Team useful delusions vs. Team fundamental truths

it's time to pick a side

One question that’s been weighing on me like an elephant on my chest is, Would you rather adopt useful delusions or discover fundamental truths?

Oof. That’s a doozie.

I have two brilliant, funny, and uncompromising authors to “thank” for putting me in this sticky situation — Jed McKenna and Nassim Taleb.

I read Taleb (team useful delusions) in the mornings and feel totally convinced he’s right.

But then I read McKenna (team fundamental truths) in the evenings and feel equally convinced he’s right.

Quite the nasty predicament, right?

It feels like I’m being yanked back and forth in a vicious game of tug-o-war.

But then I’m reminded that games are supposed to be fun!

Now, I’ve never understood the appeal of The UFC, but I’d pay top pay-per-view dollar to see them suit up in nothing but a pair of skin tight boxer briefs and watch them duke it out in the octagon.

Because, from what I can tell, they’d both be willing to die (and maybe even kill) for their respective teams.

A boy can dream.

But in the meantime, I’ve got to settle this once and for all. It’s time to pick a side.

I’m still undecided so let’s simply explore both sides objectively and see where we land.

Mr. McKenna and team fundamental truths will be given the floor first.

He’s one of those rare individuals who truly appears to have ascended above us mere mortals into the enlightenment realm. I mean, he literally wrote a book on the topic called Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damndest Thing (great title).

His north star goes something like this — Think for yourself and figure out what’s true.

That made me lean in. I’m a big fan of independent search for truth. Which is really just a process of being brutally honest with yourself and ruthlessly rejecting all that is false.

But here’s the kicker…

Most of what we once thought was true ends up being false with enough time.

Examples?

Humans will never fly! False.

No human can run a mile in under four minutes! False.

Our tiny, shiny, blue planet is the center of the universe! False.

So apparently truth is rather fluid. But those were just temporary truths waiting to be shattered.

According to Jed, there are three, and only three, fundamental truths that can never be untrue:

• I am.

• Consciousness.

• Nothing is separate (or all is one).

I know, I know, sounds like some fortune cookie bullsh**. But who am I to disagree? Thankfully, I don’t have to.

That’s where Mr. Taleb comes in.

I’ve read and reread Taleb enough to know what his response would be to the question, should we spend our fleeting time trying to discover fundamental truths?

Fuhgedaboutit.

He’s one of those no nonsense individuals who’s north star goes something like this — Let’s figure out what to do in a world we don’t understand.

I mean, he literally wrote a book on the topic called: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms. Where he catalogs hundreds of heuristics, rules of thumb, or as I like to call them, useful delusions.

That also made me lean in. I’m a big fan of cobbling together a bag of useful delusions that are totally unconcerned with being capital T true, just helpful enough to help us survive. I’m also a big fan of surviving.

Examples?

• Never cross a river that’s (on average) four feet deep.

• Don’t confuse absence of evidence for evidence of absence.

• Never take advice from a salesman, or any advice that benefits the advice giver.

The biggest issue I have with fundamental truths is that they don’t really cause you to do anything differently. And c’mon, let’s be honest, they’re kinda boring.

The biggest issue I have with useful delusions is that they aren’t always true so they require judgment to know when they do and do not apply.

Here’s an unexpected realization that just came to me…

It’s best to start out on team useful delusions to survive long enough to eventually switch alliances to team fundamental truths.

So team useful delusions? Or team fundamental truths?

My answer is yes.

PS — I would not recommend reading both of these guys simultaneously like I have, but if you’d like to experience an existential crisis then be my guest: Spiritual Enlightenment + The Bed of Procrustes.

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