We start off life with the idea or perhaps even the absence of an idea. There are no constraints. Everything is possible. As we explore, we start making observations. These observations turn into patterns and these patterns into rules. Rules form the structures that allow us to move through this system of life. But the moment these structures form, everything is no longer possible. Only that which the structure supports is possible. And there's a flaw with these structures; they're based on approximations and bias. These structures are our best guess about how things work. The present may determine the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future. Listen now to go on a brief journey of how structures and systems are formed and broken down and how everything is possible even in chaos.
If you would like to help us spread the word, please give us a 5-star review and tell your friends to subscribe. We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and every major listening app. Visit the website one.hunterpowers.com to listen to the entire archive. And for even more, follow @theHunter on twitter. I am Hunter Powers, broadcasting live from our nation's capital, as we say in the city DC PROPER, and until next time...
Hunter Powers: Welcome to the One. I am Hunter Powers broadcasting live from our nation's capital, Washington, DC. Today's one idea is everything is possible. We start off life with this idea or perhaps even this absence of an idea, there are no constraints and everything is possible. And as we explore and we start making observations and those observations turn into patterns and those patterns turn into beliefs, rules as it were, and these beliefs or rules form the structure that allows us to move through this system of life. And, of course, it's not just when we're first born, it's anytime we encounter something new, a new subject, a new person, a new land, we start with nothing. We start off, we explore, we make observations, and those observations turn into patterns and those patterns into beliefs. Then we feel like we begin to understand what is possible of this thing that we are interacting with, this structure, this system. And I want to suggest that there's a certain kind of system that we tend to mold our beliefs towards.
Hunter Powers: We fit our patterns into this type of system and that system is a linear, deterministic, non-idempotent system. Now, you probably don't have a great understanding of every single one of those words. None of them are hard concepts to explain. They're more mathematical computer science terms so if you're from that background perhaps you're like, "Yep, I got it." And if you're not, you're like, "Nope." I lost you. But I think they are good words to explain the systems that we try to mold our patterns and beliefs into. So once again, linear, deterministic, non-idempotent, I'm going to start with deterministic. What is a deterministic system? A deterministic system is a system where there is no randomness involved. Any future state of the system doesn't depend on any randomness. If you do this thing, this other thing will happen and it will happen every single time.
Hunter Powers: If I turn the light switch on, the light will turn on. If I drink a cup of water, I will feel hydrated. If I apply enough force to a baseball with a bat, that ball will soar. Certainty, we like certainty, and when we are observing things, we like to think of them initially as certain things. But, of course, we all know that light switch will not turn the light on every single time, will it? But we don't know that until we first experience it not turning on. And our default belief tends to be that it will turn it on every single time. So deterministic, this idea that we have a system in which no randomness is involved in the future states, we're guaranteed the same outcome every single time. All right, so we had linear, deterministic, non-idempotent. The next one I want to tackle is linear.
Hunter Powers: Linear systems suggest that the output is directly proportional to the input. If you put twice as much in, you'll get twice as much out. If I put two pizzas into the oven, I'll get two pizzas out of the oven. If I walk twice as fast, I will get there twice as fast. These are linear relationships, a one for one relationship between the input and the output. So now that we've seen this system and we've seen how things are working, if I pick this faucet up, water comes out. So, that was my deterministic, every time I turn the faucet on, water comes out. Now I want to apply linear to that. If I want twice as much water, I just open the faucet for twice as long. So we have linear and we have deterministic and then the third part of it was non-idempotent. So non-idempotent is not idempotent.
Hunter Powers: So, what does idempotent mean? So idempotent is a property of certain operations in math primarily but also frequently used in computer science and programming where an operation can be applied multiple times without changing the result beyond the first time it's applied. The easiest example of this is multiplying something by one or by zero. Zero is probably a more interesting example. So if you take some giant number and you multiply it by zero, what is the answer? Hopefully you know that it's zero. So we started off with a million and then we multiplied it by zero and now we've got zero, and multiplying it by zero is an example of idempotence. The function of multiplying it by zero is idempotent because if we now multiply the result by zero, again the result doesn't change, right? So, one million multiplied by zero, well, now we have zero, and now we multiply it by zero again and well, still, we've got zero again and we can multiply it by zero an infinite number of times and we'd still have just zero.
Hunter Powers: An example of idempotence in the real world, not, not in the computer world, might be vaccines. So, I'm pretty sure I'm correct here, chickenpox, when you get the chicken pox vaccine the first time you are now more or less immune from chickenpox. And if you get it three times right after each other, you're not somehow three times as immune. No, you have the exact same immunity as just having received the vaccination one time. The chicken pox vaccine is idempotent. You only get something after the first time that you apply it. The subsequent times the result stays the same, there's nothing more there. One more example might be cleaning your house. So let's say that you have a a series of chores that you do to clean your house. You wipe off the counters, sweep the floors, mop the floors, change the linens. These are the series of things that you do once a week when it says, "Go clean the house."
Hunter Powers: And you do these things and now your house is in a state of cleanliness and if you immediately did these things again it wouldn't change the state of your house. Your house was clean and it will still be clean, it won't become more cleaner, given you completely cleaned at the first time. So cleaning the house could be thought of as a an idempotent operation. Now what we said was non-idempotent, that what we look for when we make these observations, when we turn these observations into beliefs, what we look for are non-idempotent systems, systems where I can continue doing the same thing to get the same result and get it in a linear fashion or a one to one relationship. So I am hungry, I can start eating, and if I want to get fuller I could eat more. It's not as if once I eat one cup that I can never eat any more because I've now achieved a state of fullness and it will forever last.
Hunter Powers: By default, we look for these systems that we can repeat and gain additional rewards. Your job, a good example of this, I'm going to do something for money. I'm going to keep doing this and I will get more money. It is not idempotent. It's not as though once I have done this work and been paid once, I will never get paid again, I've maxed it out. No, I will keep doing this over and over again. I will keep following this pattern and I will keep getting paid. We see our job as deterministic. I do the work and I get paid. There's no random chance whether I'll get paid or not. Now, some people have interesting comp structures where it's based off of some things that do have some randomness in them, whether it's a tip for a waiter or a commission for a salesperson. But, in general, they like to think, I do the work, I get paid, and I get paid over and again and that pay keeps accumulating. And if I want more pay I do more work. Why? Because it's linear, one-to-one, linear, deterministic, non-idempotent systems.
Hunter Powers: These are the systems that when we are making our observations and when we are forming our patterns that turn into our beliefs that we try to mold things into. And I'm now going to give you another word for linear, deterministic, non-idempotent systems, and that word is stereotypes. Maybe I should've just said that from the beginning. We simplify things. We observe these complex systems and we simplify it down to kind of the absolute minimum that we need in order to interact with it and get through and get what we want or what we need from that system. And it makes sense. We can't possibly take in every single permutation, everything that could go wrong or could come out. Are we going to spend our whole life observing the faucet, the faucet in the kitchen, watching it come on and off, to determine whether we can reliably assume that water will come out when we open it up and how much water and if we do it for twice as long, will twice as much water come out?
Hunter Powers: No, it's not realist. So we form our stereotypes, we form our linear, deterministic, non-idempotent systems. But the thing is, when we form these systems, everything is no longer possible. We started from a place of everything is possible, but now that we've created these rules and the structure, well, everything that these rules and structure support is possible, but everything is not possible. And a lot of the time, we aren't even the ones making the observations that turn into patterns that turn into beliefs. Oftentimes we're getting that information from someone else or from a book or an online course, a video, a podcast. This thing that you're listening to right now, it's giving you some sort of ideas, some sort of rules and structures and less and less is becoming possible because you are listening to this right now. How horrible is that? And it makes perfect sense.
Hunter Powers: Humans have been around for quite some time. Why don't we see if we can talk to some of the other humans and get some of their information so that we don't have to observe that faucet for the rest of our lives, seeing, when I turn it on, does water come out and when to turn it off? How reliable is that? Oh, you've spent the majority of your life observing that? Well, can't I just take your observations because I think that would help me out a lot? And so we learn from others, we learn from classes, we learn from reading, we learn from all sorts of things to accelerate this process of building our beliefs. And this is good, this is good insofar as it gives us progress, but there is a point at which it becomes bad and that point is when the progress stops, when everything is no longer possible. When you can't find your path forward, you must break up the structure.
Hunter Powers: There's a quote from George Bernard Shaw, he says, "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself and therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." And please do insert woman there as is applicable. To truly progress, to truly innovate, you are going to have to not follow the exact systems that have come before you because within these systems everything is not possible. It is only by breaking them up, it is only by being unreasonable, that everything once again becomes possible. It started in a state of being possible. Then you formed structure around it to get further and further with your goals. And if you achieve your goals, great, but if you didn't, if you couldn't make it there, then you've got to break up the structure or rip it apart. And remember, your innate bias towards putting everything into these linear, deterministic, non-idempotent systems and try to reframe and rethink and re-observe and consider what if they aren't linear? What if it's going to take 10 times more effort to get to 1% more results?
Hunter Powers: Or, what if there's another area where it's only going to take 1% more effort to get 10 times the results? What if it's not as deterministic as you think it is and you're just going to have to repeat it a few times? Maybe you're going to need to try it 10 times before it's going to work out once or maybe it is idempotent and once you've tried it and you've seen the result, there really is no point in doing it over and over and over again. And as much as you want it to happen, you want to be able to achieve the result over and over again, this method only works the first time. And so if everything is possible, what do you want to do? What do you want to accomplish? What is that next thing? I'll give you the counter. You're sitting there saying, "Everything's not possible." Well, I believe the best argument that everything is not possible, you should espouse chaos theory and chaos theory sounds kind of like everything is possible. It sounds like a whole bunch of randomness of a whole bunch of chaos.
Hunter Powers: But chaos theory is actually one of determinism, this idea that your life and the path it's going to take is already known and you are merely playing it out and perhaps you are merely playing it out by the fate of the Gods, or perhaps you are merely playing it out by the fate of physics. Because chaos theory says that the present determines the future and that the future is fully determined by the initial conditions and that there is no randomness and that chaos is actually deterministic chaos. And maybe you like this idea, maybe you like this idea that my entire future already known and there's really nothing I can do to change it. I'm going to have to do stuff, there's more life to live, but I was always going to do that stuff. I didn't actually choose to do it, the initial conditions that came before me have caused it to be so.
Hunter Powers: But an important part of chaos theory or the application of chaos theory or the application of, well, I know the initial conditions, I know where I am today, and I'm thinking about what I want to be and where I want to go and I'm coming to this conclusion that that's not possible because my conditions today do not support the future that I want. And you know what, Hunter? I didn't know how to defend this argument, but now I do and I'm going to use chaos theory as my defense for why I cannot do the thing that I want to do and that it is not possible, and it is not possible because of my existing circumstances and deterministic chaos. Well, so chaos theory also has, and you may have heard of this one, the butterfly effect. The butterfly effect is often presented as the idea that a butterfly flapping its wings in China could cause a hurricane in Texas. And you would probably respond to that and say, "Well, that's insane." And I'd say, "Well, well, well, well, that's a slight exaggeration."
Hunter Powers: While yes, that is the best known example of the butterfly effect. Edward Lorenz, who's largely credited with introducing the butterfly effect, his actual example that he used was a tornado forming that was directly influenced by a distant butterfly flapping its wings several weeks earlier. And while maybe that sounds a little less absurd than the butterflying in China causing the hurricane, when it comes down to a tornado, it still seems pretty odd and pretty weird. Laurens developed this idea looking at weather models where he observed that very, very tiny changes to the input to these weather models could have dramatic impact on the outcomes of what came of the weather. And these changes were previously thought of as rounding errors. That's how small they were, we rounded off. We've got 18 decimal places, why do we need 19? Round it off. You've got to stop at some point. We can't sit there and observe the faucet flowing for forever to determine that the faucet flows.
Hunter Powers: At some point, we've got to cut it off, we have to turn it into an approximate. And that these approximations going into the weather models, that wherever they were deciding that, "Okay, I feel like I have a good enough understanding of this," that the differences were causing extreme changes in the outcome. And that's where he started to introduce this idea of the butterfly effect, that these infinitesimal, small changes can have wild impacts on the outcome. So, while chaos theory does say that our present determines our future, it also says that the approximate to present does not approximately determine the future. And I'm going to kind of restate that as you're incapable of correctly calculating your present state to the point that you can determine your future state. It's not possible.
Hunter Powers: And so then it is really on you to decide. You can choose to live a life of determinism and you will play it as it lays, as opportunities present themselves. You will evaluate and maybe you'll take it and maybe you won't. You'll just kind of see what happens because well, it's probably all figured out anyways. Or you can take the belief of everything is possible and then go after it. Because chaos theory doesn't say that everything isn't possible. And, in fact, chaos theory suggests that we can't fathom what is possible because all of the rules and structure that we put in place in order to move ourselves forward are all approximations and they are wildly too high level to accurately predict the future. So I push you to embrace the idea that everything is possible and to look at the systems that you've put in place and look for paths forward.
Hunter Powers: But when you find you're stuck, break them apart, and understand that your present, your understanding of your present and the structures understanding of your present has no ability to accurately predict the future. And it's in that, that everything is possible. And that is your one idea for today. If you would like to help us spread the word, please give us a five star review and tell your friends to subscribe. We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and every major listening app. You can visit the website one.hunterpowers.com to listen to the entire archive. There's a number of episodes out there. Take a listen and if you want even more you can follow me. I am at The Hunter on Twitter and once again I am Hunter Powers broadcasting live from our nation's capital, as we say in the city, D.C. proper. And until next time.