The More I Learn, the Less Certain I Am

One of the university courses I’m taking is on Psychology. It covers elements of Happiness and the Mind. It explores Ego Development Theory - which tracks how a person’s identity, sense of the world, and meaning-making develops.

It’s a pretty interesting course, and I’ll probably write more about it in a later post (when I’m done with the course). First, I thought I’d just share some of the most interesting ideas I’d encountered via lessons & discussions.

Psychology is probabilistic.

Much of human psychology (and, in my opinion, for most aspects of the world, e.g. medicine) runs on likelihoods and statistical tendencies rather than absolute certainties. What we deem as “psychological facts” are empirical in nature, based on a general populace.

One of the core ideas of Annie Duke’s book, “Thinking in Bets”, is to think in probabilities rather than absolutes. A good decision can turn out badly, just as a strong hand in Poker can lose - but that should not make you change your strategy. You shouldn’t label every failure as the wrong choice, but neither should you resign every failure to “bad luck.”

This idea expands beyond Psychology, to practically all aspects of life. There’s an element of luck in everything (which is why “Success = Talent + Luck”). This changes the way one sees the world, when nothing is for certain - ”you think that’s air you’re breathing now?” type stuff.

Paradoxes and contradictions are a part of life.

Our lives often contain paradoxes and conflicting desires. For instance, we want both security and freedom, or closeness and independence. For those of us who prefer certainty and decisiveness, or believe we’re fully logical creatures, this can be hard to accept.

Definitions and context are important. Two seemingly contradictory claims may actually be compatible once we clarify what they mean. A door both open and closed might seem impossible, but not if we’re talking about two different times.

Another example: Someone wants closeness and independence. At first glance, this might seem contradictory, but are those desires mutually exclusive? Independence isn’t the exact opposite of wanting closeness - we can want and experience both, at the same time. Sometimes, what looks like a contradiction is a false opposition in disguise.

But what about cases that don’t disappear just by clarifying its definition? Like circular preferences: You prefer A over B, B over C, and C over A, all under the same conditions. So which one is best?

Or consider self-undermining ideas: tolerating every viewpoint includes tolerating viewpoints that demand an end to tolerance. Unlimited tolerance can undermine itself if it enables their supporters to suppress others.

What do we do in these cases?

Long story short: I don’t have an answer. I think it’s a trap to assume all problems have solutions. In school, we’re used to questions having a right answer: textbooks to read, professors to consult. But that doesn’t translate to every aspects of life. Sometimes, looking for an answer might be like searching for corners in a circle - some shapes simply do not have one.

But there’s one thing I can think of: Being comfortable with unresolved tensions, that paradoxes are an inescapable part of life. Some apparent paradoxes can be clarified, some require us to uncover and rethink our assumptions. And some may have no definitive answer.

Content vs Structure

Ego Development Theory (EDT) describes nine main stages of meaning making - how we understand ourselves, others, and the world. It’s a distribution: we span several stages, with one dominant stage.

Some may not like this reductionst approach. For me, it makes sense, and offers one logical lens of viewing the world.

One consequence of EDT is content vs structure. Content is what we think about or believe, while structure is how we make sense of it. The same happening can hold multiple simultaneous meanings for different observers, influenced by the stages they’re in. A person in the Achiever stage might blame their own shortcomings for failures, while someone in the Opportunist stage might see them as others’ faults, as a self-defensive mechanism. These are tendencies, not fixed rules.

Issues can arise when people interpret things differently. An underlying assumption we may hold is that others think like us; that others are in the same developmental stage as we are. But that’s not necessarily true - different people have different lived experiences, and may be viewing things from a different developmental stage.

When others have conflicting interpretations, we may call them “crazy” - but they could think of us the same way. How could both sides see each other as crazy at the same time?

And it goes back to my earlier point on paradoxes - maybe these issues arise when we think in terms of “either you’re right or I’m right”, when we want a definitive answer. If we see an interpretation as “an answer” rather than “the answer”, seeing interpretations as perspectives rather than automatically treating them as ground truth, we might come to better accept these differences. That doesn’t mean all interpretations are equally accurate. Acceptance and agreement are two different things.

But taking it to the extreme - accepting all views - also has its own set of challenges. What if we accept views that justify terrorism or murder? Understanding a view is different from accepting it or allowing someone to act on it. Where do we draw lines - and who even gave us authority to draw them?

TBC

The Psychological concepts I’ve learned are extremely eye opening. But they answer as many questions as they create. There’s still lots of meaning-making I have to do, and paradoxes I need to come to terms with. But I guess it all starts with having an awareness of these things that underpin our lives in the first place. And then we can start to rigorously uncover our assumptions, and question the things we've taken for granted.