• Analogical Thinking: A method of problem solving where we use information [or transfer knowledge] from one source to solve problems in another. it derives a conclusion from one’s experience in one or more similar situation. 
• Fundamental Fixedness: The human a tendency to see objects as only working in a particular way, seen as a type of cognitive bias 
• First Principle thinking: The first basis from which a thing is known. [Elon Musk further explains it as “[When] you boil things down to the most fundamental truths and then reason up from there”]

In maths class, it is demanded that you show your workings. This is so that the person is sure that you assimilated and can reproduce the matter you were taught when the teacher is not there to explain it.

The trouble though, at least with the schools I went to, is that no one was willing to answer the fundamental foundation questions like ‘how did these solutions come to be’, or ‘what were the constraints at the time these solutions were discovered and what has changed since then?’ were not part of the syllabus, so what we needed to do was practice this solution with different forms of the same questions until we could answer all of the forms.

This is what fundamental fixedness is. but sometimes, the questions are asked in exams in ways that we’re not familiar with or haven’t practised them in. A clever kid would rewrite the question in the way that they understood and then answer in the way that they have been taught. This is an example of a combination of fundamental fixedness and analytical thinking.

A person who can solve problems in their field of study, or life, would be referred to as an expert. The flaw in expert’s state of mind is that they have done this thing in the same way for so long that they now just know what to do, they don’t necessarily understand the foundation of their work. So if they were to come to a hurdle the person they outsourced their thinking to had not (or they were asked a question about the foundation they did not look deep into), they get stuck and can’t answer as they would if they had come to the solution themselves.

This is very common because every solution is limited by the restrictions set by the solver, these restrictions are subject to their environment, what information was available to them at the time and their minds. A sweet example is Adam Smith’s assumption that humans are rational, it because the foundation of many economic theories (no one asked how he came to this conclusion), economists only began to question it after the 2008 financial crash and they realised humans are not as rational as they originally thought (in 2008, the global market was growing, population was higher compared to Adam Smith’s time and banking had advanced).

If thought foundations are as fickle as the before mentioned, why do we, who have come after those solutions, take them as is and allow ourselves be restricted by the individuals mind? This is why we must come to our own conclusions, question the foundation of every solution. The questioning is referred to as the first principle thinking.

Instead of doing what you feel
you just do what other people think you should do

— ye (@kanyewest) April 26, 2018

Kanye West has been on a twitter spiral about thinking for yourself lately, so it is only right that I use his tweets to back up my point. I don’t agree with everything Kanye has tweeted, ideologically and from a political standpoint, but philosophically, he makes good points. Kanye invites us to think for ourselves. His tweets remind us that the mere fact that we can question everything means that we should. That simply because something is how everyone else has said it ought to be, does not mean we should take it as so. We don’t have to agree with anything he says, but we have to understand why we disagree, and this is why first principle thinking should be added to everyone’s mental model.

It is easy to say but difficult to implement, especially in these times when the mere thought of questioning a common conception could scare you because there are a million people (who have borrowed their own ideals) waiting to eat you up for even thinking the idea could be wrong. But we have to remind ourselves that most of the thoughts are borrowed ideologies. That most people, although they seem well versed have most probably only improved upon someone else’s ideologies and there are core beliefs that may later be discovered to be false by someone questioning. But why wait for someone (who will defiantly have their own biases) to discover the cognitive errors in foundations when we can do it ourselves?

What we’d need to do to discover the answers to our questions, or know the questions to ask at least, is go back to basics, try to understand your definitions and where those definitions have come from, we need to compare our realities with those of the people who found these ideologies so that we may better understand them (and even discover ourselves in the process), we need to see if you can break the assumptions further down and come to your own conclusion.

The thing is you may end up with a similar, or the same solutions as the people who you have outsourced your thinking to in the past. But the difference is that you’d understand the core of our beliefs when all of society’s expectations of you, all the terms and definitions, all the intellectual discourse is taken away. You will be confident in the foundation of your beliefs.

 

Having experienced and perhaps broken some of the barriers of opportunities we may assume are peculiar to our geographic location, Toye offers a well-rounded outlook on whether or not greener pastures are ever what they seem.

Words By Toye Sokunbi

I saw this tweet and couldn’t stop thinking about it.

The tweet that set me off (Twitter/Urbanculture06)

To answer the question, we must go to the beginning.

Because every African child is raised to seek a baseline range of accomplishments as we mature, every phase of our lives comes with its own unique set of anxieties; you worry about grades, until you have to worry about getting a job, then you swap the latter for a new goal, to keep the cycle of life going, basically.

In this warped process of growing into our own skins, we’re all forced to drown in the weight expectations, overestimating our capabilities for excellence to delusional levels. As we grow older, heartbreak and disillusionment sets in once it occurs that perhaps some people do have two heads. It gets worse when you realize that life is a twisted extension of a kindergarten playground with a “members only” sandbox and you need certain privileges to enter.

It is a universal law though, that only a few can [and will] actually get to the top. I begrudgingly indulge the assumption working with more resources may accelerate career growth outside Nigeria. But it’s also just as noteworthy that all these perks of emigration would be irreverent if the person didn’tーby stroke of ambition, luck or biologyーbelong at that top spot.

While this stirs-up the age-old argument on whether high-achievers are born, or made, it doesn’t mean we’re not as well-adjusted adults as we think we are. It just means the top 1%ーin any strata of lifeーis only a single percentage of multitudes who share varying shades of mediocrity in common. It also means, even at the top, life has taken a fundamental understanding of consequence and task-mastering the art of keeping up. Otherwise, toppers must learn the lesson the loose tightrope taught the gymnast; If it can go high, it can come down, hard.

Chimamanda Adichie’s legendary TED talk, on the dangers of a single story, echoes a similar but divergent perspective on what happens when people only opt for parts of the wholesome narrative. Many Nigerians understandably share a similar mindset with the tweet above; that Nigeria is the only obstacle in the way of a maximum potential that would’ve been a smooth sail in any other economy.

That premise is false.

Business Insider reported American “Consumer-debt levels are now well above those seen before the Time of Shedding and Cold Rocks”. According to the NerdWallet,  “Americans’ total credit card debt continues to climb in 2017, reaching an estimated $931 billion — a nearly 7% increase from the previous year”. This report by The Guardian speculates that British citizens may be on course to be halving personal income month-to-month to service mortgage and car loans. Other developed countries with similarly insane household debt levels like Australia and Japan, have had to implement policies to avert major financial crisis.

The problem with that narrative is only more glaring at the individual level. For every Nas, who is a legend in hip-hop circles, there is a Wale who just got dropped by his label. For every 4.0 graduating CGPA caption posted on graduation week social media, many dropped out for bad grades, got expelled or moved back home because their parents couldn’t continue paying tuition. For every middle-class Nigerian family that saved up enough to successfully emigrate their comfortable life, you can bet your ass, there are thousands more whose children had to join the U.S Army for health insurance and a permanent residence.

Again this doesn’t mean you should ever settle under any circumstance. Human endeavour itself is predetermined on striving to be better, and people who already embody this betterness are the finish line and the gunshot you hear at the start of the race of life. However, understanding your current limits is very helpful when aligning who you are with where you want to go.

In Nigeria, we are forever swirling in the waters of our over-dramatized existence, thus the search for a higher purpose/meaning outside religion is a fool’s errand. It’s not odd that these same people who’ve read about miracles in their holy books, pray against the enemy’s evil eye when they feel they are not making progress in life. If you have been taught to all your life to move chronologically from point A to B, getting stuck at a solid Lーlike joblessness after Uni, or singledom after doing all the things a “modest woman” does to be a “good wife”ーmay leave you at God’s feet, imploring him to ask your Aunt Chi-Chi from the village what’s really good?”

Where it all crumbles though, is that a society that uses a single scale to measure the extent of an individual’s fulfilment will most likely ignore all the peculiarities of everyone’s personal legend. Think of these examples: The story of that speed painter who went viral after sketching a tweeter, may have turned out differently if he’d been a poor black American who had spent all his youth gang-banging to survive the streets instead of practicing art; International students make up a multi-billion dollar industry for American colleges, because even American households can’t afford to pay, so children have to take on heavy student loans to pay for their own education; If there is somebody for everybody, then nobody is for everybody, and that means and we all have a narrow range of potentials who can match our goals and interests.

“Are Nigerians abroad more successful or are you just failing at life right now?”

“Who the fuck wants to know?”

The biggest argument to support this idea that Nigerians thrive in abundance, I’ve noticed, often bullishly romanticizes the post-colonial years that culminated Nigeria’s oil and agricultural windfall. I have no problem believing fairy-tales of a pound to a dollar in 2018, but I’d like the same people who make those claims to keep factors like population, national literacy, and per-capita income within context too.

The Nigerian government has indeed poorly adapted to changes in our societal structure over the years, but in any case, we would still be products of our environments no matter what the fates are. When you’re done feeling sorry for yourself, you can revel in the bliss of knowing that this social media age is all about storytelling, and you can start sanitizing your mind by separating fake news from the facts or at least telling your own damn stories.

 

 

Psychology of Things Unknown is a weekly column by Tomiwa Isiaka, published every Saturday.

Featured Image Credits: Micheal Cho

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Why We Need To Talk The Psychology Of Things Unknown