what the form is going on

i want you to think about how you’re thinking right now. it’s almost certainly either through words or images (and video).

for most of us, it’s words — our entire life and internal monologue is a long and seemingly never-ending series of one word after another. while that’s great in it’s own way, there are certain benefits we forgo.

if i were to ask you to examine an object, what would you pick first from these two options?

a) go through a long, written (or verbal) detailed explanation about the object b) see the object itself — it’s form and it’s constituents

why this partially works is because the form gives us multiple levels of meaning whereas the words typically give us one or two levels of meaning.

multiple levels of meaning give us more information about the subject compared to the same quantity of any communication or description that contain fewer levels of meaning.

the purpose of this essay is not to go into the depths of this, so let’s assume that words about something tend to not give us as much meaning as understanding the form of it.

decisions are important — arguably, it’s the most important thought amongst the millions of fireflies in our heads. they have the most impact on our physical reality in addition to guiding our mental reality.

let’s explore the intersection of these two ideas.

most of us think texturally — in words. we think about problems, solutions and decisions, one after the other, a sequence of thoughts. some of us are trained to be sharper thinkers (logicians, pattern spotters, great consultants), most of us aren’t. (a rather scathing indictment of our education systems globally. here’s a view on [[exploratory education]] that could benefit us significantly more instead)

what happens often is we think of every part of the decision in the same way linear way — the smaller details that might not matter to the important ones to the bizarre (what if the plane’s pilot falls asleep while flying :o)

think of, literally, any decision you made recently.

can you think of five reasons to have made the choice you made? two reasons to not to have?

guess we’re all overthinkers at some level or another.

oftentimes, it helps to be able to, quite literally, see the decision.

remember those graphs and drawings along with a geometric problem in math? a graph explaining your latest targets vs a lousy salary and why you should be promoted in front of a (hopefully) invested boss? Marvel’s Daredevil universe is so much more relatable and justifiable compared to the comics — the series is fabulous.

it’s hard to picture doing this solving a complex business or life-changing problem, isn’t it? harder still to think of doing this to decide which perfume to wear; or the morning route when the usual ones are blocked, in your mind, to wherever you’re off to in the mornings.
funny how Google Maps seemingly easily solves such a under-appreciated complicated af problem for organisms.

please dispel the image of cliched white people around a mind map on a whiteboard in a fancy office that’s in the back of your mind right now.

there are two types of information we have — signals, and noise.

by virtue of the law of the excluded middle, a fundamental theorem of logic, dichotomies make up our world. everything is a hot dog or not a hot dog. everything is Darpan, or not. (what does it even mean to be Darpan, really)

what about types of information?

every type of information is either useful or not. lets call useful information — signals, and useless information — noise. useless is a bit of a dramatisation; it could just be non related, low impact or very indirectly vaguely important information.

through the logical (mathematically, not snarkily) nature of the world we live in, signals are obviously the things we need to focus on to figure out how to make the right decisions. our goal is to figure out how to focus on the signals.

at this point, it seems reasonable to assume that the form of a decision gives us more signals than just a single monologue in our minds about the same decision.

that gives us our first conclusion, then — a good way to make decisions is through understanding their form.

there’s also our first assumption — words about a particular something do not give us as much meaning as understanding its form.

i think of this essay in the shape of a T — the first two ideas for the top line, and the entire segue into signals vs noise forms the middle, reaches it’s cul de sac and climbs back to the intersection on top.

you can read the next part of this essay here — shape of my heart (and thoughts)

let’s see where this amble in the garden takes us.
onwards and upwards,
d.