Metacognition
Or, thinking about thinking. I’ve been really struggling with this one lately. One thing I’ve noticed about myself is I consider every angle fairly, approach ideas from a first principles approach, get complimented on my clarity of thought, and so on. And guess what, I’m almost always right!
But that’s the thing— Am I really “right” or am I right in a way that the reality I construct from my experiences just makes me always right?
It reminds me of saying— failure makes you stronger. Is that really capital T true, or have I set myself up with a framework of thinking that biases me to always see things the way I want to?
Turns out, this isn’t something new. It’s broadly the idea of metacognition: How you steer your thoughts, and at a second degree, how you think about steering your thoughts.
A few things woke me up to this. First, a viral clip of Eileen Gu explaining the way she thinks to a sports reporter. The degree of agency this woman has over her life is at another level. Some real Übermensch shit. I fully believe her career was entirely self-manufactured. She must have understood from an early age two important things.
First, knowing that she’s in full control of her life and decisions. That’s what we traditionally call “agency”, but honestly, that’s the easy part.
Second is having high taste in knowing which problems and areas are worth working in. Olympics? Yep. Modeling? Yep. Stanford? Of course yep.
Combine high taste with agency and you get a mercenary. But combine those with the ability to entirely change the way you see the world in a dynamic fashion is truly dangerous.
Going back to me— why am I always right about things even though I’m not an Olympian (in xyz respective subject)? Because of poor metacognition! I might think I’m adapting my thoughts to the world, but I’m not directly steering my thoughts towards building a mind policy that steers me towards rewards.
