On Consciousness Vs Success
Thought experiments
These are working notes on a framework I'm developing around consciousness and human potential - feedback and comments welcome.
________
On reflecting on how I feel many times more conscious, now, at 39, compared to at age 18.
Which leads to a few questions
What is consciousness, and how is it defined. In what way do we become more conscious as we get older?
How can I based, on what I know now, have helped my 18 year old self become more conscious?
How can we accelerate consciousness at a faster rate.
Is a higher level of consciousness related to success?
What does it mean to be conscious?
Awareness of self, emotions, who I am, and an accurate world model.
The state of being awake - as opposed to not being asleep.
To be asleep would mean to be stagnant, dormant, and not active.
(I know that being asleep is about resting and rejuvenating too, but that is another definition)
So, the main three parts of being conscious is about understanding self, and world, and the ability of taking action.
1) Understand Self - through feedback and reflection
2) Understand world - through learning and action
3) Ability to take action intentionally and chart a course - through practice.
This gives us the three things we should seek to improve.
Learning to take action is kind of a combination of the other two. Effective action is the synthesis of your internal and external maps, but also adding with it a kind of drive, energy and courage.
If you miss even one of these, you fall back into “Sleep”
Awareness + Map - Action = The Philosopher (High insight, zero impact).
Awareness + Action - Map = The Wanderer (High energy, moving in the wrong direction).
Map + Action - Awareness = The High-Functioning Robot (Successful, but miserable and driven by invisible ego-demons).
Consciousness =
(Self-Awareness + World Model) × (Drive + Energy + Courage)
The energy is the fuel, the drive is the thrust or engine, and courage is the pilots hand.
Courage is the emotional “override” required to exercise that agency when the stakes are high or the outcome is uncertain.
Therefore courage is one of the most critical components of agency and consciousness.
Agency is a term to describe someone who takes action and does so competently and therefore has an accurate self and world model.
The ability to seek a higher level of consciousness comes from a desire to improve and be better, otherwise you will just stay at the current level. This comes from understanding the world - seeing people doing better, and understanding yourself, and that you can be capable of more, and having a drive to go for it, energy and courage.
This becomes a self-fulfilling loop where you improve yourself.
What I missed at 18 and why I was less conscious
I didn’t have as accurate knowledge of myself and the world.
I didn’t understand myself nearly as well. I learnt a lot from trying and putting myself in different situations. I think because we need to try things and reflect in order to understand ourselves. I think everyone is very very different.
I didn’t understand the world nearly as well.
At 18 I was less conscious because I didn’t have a clear map, of myself and the world. This is because the map I was looking to navigate was unchartered - my life path is quite different to others, and I also didn’t ever learn or seek to understand myself.
I also believe that most people I know think very differently to me. That could be because they think differently, or are on a different level of consciousness. It’s highly likely to be both.
Should we be seeking to understand ourselves better as children?
Yes I 100% think we should be teaching people things in greater resolution about how they work, what they are most talented at, how to build feedback loops, how to seek the right fit mentors. If everyone has access to personalised tutors and more resources, we could improve humanity enormously. I and everyone I know could have achieved far more.
What kind of map should we be giving people?
The map is changing fast as technology develops, so it’s not easy to give people an accurate map. How will technology develop? We don’t yet now what the dynamics of the AI age is. How can we teach kids about how to build a product in technology when they don’t yet have basic skills. People have an absolute responsibility to share this with others so we can grow.
Realisation
If I had such different levels of conscious in my life, it must be true that everyone around us much have varying levels of consciousness. People might not necessarily become more conscious as they get older. In some cases people might become less conscious.
People think in very different ways and are different levels of consciousness.
Someone might think very differently to you and be at a different level of consciousness. Or they might think differently but be equally conscious - just oriented differently. Conflating the two is a mistake.
For example someone might be highly conscious and exercise that in business, one might exercise that as a parent, but they might not appreciate the level of consciousness in those other domains.
Consciousness needs some domain to exercise in.
I don’t think you can be conscious and not take action - that means to have no life force - no drive, or have something else missing.
So how do you tell how conscious someone is if its in another unrecognisable domain that you might not be familiar with? How to tell if someone is just thinking differently or on a different level of consciousness?
They take and exercise agency - with strong drive, energy and courage.
Some signs:
They have accurate world models and of themselves
Willing to have difficult conversations
They take action
They are courageous
Good results
But there are limitations
You’re always observing from your own level - which means your assessment is partly a reflection of your own blind spots
Someone can appear unconscious in one domain and highly conscious in another
Quiet people can seem less conscious than they are
Confident people can seem more conscious than they are
Where it gets complicated is - are they choosing that path with full awareness, or were they just socialised into it and never questioned it? That’s where consciousness as you define it becomes relevant. The same action can be conscious or unconscious depending on whether it was chosen deliberately.
Consciousness comes in waves. Some people may be less or more conscious at different times and in different domains.
Realisation
If consciousness varies this much between people, and it compounds over time through the self-fulfilling loop you described, then the gap between the most and least conscious people widens dramatically over a lifetime. Which has real implications for improving education.
Is it worth assessing people’s level of consciousness?
It actually doesn’t matter really if people are at any certain level of consciousness or not. It’s probably fine to assess people based on:
- Integrity
- Drive
- Friendliness
- Fun
Consciousness is only really useful as an indicator of yourself, and those you partner and team up with, but even then, it only matters to the extend of how important it is to your journey.
Why is it more important for those you partner and team up with and not acquiantances?
You need a shared reality.
You can’t really change other people
The difference is that with a partner you are on a journey and going to a shared destination. Think of it like these people.
Can you change people?
It’s very challenging to try to change people to be a certain way. But
- You can teach people how to treat you
- You can choose to see the good in epople
- You can encourage them and be supportive
- You can give them training / material
Other than that, it’s best to focus as best as possible on great selection.
How can we accelerate consciousness at a faster rate
If the following is true
Consciousness =
(Self-Awareness + World Model) × (Drive + Energy + Courage)
We can accelerate it by:
By reflection and updating models
By exercising action
By expanding the domains of taking action
By tightening the feedback loops and improving them
Feedback loops with high resolution - not just acting and reflecting, but getting precise, honest feedback from external sources. Mentors, coaches, trusted critics. Self reflection has blind spots that outside feedback can catch
By being around more conscious people, and content.
Being willing to be more uncomfortable to take action.
Improving the hardware - energy.
Being more courageous is partly a choice but also wisdom and knowledge.
Exposure to very different contexts and environments - travel, different industries, different cultures. Forces your world model to update in ways comfortable environments never will.
Is a higher level of consciousness related to success?
I define success defined as:
The ability to define a destination.
The ability to arrive at that destination.
The size or distance of the destination.
Success is not objective. It’s relative. If someone has less innate abilities but achieves more than someone who is substantially more capable, I would say they are more successful.
All of these factors are driven by how conscious you are:
The ability to define a destination.
Your ability to understand yourself, to understand the destination, and to set your aim.
The ability to arrive at that destination.
The ability to navigate the map to achieve at the destination.
The size or distance of the destination.
Your skills
So it is highly related to consciousness. It’s kind of a parallel results focused version.
If the formula- Consciousness = (Self\text{-}Awareness + World\ Model) \times (Drive + Energy + Courage)$ - is accurate, then we are currently going through a massive shift in consciousness.
It’s also likely to widen over time.
Education is far more important than.
My realization is this: You cannot “train” someone into consciousness. You can only Select for it or Model it.
Whether you are building a global education platform, a family, or a city-integrated university, the strategy is the same: Stop trying to “fix” the low-consciousness actors in your life. Instead, obsess over your own alignment. Tighten your feedback loops. Expand your domains of action. Upgrade your biological hardware.