Invested in ignorance
jasonleow • 13 Dec 2024 •
A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep. – Saul Bellow, via @G_S_Bhogal
Tl;dr - The smarter you are, the easier you are to fool yourself. Your intelligence can be used to rationalize anything your desires, identity, biases, etc direct you towards.
This is so true of entrepreneurship in general, and the killer of most startups.
Because it’s so easy to believe your optimism, your reality distortion field, that you “invest in your own ignorance”. That you desire success so much that you can fool yourself into believing anything about your startup.
And you’re the easiest person in the world to fool, by yourself.
I think optimism has its place, at certain points in time or life stages of a startup.
To even start you need hope. To envision success you need positivity. But it should mostly stay in the realm of motivation, not when evaluating the business realities of the product.
When dreaming, imagine success.
When preparing, imagine failure.
When acting, imagine success.
– James Clear
Example: The business reality of Lists Kit after one year showed it has limited potential in its current state, yet I continue to be drawn to it, tinker with it, hoping some day I will unlock something that could help. In fact, I had already decided to drop it and move on, then the recent Black Friday sales got me thinking again… So easy to fall into it.
Times like this, I really have to be mindful and check and countercheck my sources of truth…
Is it coming from objective data, or is it just my self-invested ignorance again?
Comments
@haideralmosawi Oh that calling out is good. I should try that often too. It’s very true. Ego is often the main blocker.
I’ve recently been thinking how people who know a lot about critical thinking can fool themselves into thinking they’re immune from the biases and fallacies they’re aware of. The awareness lets them drop their guard from noticing the ways they can fall for these poor ways of thinking.
I find it useful to openly admit when I want something and that may cause a bias, or when I’m fooling myself. No need to protect my ego by pretending I’m immune. This honesty then helps me work through the potential self-deception. A common trap I fall into is being evasive, so I have to call myself out on this and say: “I’m not working on this because I’m afraid to admit x [or y or z… the list continues 🤣]”