Notes for Talk on Life Learning and Pragmatism in Advisory Relationships

The following are the notes for the talk I gave on July 1, 2025 based on the article Unidentified Misconceptions on Advisement 

Intro:

 

Tonight’s theme is managing life learning and immediate pragmatism in advisory relationships. It’s loosely based on the article Unidentified Misconceptions on Advisement. It’s three parts include: part one, a reintroduction to pragmatic unwrongness and suspending judgment and their place in advisory relationships; two, contrasting judgment and life-learning in advisory relationships; and in part three, I’ll get to some misconceptions.   

 

(Everyone’s the best and worst source of knowledge of themselves, and everyone knows at least something you don’t; mutual participation is necessary for learning and execution of advice). 

Everyone needs advisement. Everyone is both the best and worst source of knowledge of themselves--the best because they have the most information; the worst, because they’re the most biased. Effective advisement requires mutual participation. The advisee should not simply be told what to do. After all, learning is about more than simply knowing the answers, and executing a solution often depends on the executor’s understanding and comfortability. In addition, no matter how learned you are, everyone knows at least something you don’t know. 

 

(Immediate pragmatism—the prudence of the decisions at hand--and life-learning are important but must be distinguished, and I will reconcile this shortly, in part three) 

Immediate pragmatism--the prudence of the decisions at hand--and life learning are each important in advisory interactions and relationships. But while related, they’re not the same and are, thus, often confused. I’ll reconcile this and other misconceptions on advisement. 

 

Part One: Review of last time and introduction to pragmatic unwrongness in advisory relationships

 

(Review of last time: Belief management is holistic because life, like Nature, is a Complex system, which, in turn, can only be accurately analyzed by holistic analysis (analysis of the whole, or seeing how they parts fit together); pragmatic unwrongness is necessary because it’s wise to believe ascertaining correct answers is harder, less necessary, and beneficial than wrong beliefs are dangerous) 

Last time, I talked about belief management; why ascertaining correct answers is harder, less beneficial, and less necessary than people think; and why wrong beliefs are more dangerous and ways to avoid needlessly risking wrongness. Ultimately, I posited that managing beliefs requires treating wrongness as more dangerous than correctness beneficial and having fewer total opinions, while working harder on the beliefs you have. 

 

(Pragmatic unwrongness requires reengineering; and pragmatic unwrongness is why ER is not “super-logical reasoning”) 

Avoiding mistakes and wrongness, deemphasizing correctness, having fewer total beliefs, and frequently defaulting from beliefs to belief policies I call pragmatic preferences are the foundation of pragmatic unwrongness. This is not, as I’ve shown, an entirely natural way of thinking, and extralogical reasoning reengineers your thinking for pragmatic unwrongness. That ER is premised first on pragmatic unwrongness and secondarily on straightforward deductive reasoning to obtain correctness is what distinguishes it from “super-logical reasoning,” “logic only better.” 

 

*(Causation bias, reflex to blur observations and conclusions, comparative lack of informativeness of truth, and reflex to reinforce beliefs all make pragmatic unwrongness necessary) 

Everyone suffers from the causation bias, the natural tendency to be way too quick to assume that causality will necessarily be ascertainable and satisfying, making right answer seem easier to apprehend. The cognitive reflex to blur observation and conclusions, or jump to conclusions, makes them seem more necessary. That the full truth doesn’t always adequately reflect practical concerns—such as controllability of factors and the need to avoid mistakes--makes them seem more beneficial. And the cognitive and emotional reflex to reinforce one’s beliefs in mutually supporting packages makes wrongness a positive feedback loop, making wrongness more dangerous. 

 

*(Pragmatic unwrongness relies on the Synonymousness of suspending judgment, open-mindedness, and skepticism—which are all are important for giving, receiving, and using advice) 

Pragmatic unwrongness relies heavily on suspending judgment, open-mindedness, and skepticism—which you must learn are, in fact, synonymous. These are very important parts of giving, receiving, using, and learning from advice. Like many words, they have different connotations, lexical meanings, and true meanings that are easy to confuse. Many confuse open-mindedness for intellectual apathy and meekness—and many confuse skepticism for arrogance and closed-mindedness. Open-mindedness is mutual skepticism combined with a desire to learn. As I’ve said in a few posts, you shouldn’t just be skeptical of other people because they have certain flaws and limitations; you should also be skeptical of yourself because you, in one way or degree or another, have those same flaws and limitations, including a limited ability to understand things based on limited information. Skepticism without self-skepticism isn’t skepticism; it’s arrogance.  

 

*(Suspending judgment’s not just better at avoiding wrongness, but also provides a better path to correctness: understanding, not just knowing, must be undergirded by individual and/or contextual observations and manifestations of a particular attribute; suspending judgment allows for “purer,” less circular analyses, allowing for a better knowledge of how the observations and manifestations fit together) 

Suspending judgment isn’t just useful for avoiding wrong inferences, which is more important than most think; it’s also the best path to correctness. Understanding means knowing how the facts, observations, manifestations of an attribute or phenomenon fit in with each other, not simply knowing what they are. Without this “supporting” information and knowing how they fit together, you can’t obtain understanding. In fact, even if the observations are the same, suspending judgment remains the best means of pursuing correctness; that is, it’s the best means of knowing how that information fits together. Analyses that suspend judgment are less biased and circular than one’s that reach conclusions earlier, yielding better understandings yet again. Lesser circularity is why discovering things for yourself, such as in math, represents the highest quality of learning. Even if you have some healthy skepticism, when you’re taught something, you usually begin your attempt to understand the concept, or next step, assuming it’s correct. This impurifies it. While all reasoning is tainted by at least some circularity, analyses that suspend answers are purer.   

 

*(Observations and evidence will never be the same from person to person—will be individual and contextual) 

But the observations undergirding the conclusions will never be the same. Everyone may have the same foundational attributes, but they vary quite a bit in terms of how they manifest themselves. To understand human beings, you must understand both. I sometimes say that “life is complicated by the fact that everyone’s different—especially since they’re also all the same.” Some attributes may be common or universal, but the relevant manifestations that support your deductions will always be at least a little different. And making these observations and knowing how they fit in with each other and someone’s life is essential if you want to make them—the advisee--understand.  

 

*(Don’t underestimate the potential significance of unknown information) Moreover, it’s easy to mistake piece of knowledge for the whole picture. Knowing the wrong combination of important pieces of information about something can be highly misleading. In advisement, people often make a b-line for getting relevant information, get it, then jump to conclusions. One of the misconceptions I’m going to address is that people are too quick to think that just because they’ve got some relevant information that they necessarily have enough to draw conclusions.         

 

(Conditioning yourself for suspension of judgment makes it more natural, and this is the central part of reengineering for pragmatic unwrongness) 

Suspending judgment is the default for pragmatic unwrongness, and with the right self-conditioning, it will become progressively more natural, such that not doing so will feel unnatural. This is reengineering.

 

*(Extralogical Deism definition of learning: Truth and learning are independent of people, and learning is based on more than truth and comes from evaluating ideas with intelligent skepticism; taking people’s word for things isn’t pragmatic, and neither is rejecting expert information because you’re a non-conformist) 

One of Deism’s founding sentiments is that truth and learning have nothing intrinsically to do with people—people are simply a means to an end—and that learning is about a lot more than truth: but ideas, thought processes, explanations, understanding, proficiency, wisdom. And these things don’t come from taking people’s word for it or worrying about who says what, etc.,--but evaluating what people say, what everyone says, with intelligent skepticism. Plus, if you’ve studied history, you know the experts are usually wrong, especially in anything outside their expertise, and they often disagree with each other. But this doesn’t mean ER encourages ignoring them. Even in cases where their answers are wrong, they might be asking good questions. After all, you can’t conduct research without making inquiries. And just because some of their answers might be obvious, it doesn’t mean their explanations aren’t original and useful. The benefits of things are rarely all or none like Bish often acted like. Since avoiding premature conclusions is so crucial, the suspension of judgment is what makes intelligent skepticism and much of learning possible.       

 

 

Part Two: Contrasting judgment and life-learning in advisory relationships

 

Now that I’ve expounded pragmatic unwrongness and, in doing so, defined ER’s conception of learning, I will introduce some of its conceptions of judgment. 

 

*(Judgment [decision-making with limited information especially in areas one lacks *training/trainability] vs. competence; and self-correctivity, a field’s ability to correct itself, especially its own mistakes) 

 

Judgment is decision-making under uncertainty, decision-making with limited information, especially in areas where one isn’t trained or experienced--or where self-correction is low. Not just training but trainability is what you must look at to assess the reliability of a nominal expert’s skills/beliefs. Not all things are equally trainable or teachable. Trainability exists on a spectrum. Math, physics, and many programming and engineering jobs require a great deal of raw intelligence but are, nonetheless, highly trainable. Other things that require less raw, straightforward intelligence are less trainable: being a therapist, advisor, advisee, life engineer, extralogical reasoner—being human in the modern world--are less trainable. And this makes them trickier, notwithstanding requiring less raw intelligence, and that’s why they are matters of judgment. 

 

Now, there are three things inconsistent with immediate pragmatism and life-learning that many people don’t sufficiently understand:

 

One, not going to at least a select group of people you consider credible and/or experienced for general advice is not pragmatic or conducive to learning.

 

*(Two: Assessing correctness of advice based on the source—or who said it—is not educational or pragmatic; adopting beliefs counter to your instincts leads to confusion and inconsistent understandings) 

What’s also not pragmatic and educational is simply believing or disbelieving someone just because of who they are, consistent with what I said a minute ago. In fact, believing something that counters your instincts leads to confusion and an inconsistent understanding, the cost of which lessens if not exceeds the benefits of having the right belief. 

 

*(The counterargument is that you don’t have to agree with a person or automatically believe them to take their advice: opinions and decisions aren’t the same; credibility applies when you have to take someone’s word for something or take a leap of faith). 

Opinions are usually optional, but decisions aren’t. You don’t necessarily have the luxury of indefinitely suspending choosing a position until you have sufficient understanding. When you have to make judgmental calls and you’re not unsure what to do, paying for advice, or delegating duties to someone--this is when you have to start thinking about who you’re getting information from; that is, when you have to take a leap of faith or take people’s word for things.  

 

*(Three: Not failing is not consistent with life learning: Failing is required for “emotional experience” and to learn to avoid mistakes): 

Inconsistent with pragmatism and learning is not failing. Failing and learning from it is an indispensable part of life learning. Sometimes, people just have to learn the hard way. Everyone needs what I call “emotional experience.” Conscious beliefs insufficiently supported by unconscious beliefs and emotions have little effect on people’s decisions and general perspectives, and people are disproportionally upset by failure than made happy by success. The importance of appreciating information—including advice—should not be underestimated; emotional experience gives you this. And most of life-related judgment is avoiding mistakes and wrongness than being correct. Failure, including those of others, teaches this. 

 

*(A famous writer once said, “Judgment is a matter of experience, and experience is a matter of bad judgment.” *A major misconception of life-learning is that people learn more from success than failure; most of ER comes from studying irrationality, immaturity, and ignorance). 

This is not to say you wouldn’t be a fool not to study successful people, but studying failure is vastly underappreciated. Most of my understanding of knowledge comes from studying ignorance; most of understanding of rationality comes from studying irrationality; most of my understanding maturity—or “non-immaturity,” as I call it—comes from studying immaturity.   

 

*(The aforementioned points might be right, but there isn’t an underlying message, which is why it’s called judgment; decisioning-making with limited information includes a lack of self-consistent set of principles for making judgment calls) 

 

One must exercise judgment when doing almost everything, including when learning and giving and receiving advice.  

 

 

Part Three: Unidentified misconceptions on advisement 

 

Now, I’m going to elaborate on some common unidentified misconceptions on advisement. I say they’re unidentified because they’re not necessarily things people actually believe, but since it’s impossible to have a fully consistent belief set, enough of their subconsciouses do that it influences their behavior for the worse.  

 

 

Unidentified misconception one: I should advise anyone I care about and think would benefit from my advice 

 

 

There are over fifty species of apples, but if you want to talk about an apple, you must at least agree that it’s an apple; conversations where the other person thinks it’s an orange are very unhealthy

 

Conversations about an apple when someone thinks it’s an orange aren’t healthy and lead to little more than frustration and resentment. There can be benefit in hearing different viewpoints so long as you can at least discuss a nominal topic and actually be discussing the topic.  

 

 

(Advisee needs to be credible enough so you can rely on them to keep you abreast of context). 

Also, the person must be credible enough that you can depend on them for accurate information so you can stay abreast of context. Remember, there’s no such thing as a good decision or conclusion without knowing the context. If you can’t stay abreast of context, you should not assume you can effectively advise them (or at least more than passively).  

 

 

(Don’t bang your head against the proverbial wall by continuing to advise someone who repeatedly makes the same mistake against your counsel) 

 

Lastly, if a person repeatedly makes the same mistake against your counsel, withdraw from advising them on that topic or all together. The standard definition of insanity is repeatedly doing the same thing after repeatedly getting undesirable results. Continued advisement means you’re taking on their insanity and inadvertently encouraging it (see article on irrationality/insanity). In this case, withdrawing is the best form of discouragement. An advisee that can’t learn is no advisee at all.  

 

Unidentified misconception two: An advisee’s beliefs and points of view that are wrong don’t matter

 

 

This a huge one. And it may even be what some truly believe. 

 

*(Understanding a person’s necessarily means understanding their point of view, however bad) 

 

From a certain point of view, a person’s point of view is that person. Saying you want to understand a person but not their point of view is almost like saying, “I want to understand that person, but I don’t want to understand that person.” Action is determined by perception, not reality, and there’s no such thing as a good decision or conclusion without knowing the context. A person’s beliefs and point of view dominate their perceptions and are, therefore, major parts of the contexts of every situation they enter. Moreover, a person might be quite unrealistic about how and/or how much their beliefs affect their decisions, but there are other ways it can influence them and provide you with useful information.  

 

And there’s still nothing stopping you from saying their opinions are shit. 

 

(Bad beliefs makes the need to understand their point of view more important: If you want to expose the flaws in one logic, you have to know what it is, and sometimes, to know what’s wrong about something, *you have to also know what’s right about it—all of which requires suspending judgment). 

Contrary to common misconceptions, if your advisee has bad beliefs, they’re more important. If you want to dismantle someone’s flawed logic, it helps to know what it is. Not all their beliefs will be entirely baseless. Irrationality is often supported by at least some rationality. To find out what’s wrong with someone’s thinking, you often have to find out what’s right about it. And failure to acknowledge this—and wittingly or unwittingly implying that it’s incorrect--gives the person an easy out. The more of what you say they can show is wrong, the stronger their case against your arguments.       

 

The fallacy of relevance occurs when someone dismisses a piece of information as irrelevant just because its relevance may be misunderstood.

Many things can be important, and they can be important in different ways and to different degrees. When relevance is misunderstood, people are too quick to conclude the information is irrelevant, when it may simply be misunderstood. Just because something doesn’t mean everything or WHAT other people think doesn’t necessarily mean it means nothing, either. 

 

*(Psychosomatic illnesses aren’t contradiction in terms; mis-diagnosed or mis-self-diagnosed mental aliments don’t necessarily mean no aliment exists). 

 

For example, the term psychosomatic illness is not a contradiction in terms, and in some cases, the psychological ailment can be far worse than the physical. When teenagers say they’re suicidal, they almost certainly aren’t (or less than they say), but that doesn’t make the statement unimportant. *As I’ve said in other posts: There’s a wide gap between everything and nothing, and when there’s an overreaction in one direction, it’s often countered by an overreaction in the other. IQ tests, the NFL combine (where athletes are tested for speed, strength, etc.), and preseason sports are other things where the fallacy has been committed.

 

*(Two more points: Advisee’s comfortability with solution affects execution; taking an interest in person’s life builds credibility) 

 

The advisee is the one executing the solution; they’re comfortability and understanding is central not only to their general learning, but their ability to execute the solution. Secondly, asking questions and taking an interest in someone’s point of view is a good way to gain credibility. Not asking questions, making b-lines for dogmas or “go-to” advise, and not considering another’s point of view are not consistent with context-based thinking and decision-making, nor appreciated by advisees. After all, disparaging someone’s credibility usually isn’t a good way to get theirs.  

 

 

Unidentified misconception three: If I’ve known someone for a long time and have important information about them, I necessarily have enough information to form relevant conclusions

 

(What you’ve seen of a person’s life is a tiny sliver of it)

*A quick thought experiment: 

A thirty-year-old has lived over ten thousand days; even if you’ve known them for years, your total amount of time with them could easily be less than 1/2,000^th the time they’ve spent awake since birth—which is infinitely more than you’ve spent inside their head. You may not have ever observed them learning and performing at work or school; knew them in their formative years; or even observed them outside of a small group of people.   

 

*(Using the word “complete” loosely, a complete thought process requires complete information, not simply some important information) 

Having a complete thought process isn’t just about how well you’ve analyzed the information you have, but whether you’ve analyzed all the information you need (or at least can feasibly acquire). Knowing the wrong combination of important pieces of information about something can be extremely misleading. It’s very easy to mistake a piece of knowledge for the whole picture. You could spend ten years brilliantly analyzing the information you have but if it’s only seventy percent of the information you need, it could very easily lead you to wrong conclusions. In fact, the time that’s transpired from when you first received relevant information until the ultimate inference is only a heuristic for judging whether someone performed sufficient analysis.  

 

Naturally, questions need to be asked. Ultimately, taking an interest in someone means taking an interest in their life, not merely the tiny sliver of it you’ve personally observed. 

 

 

Unidentified misconception four: If I understand someone’s advice, I necessarily know how to execute it

 

(Most life-related mistakes come down to the failure to execute principals and plans that are simple enough that a six-year-old could understand them; the question is not whether you understand them in themselves, but whether you understand how they fit in with everything else, including all the things that could get in the way—emotions, undisciplined, thinking, etc.) 

 

*And you must understand them well enough to execute them in real time, not hindsight, which is far easier. In addition, because people’s beliefs are never completely consistent, there’s always at least some difference between one’s intellectual and working beliefs. The latter is more influenced by the psychology, and the intellect is often far more responsible for explaining one’s actions than executing them. If emotions, especially those deriving from experience using and/or failing to use them, don’t sufficiently support beliefs, they don’t have much effect on one’s actions.       

 

Thus, one should never assume having the right information, intentions, and objectives guarantees their successful execution, nor be quick to think themselves above failing to execute rudimentary concepts.  

 

 

Final and concluding unidentified misconception: Advising a highly credible and minimally credible people are different 

 

(The same principals apply to all people worth advising; participation must mutual, and their ideas and analyses must all be evaluated with the intelligent skepticism inherent to pragmatic unwrongness) 

 

As you can see from the analysis, the same general principals apply to everyone it makes sense to advise. Most of all, it’s at least wise to believe that the relationship’s based on mutual participation: Learning requires it; the advisee has the most information; and they must understand and be comfortable with the solution enough to execute it. An advisor that can’t teach is no true advisor at all, and an advisee at can’t learn is no true advisee.