Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal - Curt Jaimungal: Why You Are Brighter Than You Think

Starting point is 00:00:00 When a country's productivity cycle is broken, people feel it in their paychecks, their communities, their futures. What does this mean for individuals, communities, and businesses across the country? Join business leaders, policymakers, and influencers for CG's national series on the Canadian Standard of Living, productivity and innovation. Learn what's driving Canada's productivity decline and discover actionable solutions to reverse it. I was just watching this video about the various signs that you're a better writer than you think, I'm assuming YouTube recommended it to me because ever since I signed this book deal with Penguin Press, I've had the pleasant thoughts of every sentence I write as utter garbage what the F is wrong with me,

Starting point is 00:00:41 trending in my mind like Opelite meets Snape. As I watched that video, I realized almost verbatim these tips can be applied to you as a self-learner, as a student, as a researcher, someone who watches this channel, for instance. If you're trying to sincerely understand math, physics, philosophy, whatever your field is, it's likely that you feel that you're not good enough, but that's okay. The structure of intellectual life is set up to vaporize your confidence, and once these are pointed out, you won't be able to unsee them. Tally it up. How many rejections have you accumulated, whether it's journals or grants or graduate programs or job applications, even innocuous

Starting point is 00:01:23 comments here or posts on YouTube? Think about how ferocious the response was versus how many genuine, specific compliments you received about your thinking. For most people, animate versions outnumber compliments by an absurd margin. But this is just also a numbers game. A competitive journal rejects 95% of submissions. A top graduate program does the same. Even Terry Tao talked about getting rejected over here. You could genuinely be remarkable and still collect a skyscraper of put-downs. Just as we have a positivity bias, there's also a negative, bias, where if three people tell you your talk was insightful, you don't care about that as much as the one reviewer who wrote that the authors demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of the

Starting point is 00:02:11 literature. I didn't understand this until recently. Think about it. By the time something of yours is published, it's ancient. By the time you've put out a piece on substack and get feedback, it's a draft from weeks or even months ago. There's resubmission and revision purgatory. By the you put out content, any content, even here on YouTube, you've moved on. You think it's a piece of that's because your thinking is sharper, your knowledge is grown, and you just notice the flaws. It's like being judged by not sticking to whatever it was when you said, it's not a phase, mom. Personally, I cringe at anything of mine that's three months old. Every three months, I feel like a different person in terms of my Veltan show, my articulation. I say this on the podcast all the time.

Starting point is 00:03:01 So when someone critiques something that I published a year ago, for instance, they're critiquing a ghost. But the critiques that this doppelganger accumulates, they hurt equally. The ghost is see-through, and so the bullets, they land just as hard. Your current understanding almost always outpaces the last thing that anyone saw from you, and that lag is something that only you see. I interviewed mathematician David Bessis, who has an article on dual-braid monoids, and it was stuck in a pre-publication editorial phase for years, literally just trying to find an editor who

Starting point is 00:03:38 could grok it. And during that entire time, his thinking kept advancing while the world waited to judge a frozen snapshot of where he'd been. Any half-serious intellectual work requires unceasing criticism. You write an argument, you pace around, you find the gap, you scratch it out, you hate yourself, you yell at that lady in the elevator with a the dog who licked your glove and she's fine with it because dog owners think everyone loves their dog just as much as they do. Brutally questioning your analysis is par for the course for anything cerebral. The willingness to throw out months of work because you found a single flaw is a minimum requirement to understanding or to producing anything in math and physics

Starting point is 00:04:24 and philosophy. Now, of course, the cost is the recalcitrant loop of looking at your work and thinking this is horrible, this is horrible, and it just, it stays in your vein, moves from acute to chronic, from something localized to systemic. But you can't get rigor without some rigor mortis. Most often you're reading from Tao from Penrose from Ullinbeck and you sit down and you stare at your own work. Like, why wouldn't you feel inadequate? The comparison is super unfair. Interestingly, imposter syndrome doesn't seem to affect all fields equally. Most plumbers don't need to read about the greatest pipe joints in history before attempting their own. But you have to do the equivalent of that during your first Starbucks.

Starting point is 00:05:12 Just remember, virtually all papers have modest citation counts. Almost all published research is incremental, and it's still useful without being overtly brilliant. Most proofs look like cluges. Most insights are like direct. derivatives and that they're partial. You're not competing with Witten. This goes for self-study as well. Most of the time, you hear about someone being the next Einstein. It's not true. Einstein's parents weren't professors. They didn't have the money to hire formal tutors, but many of the people that you compare yourself to had these advantages. And more,

Starting point is 00:05:49 if anyone's a modern Einstein, I've put my money on Scott Aronson. Your contributions and your self-study can be valuable and noteworthy in and of themselves. When I'm wrestling with a guest's argument about, say, the hard problem of consciousness or quantum foundations, I refuse to let even a scintilla of confusion remain unexamined. Claude is my thinking partner here. Actually, they just released something major, which is Claude Opus 4.6, a state-of-the-art model. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire.

Starting point is 00:06:27 your workflow thinks with you, not for you, whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle problems that matter to you. I use Claude actually live right here during this interview with Eva Miranda. That's actually a feature called artifacts, and none of the other LLM providers have something that even comes close to rivaling it. Claude handles interalia technical philosophy, mathematical rigor, and deep research synthesis, all without producing slovenly reasoning. The responses are decorous, precise, well-structured,

Starting point is 00:07:02 never sycophantic, unlike some other models. And it doesn't just hand me the answers. The way that I've prompted it is that it helps me think through problems. Ready to tackle bigger problems? Get started with Claude today at clod.a.i slash theories of everything. That's clod.a.i slash theories of everything and check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all of the features mentioned in today's episode. People who benefit from your thinking will never tell you.

Starting point is 00:07:33 Most of the comments on YouTube channels aren't flattering, and if you get the impression of it being otherwise, it's because YouTube just surfaces those. So if you're a researcher, people cite you in a footnote and then move on. They use your method, and you most likely won't directly hear about it. If you're a student or a self-studier, it's basically the same structure at a different scale. You explain a concept to a friend.

Starting point is 00:07:57 The person you help rarely comes back to say, man, that changed how I think about basis vectors, for instance. They just absorb it and move on. You don't know the people that you've touched. And this applies throughout life. There's this one guy. I was with my friend at the TTC. It was Spadina subway station.

Starting point is 00:08:16 And I remember some stranger came down. So my friend and I were talking about how we didn't have the money to go home. I think we're 14 or 15 or so, just downtown quietly talking about it. And then we moved on. This was like minutes later, some stranger came down the stairs. I still don't know to this day how he overheard us because it was quite far away. He was by the streets.

Starting point is 00:08:37 And anyhow, he came down and he gave us two tokens to go into the subway. He just gave it to us. I think about that guy all the time, constantly. He gave us tokens. and then he just left. He just went right back upstairs. He didn't even go back into the south. He didn't have to go to travel anywhere, as far as I could tell.

Starting point is 00:08:58 He'll never know how much I appreciate what he did, and how much I think about it, how much I think that that sort of kindness is rare. So for every person that you directly hear positive news from, there may be tens more who benefited but just said nothing. This video is sponsored by Shortform, If you want a free trial and an exclusive $50 off their annual plan, then go to the link in my description, shortform.com slash T-O-E. If you're like me, you've encountered books that are so dense, finishing them is actually just the beginning.

Starting point is 00:09:34 Short form helps with that. Their book guides go far beyond pastiche summaries. They critique, they add context, they include interactive exercises, and connect ideas across authors. Take Gertell Escherbach, or The Master and His Emissary, two of the most demanding, reads in consciousness studies on the popular market. My method is I read the guide first, then the book, then I read the guide again. So it's a triptych of engagement that cements understanding, better understanding for me. The GEB guide maps recursive structures in a way that exhibits intellectual pliotropy where one insight branches into consciousness, computation, and self-reference

Starting point is 00:10:09 simultaneously. Shoreform covers philosophy, science, and psychology, ipso facto, the intellectual core of this channel. They publish new guides weekly and subscribers, on what books get covered next. Their browser extension, Shortform AI, summarizes articles and YouTube videos with a single click. Go to shortform.com slash T-O-E for a free trial and an exclusive $50 off your annual subscription. That's shortform.com slash T-O-E.

Starting point is 00:10:40 When I'm wrestling with a guest's argument about, say, the hard problem with consciousness or quantum foundations, I refuse to let even a scintilla of confusion remain unexamined. Claude is my thinking partner here. Actually, they just released something major, which is Claude Opus 4.6, a state-of-the-art model.

Starting point is 00:10:59 Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow, thinks with you, not for you. Whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing your next business move, Claude extends your thinking

Starting point is 00:11:15 to tackle problems that matter to you. I use Claude, actually live right here, during this interview with Eva Miranda. That's actually a feature called artifacts, and none of the other LLM providers have something that even comes close to rivaling it. Claude handles, interalia, technical philosophy, mathematical rigor,

Starting point is 00:11:33 and deep research synthesis, all without producing slovenly reasoning. The responses are decorous, precise, well-structured, never sycophantic, unlike some other models, and it doesn't just hand me the answers. The way that I've prompted it is that it helps me think through problems. Ready to tackle larger problems?

Starting point is 00:11:51 Sign up for Claude today and get 50% off Claude Pro when you use my link, Claude.a.I. slash theories of everything, all one word. In the writing world, the trap is to equate book sales with quality, but in intellectual life, there's some other metric like the H-Index or citation counts or how many PhDs you have, which university, there's a hierarchy, people don't like to speak about this, Are you an associate professor? Are you a full professor? What are the journal impact factors?

Starting point is 00:12:22 What's your GPA? Grant dollars? Etcetera. Quine had a concept of a web of belief, which is about how we don't exactly know isolated facts, but instead there's a vast network of interconnected ideas and we just try to make something coherent from it. It's somewhat similar for intellectual life. We have a vast network of interconnected metrics that we use to gauge our self-worth. To truly understand something, to progress relative to oneself, is just a single tiny atomic measure that's negligible and private. In fact, you're penalized forever feeling good about yourself, since it's just going to be, hey, that's the Dunning Kruger effect, bro.

Starting point is 00:13:01 You're an idiot and you should know it, and you should gauge how little you know from how confident you feel. But metrics can be wretched. They often don't measure what we think. So decouple your self-worth from these other metrics. Obviously, it's much easier said than done. Now here's a video I made on the very topic of why the aching aspects of understanding is almost essential and how LLMs have me worried.

Starting point is 00:13:25 Actually, soon I'll be posting a video on how the Dunning-Krooger effect isn't the effect that most people think, and ironically, the people who invoke it tend to be exemplifying what they think is the Dunning-Kroger effect themselves because the Dunning-Kroger literature doesn't say what most people think it says. It's similar to how people will just say, oh, so-and-so is the uncanny valley. Like it's an actual scientific term as if it has a real effect, but if you ask them how are you objectively measuring verisimilitude and creepiness, they realize it's a faulty notion. An extremely large-scale study in the UK found that science and pharmaceuticals have a 78% prevalence of imposter syndrome compared to other fields like property and construction, which sit at 29%. This is what my previous comment regarding plumbers was referencing.

Starting point is 00:14:17 In other words, your electrician likely doesn't feel as inadequate as you. There was a systematic review covering 62 studies and over 14,000 participants, which also found something similar. It turns on imposter syndrome breeds under four specific conditions. Number one is if you have some form of ambiguous criteria of what competence is. You can never actually prove that you know enough, for instance. There's always another paper. There's always another technique, another colleague who knows something that you don't, for instance.

Starting point is 00:14:46 Number two is delayed and opaque feedback. So you submit something, a paper, a video, or what have you, a book? You have to wait months. And sometimes the reasons for rejections are cryptic. So then it's multivocal feedback. Three, extreme social comparison with peers whose internal doubts that you can't see. and then four is a genius culture. Now, this means that brilliance is treated as innate rather than developed,

Starting point is 00:15:17 and paradoxically, the innate one is the one that's celebrated more. Now, when it comes to the other construction and trade work that we mentioned before, it inverts all of this. A plumber either fixed the leak or didn't. You don't sit around wondering if your pipe joint was innovative enough. Plumbers are like complex numbers. They have full closure. Now, here's what I was wondering. Don't we also have a well-documented optimism bias?

Starting point is 00:15:42 Isn't it the case that most of us think we're above-average at, say, driving, or above-average in intelligence, or above-average in looks? If so, then isn't this contradictory to say that 70% of academics also feel like frauds? Well, it turns out it's compatible, because the optimism bias is about a general self-concept, but in low-stake context. Whereas imposter syndrome is about your specific role performance under extreme evaluation. So that means you can simultaneously believe that, hey, I'm pretty clever, and also I'm a piece of who doesn't deserve archive access on GM, someone's going to find out. There's also the more subtle mechanism of inflating how competent your peers are.

Starting point is 00:16:23 This is something I struggle with constantly. By comparison, your self-assessment looks horrendous. It's like an unholy mix of underestimating yourself and then overestimating those that you interact with. But just like qualia or anything else consciousness-related, only you have privileged access to your own confusion, to your doubt. Everyone else's output is polished. For instance, it always surprises me how much knowledge that I project onto

Starting point is 00:16:52 interviewees of this channel say that they don't actually have and how much knowledge I have that they don't. I'm sure the same happens to you. So to some, the informational environment that you live in, like the YouTube comments, the archive, the conferences, the rejections, the lag between when people evaluate your output and when you actually output, the daily comparison with the giants of the field, the silence from the people who actually appreciate you, the metrics that don't actually measure what matters, but everyone cares about them, the conditions for imposter

Starting point is 00:17:22 syndrome. None of this is evidence that you're inadequate. Anyone would feel low. Be a miracle if you felt half decent about your ability and intelligence. So, therefore, likely, you're a better thinker than you think. Now, if you like this video, you may also like this other video I have dispelling the myths of girdles and completeness theorem, and this other one about Veritasium and where I think some of the ontological inferences from the effectiveness of Feynman's path integral is inflated. The links to them are on screen and in the description. The Economist covers math, physics, philosophy, and AI in a manner that shows how different countries perceived, developments and how the impact markets. They recently published a piece on China's new neutrino detector.

Starting point is 00:18:12 They cover extending life via mitochondrial transplants, creating an entirely new field of medicine. But it's also not just science. They analyze culture. They analyze finance, economics, business, international affairs across every region. I'm particularly liking their new insider feature. It was just launched this month. It gives you, it gives me a front row access to the economist's internal editorial debates. where senior editors argue through the news with world leaders and policymakers in twice-weekly long format shows. Basically, an extremely high-quality podcast. Something else you should know about is that if you go to their app, they not only have daily articles,

Starting point is 00:18:52 but they also have long-form podcasts with their editors and writers. This is also available online. Whether it's scientific innovation or shifting global politics, the economist provides comprehensive coverage beyond headlines, as a toe listener, you get a special discount. Head over to Economist.com slash T.O.E to subscribe. That's economist.com slash TOE for your discount. The Madamy Holmes bike for brain health

Starting point is 00:19:20 supporting Baycrest returns on May 31st for its fifth anniversary with a new start and finish at the Aga Khan Museum. Join thousands of cyclists as we take over the DVP and Gardner Expressway in support of dementia research and brain health. Writers of all abilities are welcome, and both regular bikes and e-bikes can participate. Bring your friends, family, or corporate team, and make an impact. Register today at bikeforbrainhealth.ca.

Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal - Curt Jaimungal: Why You Are Brighter Than You Think

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