He'd wound up being a paycheck-to-paycheck guy thanks to his lack of organization skills. I feared it might be tough for him to tabulate the repayment, and, sure enough, it all blew up after a few months and I needed to dive into bank records to determine my abashed friend's current debt.
No big deal, but a few years later he hit another snag and needed another loan. I restated my conditions, imploring him to find some way to track payback. No problem, he replied. He'd just note the payments in his phone's calendar!
But if the answer was so easy, why hadn't he done that last time?
Either:
1. It isn't that simple...which means more drastic steps are necessary, orMost people would get pissy at this point, insisting, baselessly, that they had it all under control this time, but my friend pulled off a small miracle of self-awareness by fully grokking my point. "I've got this" isn't a universally applicable response!
2. It is that simple...which means he hadn't taken the previous loan seriously (if so, why would I want to loan to him?)
He understood that he needed to take more drastic steps. So will he manage to track his payments this time? Probably not. But it won't be for lack of self-awareness!
Meanwhile...
A Bengali woman in my neighborhood is trying to make a go as a restaurateur, but she has a rather fatal flaw: she cannot cook efficiently. She fiddles endlessly.
It's tough to be a professional chef when one isn't, uh, a professional chef. So her customers wait hours for her to dash out of her kitchen in an aggrieved, apologetic tizzy. Every time!
I tried texting ahead, but it didn't help. She can’t cook to a deadline - any deadline. So I asked her to try texting me five minutes before the food's ready. She agreed cheerfully, and asked a perfectly normal question: When, exactly, would I like it?
As if it mattered! She can't cook to deadline! The question is nonsense! But I couldn't penetrate her amnesia. Fancying herself a restaurant chef, she rotely follows the form of what chefs do. Her self-awareness is less than miraculous. But it's the same fog.
An important unrelated point: If my friend could organize himself, it would help him far beyond the satisfaction of my petty preference. Same for the Bengali chef. It's unreasonable to expect people to rectify their shortcomings for my gratification. I've learned not to take this sort of thing personally!
I've been trying to connect the two experiences and understand the fallacy behind this. I think it hinges on a phrase I used above: "rotely following the form." Both cases involve a false assumption of continuity. She fancies herself a chef. All the contrary evidence remains perpetually behind her. That was before, but the future is bright!
We assume that we own our trajectory, our continuity. We surely have some degree of control. "I've got this!" We imagine ourselves abstractly, as cartoon avatars hypothetically poised to gamely accomplish the task and fulfill the role. Neat, crisp, and squeaky clean! Meanwhile a compassionate amnesia conceals the upsetting disjoint between this cartoon tidiness and the mess that is our reality.
My examples spotlight particularly well-intentioned and sincere people. Imagine how much stickier it all gets when one must factor in snide disregard or even outright malevolence. What if my friend were reluctant to pay back the loan?
In fact, we even project negativity when none is present. This explains the basis for Napoleon's quote: "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence." The apparent reluctance to take responsibility, and the apparently heedless failure to stave off inevitable breakdowns, make it easy to suspect ill-will.
But even "incompetence" is unduly brusque. It's really just a narrowness of framing. We're naturally foggy in anticipating outcomes, and amnesiac to previous failure which would shake our sense of smooth cartoon continuity. We genuinely imagine our next run will be the good one, putting it all right, even though, past a certain point, we're exhibiting the proverbial insanity of doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result.
The trick is, as usual, a flip of perspective: own your incompetence. Inhabit the discontinuity. Don't aim to feel smart, aim to actually get smart. By allowing ourselves to feel perpetually messy, we stoke curiosity and kindle creativity to patch holes, clear obstructions, and find new procedures (i.e. the "drastic steps" I urged my friend to devise). Live in the actual mess, not a slick imaginary cartoon. Shake off the amnesia and get real!
In the examples above, I was the one illuminating blind spots and contriving workarounds, while the other person labored to preserve continuity. I brainstormed while they remained stuck in slapstick comedy loops, endlessly assuring "No problem!" as an endless series of rakes slapped their faces.
As they framed it, there was a need to Do a Thing, so they reset - over and over - with steely determination to get 'er done. It never dawned on them that such an approach deprecated their previous efforts. They'd tried plenty hard those times, too! If it were just a question of steely determination, why were they caught in an endless loop? But a protective fog blocks any such consideration. Don't worry; this time I've got this!
Determination is not a cure-all. Reframing is also necessary. Me, I'm a mutant, aware of, and blithely amused by (but never depressed about) my myriad shortcomings and my track record of failure. I DON'T HAVE THIS!
So I work tirelessly to erect scaffolding and baffles and workarounds and levers and pulleys to overcome my propensity for failure and avoid the slapstick comedy loop. I have no confidence in the notion that I just need to really try this time, because I always try hard. That's my baseline! And I recall with crystal clarity the many times I applied full-hearted determination straight through to unmitigated disaster! At least I avoid the fog (while opting out of aggrieved embarrassment in the clear light of my feebleness). I just keep toiling, head down, like an ant.
This flip of owning your messy incompetence allows you to finally connect expectation with outcome; to dispel fog and escape the slapstick comedy loop. Our dodgy, inept lifestream is, paradoxically, something we can train ourselves to masterfully control, because it's real. The hypothetical shiny cartoon, not so much. A pose, by definition, has no substance!
The fallacy I've described affects all kinds of intelligences. AI chatbots have a devilishly hard time helping you devise directions ("prompts") for your future use with them. They labor with brisk confidence, certain they can anticipate their hypothetical reaction, but when you clear the slate (purging memory of the prep work) and try the prompt, it almost always misfires horribly. The bot goes “Huh??”
And something fascinating happens if you let the chatbot monitor the full arc of this process. If you don't erase the prep session, and instead open a new browser window to try the prompt with a fresh chatbot, then show the results to the original bot, it will steel itself to try again with greater determination ("I've got it THIS TIME!") with similar results...over and over. The same foggy amnesia! The same slapstick comedy loop!
At a certain point, I bought a bunch of tools and a stack of DIY books so I could be more of a manly man and FIX STUFF. And I found that each time I tried to faithfully follow instructions, there'd be some unique problem not anticipated in the books. It happened every time, yet an odd amnesia always made it feel exceptional.
Shaking off the fog, I realized that nothing ever goes normally. Even highly-experienced master carpenters reach an "aw, shit!" moment in every job (but they, unlike me, can improvise workarounds). Every day, they go out expecting to Do the Thing, but it's never just that, and amnesia makes the derailments feel eternally surprising.
An associated blind spot is discussed in The Expert/Layman Triage Fallacy (don't miss, too, the follow-up, where I explain how this fallacy is so strong that many people can't even parse anecdotes about it).