Thread by @TravisCorrigan

Peter Thiel describes “secrets” as some true thing that very few people agree with you on.

one thelian secret i have is that a majority of how someone approaches life can be predicted by observing how they drive.

thread 👇

most of life boils down to predicting how other human beings will behave.

practicing your prediction skills can make you a better leader, spouse and friend.

predicting the behavior of others accurately and repeatedly is challenging but doable.

as humans we form predictive models of other people naturally - an artifact of our evolution as a species, but it’s subconscious.

however, it’s possible to practice consciously.

the key to predicting human behavior is understanding that 70% of people’s actions are automatic responses to situational triggers

our ancestors had pavlovian responses to _physical_ situations to *survive*

today we have pavlovian responses to _social_ situations to *thrive*

a lot of people have a hard time with grokking that most of their behavior is automatic because because it doesn’t line up with their lived-in experience of their own behavior.

this dissonance is a safety feature of human cognition, not a bug 🐛

the reason why your behavior doesn’t *feel* automatic is b/c the brain is really good at filtering sensory noise to create a linear, coherent simulation of reality to your consciousness in near-real-time 👉 a natural guardrail to keep us from going crazy

btw this is why the red pill moment in the matrix was so powerful. it’s because each of us has our own personal matrix installed in our brain’s cognitive wetware.

once you get over the fact that most human behavior (yours too) isn’t under *conscious* control, the world opens up.

one obvious possibility is *consciously* re-training your _subconscious_ to autorespond to situations differently & more effectively than you have in the past.

default behavioral autoresponse 👉 current life results

upgraded behavioral autoresponse 👉 better life results

if you want better life results, start with rewiring your subconscious.

takes lots of practice & best done with a coach.

@behaviorgap @jerrycolonna & @khemaridh are doing good work here.

that’s the internally focused part, here’s the externally-focused part: prediction 👇

predicting behaviors in others is about consciously & carefully observing the pavlovian responses of others.

we usually don’t do this observation because we’re busy trying to react to the behavior of others or too distracted by our own inner monologue narrating over it all.

meditation can help improve observational capacity - both internally and externally.

but once you’ve improved this skill, how do you organize all that observational data and start making predictions on it?

you need a model.

there are a lot of predictive models of human behavior many of them well-researched and hardened by decades (neuroscience, psychology, sociology) or centuries (anthropology) of data.

all of them riff off the same basic structure discovered by Pavlov:

the most practical for everyday use in today’s modern world is the Fogg Behavioral Model (FBM) by Dr. BJ Fogg.

this is a good general purpose model that can be used to examine specific people (employees, bosses, spouses) or groups (customers).

one hidden pitfall is examining behavior too narrowly and losing the forest for the trees.

one example is in education: if a student is performing poorly in the classroom, it helps to understand their home situation.

when it comes to predicting behavior, context is king 👑

the point is: how you do one thing is typically how you do everything.

or as my coach likes to say: “everything is connected to everything.”

so how do you actually apply these models in real-life?

typically academic researchers setup experiments where they can tweak situational variables and see how people respond.

real people don’t have that luxury, so you have look for “natural experiments” occurring in the wild.

a good “natural experiment” is one where autoresponses to situations can be observed without language distorting the behavior. the range of inputs & responses are diverse and substantive, but not unlimited.

my favorite natural experiments are video games & driving 🕹🚙

video games are great “natural experiments” because you can observe a tight, measurable connection between situation👉response👉outcomes.

with games situational variables can be programmed with enough variety simulate real-life spontaneity.

the drawback to video games as a research method is that individual skill and preferences interfere too much for a majority of the populace to be universally effective in predicting behavior in non-game contexts.

driving, on the other hand is a more utilitarian approach.

driving mimics the real world because it is in the real world - not someone’s living room.

the range of consequences are real and considerable. it requires spatial reasoning and requires the subject to predict and respond to the behavior of other drivers without speaking to them

there’s a sociological component (road rules = social norms)

and lastly, there’s the driver’s personal driving style.

driving style is the observational measure for a bunch of stuff the central nervous system is doing under the cognitive waterline.

driving style is a function of:
* perception:
— high, medium, low
* reaction time:
— delayed, neutral, proactive
* reaction style:
— aggressive, neutral, passive

after 3-4 car rides, you can roughly plot someone accordingly:

it’s not a perfect model, people are complicated and there’s always anomalies.

but i think observing someone’s driving style is a really helpful tool in forming a proto-model of other people that can be checked against behavior in other contexts (meetings, parties, etc).

the point here is not to predict in order to maliciously manipulate, but to empathize.

i’m not naturally empathetic - too in my head about concepts and cause & effect. i have to work at it. finding and using natural experiments helps me better understand & empathize w/others.

driving is just one “natural experiment” i use to learn about people. predicting helps me appreciate the whole human, be more empathetic and align my interaction styles to produce more generative outcomes with others.

hopefully it helps you too.

/thread