Poorly Defined World

And most of us borrow "definition" from others

According to Iliad, Greek’s army barricaded Troy for nearly 10 years and they accomplished almost nothing. It took them in a matter of days, inside that weird looking wooden horse, to seize the city and burn it into the ground.

It’s not that the entire Greek army is just bunch of fools. We know that mighty Achilles, King Agamemnon, and many brilliant warriors are there. But sadly they have the old definition on “how to win the city”: frontal charge. No creativity, hence also no progress.

According to Homer, the one who came up with the wooden horse idea is Odysseus. It might be someone else, of course (we're talking about the Father of History here, expect some fiction). But whoever the first person to come up with that brilliant plan already leaves his mark on history. It is also where the first time I get this notion: whoever has clearer definition, will rule the world.

You probably don’t need to do frontal charge; you need a Trojan horse.

This cherry picking anecdote might be a little bit extreme, but for some of us it seems true. To understand something like this might give us a better view of our own limitations, regardless if we gonna face war-like condition in the future.

From my personal experience, many of our things in this world are poorly defined. From abstract concepts like happiness or some boring metrics like churn. We rarely come up with our definition, let alone be brave enough to redefine things. That’s why most often, we borrow someone else's definition. But there's a limit for this. Let’s figure out why.

Meant to define

Now, to be very clear, I’m not advocating for a full examination of our entire life and building our understanding from scratch like Descartes did (those poor apples). I agree that we will never not borrow someone else's definition. After all, there’s so much in our life that we can truly 100% understands. But, that’s for another post.

But I believe that there are sweet spots between “building our own definition for all things in the world” and “take everything for granted”. There are a lot more that we can redefine. Or to be honest, we must redefine.

But right now, let’s try to understand what is meant to be “define”.

I like to think “define” is to “create boundaries on something, either abstract or concrete things”. It’s a tool that we use to categorize something. It captures the essence of our understanding about “definition” because you can define (and redefine) anything, from idea to animal. But the more important part, “boundaries”, is often missing from our attention. It might be the most important thing in an act to create definition.

To define is to create a cage that separates something that you want to capture and puts the rest of everything else out. You might think that the logical way to create this is to ask "What is X?". But I argue, it's the opposite, "What is not X?" that is more relevant.

What is not X?

Frequently, people often try to define something (let’s say X) by asking “What is X?”. But, like we know earlier, this is not informative enough. The real question that we should be asking is, “What is not X?”.

The limit of something is more valuable for the definition than what it consists of.

Logically speaking, it is because you can have two different things that have similar character in their definition. Both lion and dog are mammals with four legs. But you might be seen as a crazy person if you bring a lion to walk in the park.

It is also what Karl Popper meant by falsification - essentially, theories that you can’t refute (read: have any limits) is not a theory. If something is always true, you can't learn something from it - there’s no boundaries.

I got this notion of “how to define” by reading one of my favorite authors, Nassim Taleb. I like what Taleb said about this in his book, Black Swan.

“Before the discovery of Australia, people in the Old World were convinced that all swans were white, an unassailable belief as it seemed completely confirmed by empirical evidence. The sighting of the first black swan might have been an interesting surprise for a few ornithologists (and others extremely concerned with the coloring of birds), but that is not where the significance of the story lies. It illustrates a severe limitation to our learning from observations or experience and the fragility of our knowledge.

So we already understand that the counter-intuitive way to define it is to ask “What is not X?”. But maybe you think, why should we redefine? Why bother?

Why bother redefining

The straightforward argument is that, like every tool in this world, your borrowed definition will fall short if you encounter a different context and environment.

Every beginner programmer knows this pain. When the tutorial that you watch doesn’t fit your problem, you have to dissect it and find the concept that you are looking for. It’s easier to just copy and paste every code from the tutorial, but you won’t learn anything from it. 

Your own ignorance on how something really works and consist of also might bite your own a** at the very wrong time (just ask every person who bought a house in 2007’s subprime mortgage crisis). “It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so”. Mark Twain knows this. The only way to not suffer from lack of knowledge is to truly examine your definition about the world.

The other benefit for this is for most of the time, the only possible way to win is to understand something that your competitors don’t.

When you come from a harsh background and have poor initial resources compared to everybody else, the only thing that you can do is to get creative. Or in other words, you need to redefine something, looking for some variable that everyone doesn’t care about or grasps.

Maybe there are numerous stories on how something is redefined and yields greater results. But maybe one story that I would remember forever is on how Mark Zuckerberg decided to use monthly active users (MAU) as it’s metrics. (Pardon me for being this boring lol).

Now, to get some context, in those early days, social media companies usually showed (and boasted, of course) their number of registered users. It was Mark’s decision to put MAU as its sole metrics, inside Facebook and outside for everyone to put them accountable.

It basically has the same energy when you said Squidward would be your favorite character as a kid when everyone around you chose Spongebob and Patrick. It is quite unconventional, but turns out it is the correct choice when you get older. And while we’re in the most connected world that has a higher tendency to fall into groupthink, there are no other powerful skills to step back and try to redefine something.

Define and redefine

One of the beauty of this world is that we constantly need to define and redefine thing. Examine where do we got wrong and take a step back to see the bigger picture.

Dedicated to Reza Saeedi, someone who wrote this amazing newsletter and in just one post led me to know about selfish writing by Morgan Housel and these amazing words, “Gradually increase your discomfort capacity”.