Train Your Model of the World
How we have a model of the world in our head and how everything we experience changes it little bit.
Sometimes a sentence just gets stuck on my mind and I can’t get rid of it. One sentence on Paul Graham’s recent essay How You Know has been stuck with me in the last few days.
“Reading and experience train your model of the world.”
This little sentence made me say “wow” when I read it. I had to tell about it to the people around me.
We have this model living between our ears that tells us what is real, what is truth, what can we do and what we can’t do. It affects every thought we have. It is our reality.
This was such a powerful idea for me, and it made sense to me instantly because we use bayesian statistics on some of our day to day operations, and I know that training statistical models work well. It is hard to see how powerful it is until you experience it. Our phishing detection tool can suddenly start knowing a new type of phishing form with an addition of a few new examples to the database.
This powerful idea affects so much of what we do in our everyday life. I started to think about some of the examples we encounter in our daily lives.
Why we say “hi” or “good morning” to the same people every day
We say “hi” to the same people every day to let them know that we are not the enemy. We remind them we are friends or colleagues. We are on the same ship. We need to remind that to each other all the time, otherwise we might start imagining each other as enemy. We can’t take that risk. We train each other’s model so that we all know that we are allies.
Why getting compliments is the best motivation
We usually have conflicting views about how good we are. We sometimes feel like we are the best and other times we feel like we are really behind everyone else. What happens when we get compliments is that our model that says we are good at a task gets some more positive points. If you keep getting these positive points, you become more confident about yourself and you get better at what you do. That’s why finding good things people do and complimenting them is the best way to get the best out of people.
Bad friends is bad for us
Some people in our family and friends might talk down at us. Here is the problem. By, talking down at us, they are actually affecting us. They are changing us even if they have good intentions. They are training our model of the world that says we are not good enough. In turn, we accept this and we stay in the narrow world they draw for us. That’s why we should prefer spending time with people who make us feel better about ourselves, people who encourage us and people who believe in us.
Repeating a message makes it true
Politicians do this a lot. They repeat and repeat the same message over and over again. At some point, people stop asking if it is the truth. They just start assuming it is the truth because it feels familiar.
Why positive visualization works
When we imagine a successful scenario in future we start training our model that the future scenario can be real. We are then more likely to think about the steps we need to take to turn it into a reality.
Why CEOs should over-communicate
I have been reading left and right that I am supposed to be over communicating with our people. Now, it really makes sense. The reason I should over-communicate is that among so many other information, people might not recognize what are the most important things we should be focusing on. Repeating the messages makes it stronger. It makes the model stronger.
Why watching News is putting me in such a bad mood
I don’t watch news. It is not only about the wasted time. But, when I watch news I go back to the “old world”. We are the people who are living on this new internet world building tools for this new world, and old world is full of shitty politicians and bad news. I just can’t stand the old world any more, because it is messing with my model of this new world I live in which has so much more promise and hope. Watching news even for a short time will mess up my creative output and it will make me very pessimistic, because it is full of bad input.
Why traveling the world is good for you
Before you spend some time on a place you make many incorrect assumptions about it. Going to a place suddenly fills you with lots of data points in an amazingly short amount of time. You can spend years reading about a place but that won’t replace spending 1 day there.
How the meaningless TV ads work so well
Seeing a product message many times creates familiarity with it and that makes you want to buy it. Most TV ads are about showing you the product, not about providing you the information you need. Because the more you see a product, the more you feel like it is part of your world. The ads are training you that the product is part of your world.
Why re-targeting works
I was recently reading that the best marketing method these days is targeting. The idea is that, using browser cookies, you advertise to the same people who previously visited your site. What usually happens is that someone hears about your site, checks it out and then leaves it and forgets about it. But, if you show ads to the same people about your site, they will remember it and they will come back. Most visitors will turn into active users only after they visit your site multiple times over a long period of time.
This is a really powerful idea. Use this new tool to understand the world and make it better.
Everything you experience has an affect on who you are.
Train your model of the world and you will shape it.
