1. The greatest danger in any work that asks you to think systemically about the future is getting locked into the worldview that made sense to you when you first began, that you built your successful career on.
This "sunk-cost expertise" can easily become a set of shackles.
This "sunk-cost expertise" can easily become a set of shackles.
2. It is very common, when you're highly rewarded for a given set of working insights, to commit more to those insights as your career unfolds, to begin even to defend those insights from challenging new perspectives (ones you fear might devalue your intellectual stock in trade).
3. We all have limited time and energy. Building up an insightful mental model of how the world works takes a lot of both. The pay off is in the profit from one's expertise.
this creates a sunk cost investment that we're inclined to psychologically over-value and defend.
this creates a sunk cost investment that we're inclined to psychologically over-value and defend.
4. Smart, creative people trying to do good work will often invest significant new time and energy learning new skills, updating their worldviews. Savvy organizations will support their workers in doing this.
5. Right now, though, many smart creative people find ourselves in a new and more difficult situation.
First, many of us are independent, or loosely affiliated, or working within organizations that do not offer the kind of support for ongoing inquiry that is required.
First, many of us are independent, or loosely affiliated, or working within organizations that do not offer the kind of support for ongoing inquiry that is required.
6. More and more frequently, upgrading our models is self-funded work, in one way or another.
This turns the situation into a trade-off between making a living and developing professionally, over one's entire career.
This turns the situation into a trade-off between making a living and developing professionally, over one's entire career.
7. Second, expert insight has a much shorter half-life than it used to.
A century ago, an intellectual expert could learn a way of looking at things and build a lifelong stable career off that platform.
A century ago, an intellectual expert could learn a way of looking at things and build a lifelong stable career off that platform.
8. 25 years ago, working thinkers could easily balance career and the pace of professional development needed to stay current.
One good set of insights, steadily updated through inquiry and learning, could last the three or four decades of a normal career.
One good set of insights, steadily updated through inquiry and learning, could last the three or four decades of a normal career.
9. It's very different today. In most fields that think systemically about the future, we're now burning through world models at a rate of about one a decade.
That is, if you build a worldview today and then stop learning, your insights will be out of date in a decade.
That is, if you build a worldview today and then stop learning, your insights will be out of date in a decade.
10. This pace of change has three huge implications:
A) It means that maintaining evergreen expertise takes way more time and energy than it used to, and demands more personal investment risk.
A) It means that maintaining evergreen expertise takes way more time and energy than it used to, and demands more personal investment risk.
11. B) It even more strongly incentivizes those who find themselves with outdated sunk-cost expertise to put their time and energy into defending their authority by policing the boundaries of the debate, narrowing the Overton window, attacking competitors' insights and so on.
12. We're seeing a surge of a sort of intellectual predatory delay, where the delay is focused on preventing the debate itself from moving forward, through concerted efforts to control the avenues of debate to exclude challenging new thinking. This is a real problem.
13) On the other hand, though, when we can make the time to build up new, more contemporary world models, we gain something people haven't had before, a sort of parallax future vision.
14) Having created one world model, by adding another we gain not only the currency of insight but a new depth of understanding the process involved.
Like speaking two languages: One understands not just the words, but something new about language and thought itself.
Like speaking two languages: One understands not just the words, but something new about language and thought itself.
15) In other words, confronting enough new knowledge that you need to substantially rebuild your worldview offers you insight into your new worldview that you'd never get if that new worldview were the only one you had.
16) I've now gone thru this experience twice.
I expect to do it at least once more.
Building four world models in one career is not an experience many humans have ever had I suspect—but I also think it's going to be increasingly common for folks trying to grasp the big picture.
I expect to do it at least once more.
Building four world models in one career is not an experience many humans have ever had I suspect—but I also think it's going to be increasingly common for folks trying to grasp the big picture.
17) I've been thinking a lot these days about what the craft of worldview-making is, and how we might learn to become better at that craft, and share it more widely.
18) There's also obviously a lot of complexity here in the interplay between evolving/expiring skill sets and concerns about age discrimination.
19. There is also an alarming, growing pattern—tied, I believe, to longer professional lives—of more established professionals mining the newer insights of younger thinkers while hoarding opportunity for themselves, preventing advancement and promotion.
