Synthesis #1: Building an Operating System

Synthesis of Ten Ideas

Hey there 👋,

Welcome to the first edition of Synthesis.

When I started writing 13 weeks ago, I just wanted to commit words to paper and organize my thoughts. Now, 13 weeks later, I have a better idea of where to take the Anticynical project.

If you’re new here (welcome!), today’s newsletter is a great place to start things off! If you’ve been here a while (thanks, Mom!), I hope you’ll enjoy today’s newsletter.

Many foundational aspects of life and society are changing. How we work, software and AI, aging and longevity, renewable energy, cosmopolitanism, and personalization. The world is changing at an unprecedented pace. This is not breaking news.

Although these changes offer new opportunities and resources, they also place new pressures and stressors on the individual.

Having to constantly learn new skills and adapt to new technology makes almost everyone feel like an impostor. It’s also easier than ever to compare yourself to the world’s best, leading to increased feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt.

Further, if anxiety is truly the “dizziness of freedom,” as Kierkegaard said, we have more freedom and opportunity than ever before and, thus—more anxiety. In the face of this anxiety, it’s easy to fall into cynicism, nihilism, and pessimism, surrendering to the apparent meaninglessness of the universe.

In writing Anticynical, I want to build a psychological and philosophical operating system for this rapidly changing world. A framework to thrive in such a world while also developing psychological resilience and adaptability.

As a reminder, this is the current publication schedule of the newsletter:

1. 10 ideas (one each week)

2. 2-4 weeks of recaps

3. One synthesis essay. (we are here)

4. Repeat.

Let’s jump in.

Note: this email is longer than the others, so you might have a better reading experience in the browser or the Substack app.

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Synthesis

There were a lot of common threads between the ten ideas I covered before. I decided to organize those common threads into three categories and write about two things per category:¹

1. Foundational pillars: ideas or concepts that underlie or form the basis for some or all of the ideas. I wrote about:

   1. Rational Optimism

   2. Self-awareness

2. Emergent ideas: ideas or concepts that emerge from the “interaction” between ideas ideas. I covered:

   1. Plurality of Values and “Living Out” Revolt

   2. Cynicism and (Non) Achievement

3. Complementary practices: practices that can support, enhance, or strengthen the ideas and their implementation. I covered:

   1. Mindfulness Meditation

   2. Goal or Process-setting

Foundational Pillars

Rational Optimism

I briefly mentioned rational optimism in the first edition of Anticynical. It is a foundational concept to this entire project.

To begin, I’ll quote Naval Ravikant’s succinct definition of rational optimism again:

To create things, you have to be a rational optimist. Rational in the sense that you have to see the world for what it really is. And yet you have to be optimistic about your own capabilities, and your capability to get things done.

Seeing the world for “what it really is” is hard.

To illustrate, no one really "sees" or understands how exactly the stock markets work. How or why the prices fluctuate from moment to moment. Consider then that the stock markets are a tiny part of the world. The world is much more complex and vast. And it's rapidly evolving.

However, some develop a deep understanding of a small slice of the market and get rich from that. And others develop approximations—basic principles² and mental models—that represent or approximate reality well enough to be useful.

This hints at a “generalized specialist” way of looking at reality—delving deep into some of its aspects and using helpful approximations for most other aspects—is a common tack many successful people take.

In fact, this way of looking at reality might be the only effective way to look at reality in a dynamic, evolving world. To thrive in such a world, you have to keep learning new things and also continue to build deep expertise in a few areas. This deep expertise allows you to contribute to and impact the world, giving you a sense of mastery and purpose.

Now let’s talk about optimism. The optimism Naval, or I, am referring to isn’t foolish or naive.

Yes, proportioning your beliefs to the evidence is prudent. I have terribly flat feet, and I’m a slow runner. I have no reason or evidence to believe I can sprint 100m in under 10s, even if I practiced consistently for 10 years. Being optimistic about running 100m under 10s is naive.³

“90% of all startups fail.” We’ve all heard a version of that before. And it’s likely true—the actual number might be 80% or 75%—but most startups indeed fail.

But if you have a strong background, a good team, and you’re trying to build a company you’re passionate about, there is little reason to appeal to the failure probability of startups.

First, you don't have much evidence conditioned on your specific circumstances. Second, taking something that's probable for something granted is a fallacy. Third, the failure rate becomes less relevant if you're willing to pivot and try multiple times. And fourth, even if your startup fails and you decide to quit, your life doesn't end there; you will have learned valuable lessons.

Being optimistic and trusting yourself and your team to execute well over time is entirely rational. It is actually more naive to get overly attached to the high failure rate of startups in this case.

This kind of optimism translates to life as a whole. You trust yourself to live life well. You trust yourself to grow toward your ideal self.

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Self-awareness

Self-awareness is such an important aspect of psychological well-being. No surprise, then, that it plays a central role in everything I’ve written about.

When you design your environment, you make certain things difficult and other things easier. But what are these “certain things”? To answer that you need to have self-awareness of your own tendencies. Is it hard for you to consciously save/invest money? Then enrolling in automatic recurring deposits is a great option. Do you (like me) have difficulty controlling yourself when there is junk food at home? Then limiting how much junk food is at home is a good way to design your environment.

Anticynical #2: Environment Design

If you resonate with the idea of integrating revolt (see next paragraph for more info) into your life, then you should have some idea of what you’re revolting against. What are some specific ways in which the absurd plays out in your life?

Remember, the absurd is the strange condition you find yourself in, living in this world. You go through the motions and routines of life. But why do you do those things? You know you are going to die one day. Why do anything at all? Why keep living? If you take a step back to examine your life, you might realize that it is kind of absurd.

This realization and seeing your life’s absurdity requires a level of self-awareness.

Once realized, instead of succumbing to this absurdity and falling into nihilism or cynicism, you might choose to explore and enjoy the depths and beauty of existence. You revolt against the absurdity.

Anticynical #8: Revolt

Recognizing when you’re merely acting and producing motions rather than those actions achieving something and moving you toward an outcome is often only possible when you take a hard look at yourself. You have to be highly self-aware to know that you’re deluding yourself.

Anticynical #7: Acting vs. Achieving

Thus, without some self-awareness, it’s impossible to understand or implement many of the Anticynical ideas.

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Emergent Ideas

Plurality of Values and “Living Out” Revolt

I’ve said this before: Albert Camus’s idea of revolt is one of my favorite philosophical ideas.

Yet, you live in a constant revolt against this absurdity. […] You have a perpetual middle finger raised to the universe’s silence and indifference. You live fully asserting the present, not being caught up in the past or being hostage to the future. You explore and enjoy the depths and beauty of existence.

I want to relate this idea of revolt to having a plurality of values.

A plurality of values means that you recognize that many things in life are important and worth pursuing and that these things can often be in tension with one another. For example, the value of honesty might conflict with the value of loyalty in certain situations. In these cases, you must find a way to balance these values.

Anticynical #5: Plurality of Values

In my opinion, the way to “live out” revolt is by:

• being clearly aware of the absurdity of life and inevitable death,

• not succumbing under the burden of this absurdity,

• not trying to assign some artificial meaning or purpose to this absurdity,

• striving to live in the present and not squandering away attention, and

• using a plurality of values to guide your executive functioning.

Values give you an overarching “direction” in life, and a plurality curbs the worst aspects of placing too much emphasis on a single value.

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Cynicism and (Non) Achievement

I wrote the following about cynicism in Anticynical #10:

Modern⁴ cynicism is a defense mechanism that often stems from insecurity. It is an effort-avoiding, intellectually lazy position that allows you to feel better about yourself. It can also appear to sound intelligent.

[…]

The cynical “attack strategy” is also effective. You can shut down a surprising number of discussions and arguments by employing the cynical strategy. And here’s the most pernicious aspect when you have ingrained cynical tendencies: the person you “attack” most often is yourself.

Anticynical #10: Cynicism to Skepticism

Here, I want to explore the interaction of the two emphasized parts:

• cynicism is an effort-avoiding and intellectually lazy position that makes you feel better in the moment, and

• once cynicism becomes a tendency and a habit, you are very cynical of yourself.

These two work in tandem, creating a vicious feedback loop that makes you feel good (in the moment) about not taking up challenging, but fulfilling endeavors. This all but guarantees that you never achieve what you want.

Whenever you fancy creating something or aspire towards something, you’ll quickly convince yourself that doing that thing wouldn’t be in your best interests. Or you would paint yourself a victim, claiming only those that aren’t held back as you are would be able to do such things.

“I’m too old to start working out; that’s for younger and fitter people.”

“Ha! I can’t even save $5 from my paycheck… I’m going to live in a cardboard box when I retire!“

Whenever I hear people say such self-cynical, self-defeating things, I feel like vigorously shaking them and then hugging them.

Shaking them because I want to “wake” them up to take a hard look at reality. To not be effort-avoiding and lazy.

I also feel like giving them a hug because I empathize with them and know what it’s like to be in that vicious feedback loop.

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Complementary Practices

Mindfulness Meditation

I have been practicing mindfulness meditation regularly for almost five years. It is one the most powerful tools to develop self-awareness⁵ and skillfully direct attention.

Goal or Process-setting

Some people love setting goals and swear by them. Others claim goals don’t work, but processes do.

I’m personally biased toward processes, but I use both depending on the use case. Paired with a plurality of values, both can provide more direction or orientation in life.

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Bonus: Behind the Scenes

Here are some fun things that came out while writing this newsletter.

The N-th Order Idea Matrix

To start relating the ten ideas to one another I created an “idea matrix.” I wrote down the ideas along the row and column headers. Then each cell in the matrix corresponded with an “interaction idea” between the two ideas. I thought about each non-gray cell for a few minutes and wrote down my thoughts on a card.

Then I picked out some interesting interactions from this matrix and put them on another matrix, creating a “higher order” matrix. In theory, this could go on ad infinitum: a matrix of ideas of ideas of ideas….

My idea matrix at an intermediate stage. The 10 ideas are abbreviated.

A Fantasy Story that (as of now) remains a Fantasy

My original idea for this synthesis newsletter was to write a story based on the ten ideas.

I did some world-building, created a bunch of characters, and even drew a rough map of (a small part of) the world. But after writing ~3000 words, the story had only just begun. There was no way I could deliver the whole thing in time. So, I switched tracks.

A draft map of a region around the city-state of Acynia.

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I'd love to hear from you…

Did you like any one of the subtopics in particular? Or did you think one of them was just fluff? Tell me more.

Or anything else at all. Just hit reply.

1. Kind of an arbitrary decision, but one that allowed me to focus and not be overwhelmed.

2. Like Ben Graham’s definition of what investment is: “an investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis promises safety of principal and an adequate return. Operations not meeting these requirements are speculative.”

3. Some might argue that a prosthetic in the near future could allow me to do that. But until such a prosthetic becomes safe and relatively cheap, it is still a pipe dream for me.

4. As opposed to the ancient school of Cynicism.

5. Of course, one of the “goals” of meditation is to “drop” the self from self-awareness and be left with only awareness. But that’s a discussion for another time.