The Life-Changing Power Of Changing Your Perspective - Derek Sivers

What do you mean when you talk about useful, not true?

Oh, diving right in. (laughs)

Oh, yeah.

Um, for years, I write things that are sharing my point of view on something. I share a point of view I find useful, and I state it as a fact. I say, for example, um, "Men and women are the same." And I choose that belief, for example, uh, to counterbalance my tendency to think of men and women as more different than they actually are. So, I would deliberately choose a belief that helps counteract my tendencies, right? In the same way that somebody who has a tendency to be late to things might leave, start leaving what seems unreasonably early, which helps them get there on time, right? So, there are many beliefs in life that I choose as a countermeasure. But when I express this belief publicly, there was often somebody saying, "But that's not true. Men and women are different." I'd say, "I know it's not true. True is not the point. What the hell is true anyway? I'm choosing this belief because it's useful to me, not because it's true." And this subject came up a few times, even when I was writing a book about business. I would say something like, "Marketing is just another way of being considerate," and there would always be somebody to say, "Hmm, well, that's not always true," and I'd say, "I know it's not true, but this is a nicer way of thinking of marketing. Instead of thinking, like, 'How can I annoy people and spam them?' If you think of marketing as whatever you're doing to be considerate, to help people remember you, to help people find you, uh, it's a better way of thinking about it. I find it more useful to think that way." So, I realized there was a theme underneath my previous four books, which is that I choose beliefs because they're useful, not because they're necessarily true.

I love this idea. So, you, uh, I think George Mack, a good friend of mine, uh, phenomenal writer, got a copy of your book before maybe it'd even been announced, or maybe early on, and, uh, we'd been talking about something which is literally true but functionally false for two years, two and a half years? Uh, or functionally true but literally false. And I was like, "Oh, Derek's got it. Like, he's nailed it. This is the exact thing that we've been talking about for ages." So, I was super excited to be able to have this conversation, because it's kind of a pet project of mine too. Um, the best examples that I've got, something which is, uh, functionally true but literally false, porcupines can throw their quills. No, they can't. They're not darts players. They can't throw their quills. But if you treat a porcupine as if it can throw its quills-

(laughs)

... you're less likely to go away from it. Um, walking under a ladder is bad luck. No, it's not. I- I- I- I am yet to see any evidence that people who have walked under a ladder result in worse luck over the next however many decades of their life. But if you evade walking under ladders, you are less likely to have paint cans, and plant pots, and humans dropped on your head. Uh, pigs are morally dirty creatures, and that means that you should never touch them or eat them. Not true- As far as I'm aware, the moral status of pigs is equivalent to that of cows and chickens and everything else. But their flesh does carry a higher pathogen load on average, so if you avoid eating it, adaptively, that's protective to you, especially if you were perhaps, let's say, in the Middle East, in a place which is quite warm and doesn't have great sanitary conditions, and it's the Middle Ages. Uh, and the reverse, something which would be, uh, literally true but functionally false, much harder to find, at least in my opinion, uh, would be free will doesn't exist. So, a deterministic view of the world, uh, one which may, laws of physics and a bit of philosophy kind of seems to say to people smarter than me that this might be the case. Uh, but when you actually try and functionally use that or usefully use that in your life, uh, it kind of results in a lot of people becoming nihilistic or fatalistic or apathetic or just a bit sad or something. Uh, and I guess another one, uh, sort of, like, always treating the gun like it's loaded is-