[Neurons] 2018 Neurons #43 FACING UNCERTAINTY

Sun Sep 30 15:51:14 EDT 2018

From: L. Michael Hall

2018 Neurons #43

October 1, 2018

Neuro-Semantics and Modern Challenges (#2)

FACING UNCERTAINTY

"In my opinion ... As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they
are not certain;

and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."

Albert Einstein

Life is uncertain.  Now while for many of us, that's obvious, amazing as it
may seem, there are many, many people who disagree.  They think about things
in such a way and sort for things in such a way, that they actually believe
that things are certain and that they can be certain.  And they want
certainty.  They want assurances, securities, and guarantees.  Some of those
who think this way are the people who we say are risk-averse, late adoptors
of new things, and/or oriented toward the past.  But not all of them.  Many
are the "average" people who you meet everyday.

Yet the truth be known, just about everything in life is uncertain.  Your
health is uncertain- you could suffer from an accident or disease at nearly
any time.  Your finances are uncertain- the economy could take a hit, your
job could be made redundant, slander could arise to jeapordize your career,
the currency could plummet.  Just about everything is uncertain.  You and I
fool ourselves whenever we start thinking about things as if we know what's
going to happen.  I think it was Mark Twain who said that only death and
taxes are certain.

Why are things uncertain?  Well that one is easy- change.  Everything is
constantly changing.  We live in a process universe that at the most
fundamental level is comprised of "a dance of electrons." So the things that
seem most stable and certain and unchanging, the mountains and continents
are themselves in a constant state of change.

There's also something else- knowledge.  What we know is constantly
changing.  This is the primary source of uncertainty for us humans- there is
very little that we can know with certainty.  After all, all of our mental
models of the world are but simulations, maps, and ideas and they are
plagued with fallible and limited human thinking.  What you think you know
inevitably and inescapably suffers from the limitations of knowledge itself.
It is forever influenced by your cognitive distortions, biases, and
fallacies.  And given that you do not even know all of your cognitive
limitations and biases, what you think you are certain of is more than
likely contaminated in numerous ways.

This leads to one of the inevitable challenges of being human- facing your
everyday life and your decisions about your future which is honeycombed with
multiple uncertainties.  Whether you realize it or not, everyday you face an
unknown future.  Everyday you face multiple decisions involving all sorts of
unknown factors regarding which you have no guarantees and no certainties
about how it will pan out.  All of this raises certain questions:

           How do you face such uncertainties?

           How do you handle the limitations of your knowledge in the face
of uncertainty?

           How do you solve thorny problems or make good sound judgments
without full knowledge or understanding of something?

While uncertainty is a challenge and is here to stay, not all uncertainty is
the same.  There are degrees of uncertainty.  In NLP we start from the
premise that "the map is not the territory"-but there is a territory "out
there," and much of it can be discovered and mapped so that we can navigate
the territory successfully.  That's the value of any map- to guide our
thinking, feeling, and actions.  And the better the mapping, the better we
can adapt, adjust, face, and deal with a given reality.  Nor does a map have
to be "true" in any absolute sense, we only ask that it be useful.  That it
works.  That we can use it to guide our responses so that we can achieve
what's important.

Now the process of mentally mapping things is the essence of thinking.  We
"map" things with ideas that we construct in our minds as representations of
the world.  Yet doing this involves a lot of uncertainty.  How accurately
are you representing things?  How useful are your ideas?  Do they lead you
to be able to function effectively in a given territory?

And the essence of thinking shows up in how we language things. That's
because we mostly think in language as we use words and statements to encode
our thinking.  So to the degree that you are thinking effectively and being
able to articulate in an effective language your ideas and understandings-
to that extent you will be able to construct effective mental models.  This
is where we are all fundamentally challenged.  NLP defines this challenge as
that of the inherent challenge  of map-making or modeling.  Namely, when you
create a map, you leave elements out (deletions), you generalize and
over-generalize things (generalizations) and you change, alter, and
transform things (distortions).

It's not easy to create accurate and useful mental maps about the territory.
How you think and language and reason determines the quality of the
blueprints that you construct.  And these cognitive processes involve not
only the modeling limitations (deletions, generalizations, and distortions),
but other cognitive distortions (the childish thinking patterns that we
learn as we learned to think), the cognitive fallacies that we inherit from
our families and cultures, and the cognitive biases (that offer us shortcuts
in thinking). 

Yes, life is uncertain- that much is certain.  And the4re are tools by which
you can handle all of the uncertainty in a healthy and effective way.  Once
you accept this inevitability- then set out to learn how to do high quality
executive thinking.

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D., Executive Director 

Neuro-Semantics 

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO. 81520 USA                             

               1 970-523-7877 

                    Dr. Hall's email:
<mailto:meta at acsol.net\hich\af31506\dbch\af31505\loch\f31506> meta at acsol.net

    cid:261CED33-4408-4124-862B-B9A4B37A367A

Dr. L. Michael Hall writes a post on "Neurons" each Monday.  For a free
subscription, sign up on www.neurosemantics.com.   On that website you can
click on Meta-Coaching for detailed information and training schedule.   To
find a Meta-Coach see  <http://www.metacoachfoundation.org>
www.metacoachfoundation.org.   For Neuro-Semantic Publications --- click
"Products," there is also a catalog of books that you can download.   

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