeply.
There is also the Nietzschean in me that says all of this moralizing about money is cope and the slave morality I have been conditioned in; To go ahead and sell all I want as long as it enables me to live a creative, carefree life.
All this internal discussion was prompted by me reading 100M$ Offers by Alex Hormozi, and getting inspired by this video to think about what frameworks the person has for looking at the world, and also reading summaries/watching videos about To Sell is Human by Daniel H. Pink (Important points from this book for sales- Attunement with the customer and Clarity about what, why, and how you’re selling).
Creativity
This week I was also reading Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon again. It’s a cute and quick read that crisply tells you things that you might not have noticed/can improve about your creative process.
Interesting stuff I thought about while reading:
You are going to get conditioned anyway, so why not be intentional with what you get conditioned by and what you allow to change your perspective on the world (stealing like an artist).
Start then learn, Don’t learn then start. This was the title of an old Andrew Kirby video I watched (which I can’t find anymore, funnily enough). This is also precisely how you get out of tutorial hell whenever you’re trying to learn a new programming language. This framework of starting cycles of iteration for improvement with implementation instead of information intake generalizes to quite a few fields.
Solve the Problem you want to see solved- This is common advice in entrepreneurial circles, and I have also come across this in Dan Koe’s work. The idea is that you can only be genuinely authentic about your investment into a problem if you actually care about it. So you solve the problems you want to see solved, and trust that others would have been in the same situations as you. Sell your solution to the specific people in your niche who genuinely require your solution.
Creativity is Subtraction: reiterates intentionalism and minimalism.
The part where he talks about geography no longer being a constraint reminded me of how something as simple as discord which allowed me to choose my conditioning during the lockdown can serve as a powerful medium for learning if you truly want it to. But more on that some other time.
Chaos Theory
This week I have started reading the book on Non-Linear Dynamics and Chaos by Steven Strogatz. It is a standard text in this area and seems extremely well written and intuitive.
I have also become interested in the Developmental Interpretability of Neural Networks, which interestingly also draws upon the methods of Statistical Mechanics, Information Theory and Bayesian Optimization as the Free Energy Principle.
Interestingly, it also has references to the work of Rene Thom in the form of catastrophe theory, which I had gotten interested in some time back, so I am excited to explore this next week.