@bertier
Coder by day, existential worrier by night.The day job and my years back in the day as an astrophysicist have shown me how amazing our progress as a species is. And how fragile our civilization is. Risk of near species extinction has never been higher- we're evolving fast, ever faster, and without a safety harness. At 1-Squared we're going to make a record of everything worth keeping from our incredible civilization. Just in case...
Learning and the Goldilocks Zone of Order and Chaos
November 13th 2025
10
Really bad things happen, they always will: we can never be in full control of our environment or even of ourselves. But by adopting a mental framework in which to ground events both good and bad, we are able to learn and move on.
You will need:
1. Consider bad events to exist in the world of Chaos.
These are happenings which do not fit in with our expectations or wants. They are by definition elements of the universe we don't have control over to predict.
2. Consider good events to exist in the world of Order.
These are events which turn out in line without expectations of how the Universe behaves. To varying degrees, these are the parts of our experience which we have some element of control.
3. Consider learning to be the process of integrating events from the realm of Chaos into your realm of Order.
We learn through our inquisitiveness and interest in the unusual, the rare, the strange, or the weird. These are things we have encountered which currently live in our realm of Chaos. By modifying our conceptual framework under which we view the world, we can integrate this new information into our realm of Order.
4. Be wary of staying too near to the realm of Order - the conservative.
For those who hold their views and opinions in too high regard are not sufficiently open to the new, to the novel. They cannot learn and grow. They stultify, they are easily bored. They become boring people. We may imagine a prehistoric individual too scared to approach a lava flow, and thus miss the opportunity to discover fire.
5. Be wary of stepping too far into the realm of Chaos - the radical.
For those with no fear of the unknown, overly confident steps into the realm of Chaos can result in an overload of new information incomprehensible to their current framework of thinking. Imagine this individual's first encounter with a lava flow: fascinated by the heat, he or she may stick their hands in out of curiosity and suffer fatal injuries.
6. Optimal learning involves staying in the Goldilocks Zone of Order and Chaos.
The balanced individual is able to judge the amount of chaos they are able to take on at a time, and integrate this into their understanding of the world. This is learning.
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