The Adaptive Dilemma Part 1
Language And Self-Efficacy (Asking Better Questions)
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This series is about helping people ask better questions, get better answers, and to work together to get what they want.
Quote Of The Day
Seeking Dopamine Without Effort Will Destroy A Person
-Andrew Huberman
Contents
- Karpman’s Drama Triangle
- Language Is Important
- Rocky Road From Action To Intention
- Asking what you mean to ask, answering what was asked
- Colloquial Speech Patterns
- Valid Or Useful?
- Homework
- Share your 6WU
- Youtube
- Up Next
Karpman’s Drama Triangle
Who do you think is the most dangerous person in this triangle?
The Victim.
If we have a Victim and a Rescuer, the only way that these two can maintain their identity is to find someone to blame their issues on.
Enter the Persecutor.
The natural inclination is to point fingers at the Persecutor, but the reality is most people are victimizing themselves (often unintentionally).
What can happen is that people who have things they need to deal with internally will procrastinate on their own tasks to go and find someone who is playing Victim and be their Rescuer so they “feel” productive.
Nothing wrong with helping people of course, but you should handle your own issues before you help others.
Most villains are made up (of course there are some real villains out there but not as many as twitter or facebook would have you to believe.)
Without a Victim there can be no Rescuer.
This means that the Rescuer will have to eventually face their own issues.
The longer you are positioned in the triangle the more you face the Doom Loop of Misery.
We are of course making an assumption: You want things to get better for you. (A higher probability of getting what you want).
Language Is Important
There are 4 aspects that we will cover in this article.
- Rocky Road From Action To Intention
- Asking what you mean to ask
- Answer what was asked
- Colloquial speech patterns and self-efficacy
Rocky Road From Action To Intention
This was a dissertation written by a Stanford student in 1990 and what she investigated was:
If you sat across from someone that is very close to you and you tapped your favorite song or a random song, what is the probability that the person across from you would be able to guess the song?
At the start of the experiment.
60% believed that their partner would be able to guess the song.
After the tapping occurred the tappers were asked what do you think the probability is that the person sitting across from you knows the song?
40% believed that their partner would be able to guess the song.
The real probability was 1–2% that the partner could guess the song.
Takeaway
- We are terrible at estimating our ability to communicate
- We are also horrible at estimating how well we have communicated after the communication has happened
The reason?
We have these accompaniments that are only in our head that we assume others have as well, but they do not.
In the case of the tapping, we can hear the tune, we may have deep memories associated with the song (like where we were, smells, and can see the exact image, etc).
The person listening to the tapping and trying to figure out the song won’t have any of these.
How does this apply to the world we live in, whether it be in business, crypto, or family life, etc?
We should recognize that we don’t communicate as well as we think we do and even after we have a conversation we may need to do some further clarification because the other party won’t have the same accompaniments that we do.
Asking what you mean to ask, answering what was asked
This is the illusion of communication.
What is protein?
If I answer the question with:
A protein is a naturally occurring, extremely complex substance that consists of amino acid residues joined by peptide bonds. Proteins are present in all living organisms and include many essential biological compounds such as enzymes, hormones, and antibodies.
Now if this was really the question you meant to ask then you’d walk away happily. If the real question you wanted to know was:
Should I eat more protein? Is protein bad for me? What foods have protein in it?
You were unable to formulate these types of questions and so there can be a big discrepancy between what was asked and what is actually answered.
This is how we can end up victimizing ourselves especially in large communities.
- We look for information and are not careful with the question we ask.
- The person responding doesn’t actually answer the question we are trying to ask.
- They answer based on what they think the question we are trying to ask is.
The conversation then goes on and gets further from the original intent but no one is really aware of it.
We have to be more diligent with what we mean to ask.
If we are the answering party, we should be extra careful to answer exactly what was asked, not an assumption based on our own thought frames of what we thought they meant to ask.
When in doubt seek further clarification before throwing an answer out.
Now that you’re aware of this concept, it’ll be more noticeable, watch for it in the world. Take a look at conversations and how people may ask one question and receive answers for a completely different question.
Colloquial Speech Patterns
This is how we victimize speech patterns and don’t realize we are doing so.
“Oreos make me fat”
Oreos don’t actually make you fat this would imply that they simply shove themselves down your mouth.
A possible scenario would be that you realize you actually have no self control around Oreos and that eating 1 turns into eating an entire bag each time.
The difference between the two scenarios is that one of them is acknowledging how you modify your behavior to get what you want.
Whereas the other is pointing the finger at an inanimate object and calling it evil or “bad”.
“Exercise doesn’t work for me”
Exercise doesn’t work for anyone. The behavior of exercising consistently and modifying behavior probably does have some sort of outcome for you.
“Crypto wrecked me”
It didn’t…
Sorry, but you wrecked yourself in Crypto. Now maybe it was because you didn’t understand it, doesn’t fit your personality, or whatever the reason might be.
These colloquial speech patterns take power out of your hand and put it in someone else's in order to make you a victim.
Valid or Useful?
“The correctness of information is often divorced from its value.”
-Dr. Trevor Kashey
Something being correct doesn’t mean it’s useful.
Example
It’s midnight and you have the munchies and you’re at your friend’s house wanting to navigate to the fridge for some food.
Do you want to know what electricity is and how it works or do you want the action with the highest probability of turning it on?
Where’s the light?
Well when you press the switch it activates the circuit of electricity which is powered by a battery. This battery is connected with wires which after the switch is flicked on creates the connection needed to generate light.
Knowing what electricity is and how it works won’t help to inform my behavior.
Homework
Reflect on your questions. Are your assumptions explicit? Are you victimizing yourself unknowingly? Are we trying to make valid points of find useful answers?
Resources for additional reading: Teaching Smart People How To Learn, Harvard Business Review.
Share your 6WU
Remember: Wisdom comes from multiple perspectives, help others learn from you. Weeks or months from now come back to this & see what others have added to the thread to see if you can build on your own wisdom.
https://twitter.com/wolfdencrypto/status/1551608229553061888?s=20&t=Dc8701r6rJoVeG6oVK9NHw
Youtube
Up Next
The Adaptive Dilemma Part 2: Dogmatic and Polarizing Orientation.
https://medium.com/wolf-den/the-adaptive-dilemma-part-2-33e72b78e30c
DISCLAIMER: These articles are for educational purposes only. Nothing in this article should be construed as financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any sort of security or investment. Consult with a professional financial adviser before making any financial decisions. Investing in general and options trading especially is risky and has the potential for one to lose most or all of their initial investment
