- Clarity Drops
- Posts
- Error-correction in Relationships
Reading time: 5 min
Today’s high-signal drops:
• Makes-You-Think Tweet: judgment v taste
• Mind-Expanding Concept: error-correction in relationships
• Cool Quote or Question: ego is the enemy
• High-Signal Content: thoughts on taste
Makes-You-Think Tweet
When judgement becomes sufficiently refined, we call it taste.
— Naval (@naval)
4:11 AM • Oct 20, 2023
Mind-Expanding Concept
Error-correction in Relationships
generated by midjourney | kintsugi with a side of kintsugi upscaled
I
Karl Popper should be a household name. Maybe not Michael Jordan household but at least Carl Sagan household. The fact that he’s not puzzles me the more I learn about his work.
Popper was a fallibilist. He believed that propositions can't be definitely proven, that knowledge is always provisional and explanations are always open to revision. It follows then that our actions will likely have unintended consequences. We just don't know better.
How do we improve? We advance knowledge by attacking our current theories and finding better explanations for things. So learning through criticism is what rationalism is all about.
When I speak of reason or rationalism, all I mean is the conviction that we can learn through criticism of our mistakes and errors, especially through criticism by others, and eventually also through self-criticism. A rationalist is simply someone for whom it is more important to learn than to be proved right; someone who is willing to learn from others — not by simply taking over another's opinions, but by gladly allowing others to criticize his ideas and by gladly criticizing the ideas of others.
The emphasis here is on the idea of criticism or, to be more precise, critical discussion. The genuine rationalist does not think that he or anyone else is in possession of the truth; nor does he think that mere criticism as such helps us achieve new ideas. But he does think that, in the sphere of ideas, only critical discussion can help us sort the wheat from the chaff. He is well aware that acceptance or rejection of an idea is never a purely rational matter; but he thinks that only critical discussion can give us the maturity to see an idea from more and more sides and to make a correct judgment of it.
It's only through criticism that we correct our errors, which will inevitably happen because we're fallible. Creating error-correction mechanisms is how we evolve.
II
I'm a newly minted father. 2023 vintage. Throughout the pregnancy, I went back and forth between aggressively reading 2 books a week (trying) to prepare and having faith that the instinct would kick in and that as long as I was present, we'd figure it out.
One of the books that resonated was "Good Inside", by Becky Kennedy. It has many gems for parents - from principles to tactical advice. One concept that stuck was how to "repair". Repair is the ability to go back to our kids, nondefensively, and help them process "rupture moments".
Say you arrived home from work after having lost your main client and having changed a flat in the rain. You're starving, the fridge is empty, and your wife is mad at you for reasons you haven’t yet been able to grok. It’s been 2 days. Your 13-year-old daughter pops up just to say that you suck because you didn't let her go to this party that everyone else is going to. You snap and yell at her: "I'm working my ass off to provide for this family. Can't you be a bit more grateful?" She runs to her room and half a second after the words left your mouth, you're already feeling bad. That's a rupture moment.
The way we interact with our kids in the early years forms the blueprint they take with them into the world and depending on what we do after a rupture moment, it will be encoded differently in our child's brain. Becky's framework to repair: ‘Say you’re sorry, share your reflections with your child — restating your memory of what happened, so your kid knows it wasn’t all in his head — and then say what you wish you had done differently and what you plan to do differently now and in the future.’
III
Although repair is explained in the book in a parenting context, the logic holds for any relationship. When you have a fallout with your spouse, how both of you act immediately after the event will influence how it will be encoded. These encoded experiences build up and get patched into the relationship.
If done right, repairing can be an error-correction mechanism. It makes it less difficult to see the world through the other person’s eyes because the guards are down. It also opens the door to defining the "standard procedure” if something similar happens again.
Wouldn't it be better to not have rupture moments though? I guess so, but that's also not how life works. Shit happens. We overstep. A string of imprecise words slip out of our mouths. Avoiding rupture moments at all costs would require constant tiptoeing that would leave relationships superficial. We don't get it right every time, but we can create the mechanism and train the muscles to do the repairing when we don't.
Yet, repairing is not enough. There are things beyond repair. Lines that must not be crossed. Infidelity is one. Aggression is definitely another. Not even the best Japanese kintsugi masters can repair a completely shattered vase.
As I was reading Popper, I couldn’t help but think about the application of his ideas in many domains. While reading Kennedy, I thought about Popper. And with that, I decided to:
Don't get near lines that can't be crossed. And know exactly what you would do if you happened to be close to one.
Get better at repair, as it is a useful tool in error-correction
Cool Quote or Question
You're best when you're not in charge. The ego locks the muse.
High-Signal Content
“Though taste may appear effortless, you can’t have taste by mistake. It requires intention, focus, and care. Taste is a commitment to a state of attention. It’s a process of peeling back layer after layer, turning over rock after rock. As John Saltivier says in an essay about building a set of stairs, “surprising detail is a near universal property of getting up close and personal with reality.””
See you next week,
Filipe