{"id":7277,"date":"2017-12-18T11:02:03","date_gmt":"2017-12-18T18:02:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/?p=7277"},"modified":"2019-04-08T05:00:47","modified_gmt":"2019-04-08T13:00:47","slug":"discovering-meta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2017\/12\/18\/discovering-meta\/","title":{"rendered":"Discovering the Meta"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my favorite early lessons in entrepreneurship was the idea of working \u201con\u201d your business instead of merely working \u201cin\u201d your business.<\/p>\n

To see the distinction, imagine running a restaurant. Here, working \u201cin\u201d the business is clear. Make delicious food. Offer great service to your customers. Keep the place clean and inviting. Being able to cook and host is often a motivation for many to start a restaurant.<\/p>\n

Running a restaurant is a lot more than cooking and waiting tables. It\u2019s business strategy, marketing, cost accounting and pricing. Working \u201con\u201d the restaurant means thinking one layer above to examine what processes the business itself consists of and how you can improve them.<\/p>\n

Many restaurateurs fail because they can\u2019t think at that higher abstract level. They intimately understand the food and service dimensions. But they struggle because they can\u2019t see the processes and systems that result in high-quality food, new customers and steady profits.<\/p>\n

There is a pattern of thinking here, though, that\u2019s a lot more general than just about business success. This is the idea of a basic level of understanding and a \u201cmeta\u201d level, which takes as its objects the very elements of thinking in the basic level itself. I believe there\u2019s reason to believe that much of what we deem \u201cintelligence\u201d, as opposed to mere calculation, involves this kind of \u201cmeta\u201d leap in conceptual understanding.<\/p>\n

\u201cAha!\u201d Moments When Discovering the Meta<\/h2>\n

I can attribute one of the biggest changes in my own life to one of these moments of discovering a hidden meta layer. In this case, it was thinking about habits, goals and productivity systems instead of just the objects of those pursuits.<\/p>\n

The \u201cAha!\u201d moment for me was discovering that, instead of just trying to work on some project to achieve a particular goal, I could work on my habits directly to achieve that goal. Instead of blaming a failure on willpower or discipline, I could look at the habits that failed me and see how one could be redesigned in the future to avoid those problems.<\/p>\n

After discovering this meta layer for myself, I became a little obsessed with it. I\u2019m not alone. Many people I know who started blogs on personal development often do so with habits, goal setting or productivity systems as a first topic. The discovery of this \u201cmeta\u201d layer to life can feel so profound that it\u2019s hard to believe you didn\u2019t see it sooner.<\/p>\n

Meta-Metas or Turtles All the Way Up<\/h2>\n

There\u2019s an old joke about an shaman and a scientist. The scientist asked the shaman what the origin of the world was and the shaman said that the world was resting on the back of a gigantic tortoise. The scientist responds smugly, \u201cbut what does the tortoise stand on?\u201d The shaman responded casually, \u201cAnother tortoise.\u201d \u201cBut what does that<\/em> tortoise stand on?\u201d the scientist asked again. The shaman replied, \u201cIt\u2019s tortoises all the way down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Metas are a bit like tortoises, except in this analogy they stack up rather than stack downwards. Once you have a certain level of understanding of one layer, it\u2019s always possible to reach out to a new higher layer and start seeing the \u201cmeta\u201d of the layer you had previously discovered.<\/p>\n

Consider our restaurant. The amateur restaurateur sees the business in terms of food and service. The smarter restaurateur sees it in terms of business processes that create the food and service. The smartest restaurateur, sees those business processes in terms of strategies that compel them. Metas on top of metas.<\/p>\n

Or consider habits. The initial layer is to strive after things, and blame amorphous properties like willpower or motivation when you can\u2019t reach them. The meta layer is to investigate the processes that guide willpower and motivation\u2014habits, goals and systems. The meta-meta layer is to think about the ideas and philosophies that guide those meta-level objects. What kinds of goals should I have? What habits are meta-stable<\/a>? Should a system be thorough or sparse?<\/p>\n

You Can\u2019t Force the Meta<\/h2>\n

Clearly meta-understandings are incredibly valuable. Since a meta layer encapsulates the layers below it, you can always reason downwards, if that is more appropriate. The restaurateur who has reached the level of seeing business processes, for instance, doesn\u2019t automatically forget about the food.<\/p>\n

Given this idea, it might seem reasonable to ask whether we can generate these meta-level insights directly. The pattern is relatively clear\u2014instead of reasoning about the objects directly, you reason about the higher abstractions that themselves reason about the objects. This might seem to form a \u201cpump\u201d so to speak, that would allow you to generate meta layers automatically, simply by thinking hard enough.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, however, I don\u2019t think you can force it. I believe that this is because the meta comes from having detailed understanding of the layer below. If you don\u2019t have that, the \u201cmeta\u201d layer you generate has no power. You might be able to understand that it exists, but you can\u2019t actually elevate your thinking towards it.<\/p>\n

To give an example of this, about a year or so ago, I started learning to play chess. I had learned the rules of the game as a child, but I never had any skilled opponents and didn\u2019t practice. Then, recently, I started playing again with a good friend who was quite skilled at the game.<\/p>\n

Chess knowledge is easy to think in terms of layers. The most basic understanding of chess are the rules themselves. Bishops move diagonally. Rooks move horizontally and vertically. Pawns move only forward, except to capture, which has to be on a diagonal.<\/p>\n

The first \u201chigher\u201d layer of chess is encapsulated in the patterns that are not part of the basic rules, but are inevitable consequences of them. One such pattern is a \u201cfork\u201d where your piece simultaneously attacks two of your opponents pieces, and can sometimes force them to sacrifice one if they aren\u2019t properly protected. There is no rule for fork in chess. It\u2019s a higher-layer that comes from understanding the basic rules well enough to see that this pattern exists above them.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s more than just forks. Further layers of chess become increasingly abstract. Great players can often lose on lower-level principles of chess, such as material, sacrificing a pawn or piece, but gain on meta principles like activity or positional dominance.<\/p>\n

The thing is, when I started learning about chess as an adult, I knew about these things. I heard about concepts like pawn structure, aggressiveness, sharpness in tactics, etc.. but I couldn\u2019t *see* them. I knew those layers existed, but when a chess master pointed out that a certain setup was favorable to white because of one of these higher-level concepts, I was blind to it. They literally saw the chess board differently than I did because their mastery of the lower levels allowed a facility of \u201cmeta\u201d understanding.<\/p>\n

Side note: Sticklers may be rustled at my overly loose usage of \u201cmeta\u201d here. \u201cMeta\u201d interpreted strictly means something is \u201cabout\u201d itself. So meta-chess would be\u2026 chess about chess? Maybe that\u2019s meaningless. Incidentally, this is a problem with \u201cmeta\u201d not being a concept in and of itself, but a prefix which depends on which word is used as the base. Therefore, there are many things which exhibit \u201clayer-hopping\u201d in the same way as strictly \u201cmeta\u201d ideas, but may not officially qualify because the correct noun is lacking to truly make it reflexive. This is a little bit of an unconventional extension of the idea of \u201cmeta\u201d, so for those who want to limit it strictly, feel free to substitute my overuse of the word \u201cmeta\u201d with the somewhat more general (and in my opinion less illustrative) idea of \u201cabstraction.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Meta and Chunks<\/h2>\n

These days, the popular account of such understanding is that of \u201cchunks<\/a>\u201d. Human working memory is famously limited to just a few objects. Our mental powers comes from being able, through exposure, practice and insight, to bind atoms of understanding together into larger and larger chunks.<\/p>\n

Experts have expertise because their repertoire of lower-level chunks allows for increasingly abstract patterns to be deftly employed when they\u2019re needed. Physics experts see physics problems differently than novices<\/a>. They see them in terms of deep principles rather than surface features of a problem. An expert might look at a problem and say, \u201coh this is a conservation of energy issue,\u201d whereas a novice might say, \u201chmmm this is one of the ones that has a string and a pulley\u2026 which formula do you use for those again?\u201d<\/p>\n

This view of chunks also implies that meta-layers, although I\u2019ve conceptualized them as existing discretely on top of earlier understandings, aren\u2019t really discrete. While the idea of working \u201con\u201d one\u2019s business as opposed to \u201cin\u201d it seems fairly clear, there\u2019s still a lot of crossover. Does opting for smaller portion sizes represent a basic-level strategy of presenting fancy-seeming dishes? Or is it a higher level strategy of market positioning? It\u2019s often not clearly separate, and the reasoning compelling such choices can blur boundaries.<\/p>\n

What I think is useful to the meta understanding, rather than thinking about chunks alone, is that the meta understanding implies that often what you\u2019re doing when building expertise is making understandings that directly manipulate the upstream causes of your previous reasoning.<\/p>\n

Meta is Math<\/h2>\n

There\u2019s a powerful analogy here between the meta-climbing of increasingly abstract conceptual understanding and learning mathematics. In a way, mathematics is a kind of rarefied meta-level thinking.<\/p>\n

The hallmark of math is this kind of conceptual climb. You start by counting on your fingers. That generalizes to numbers that go past ten. Then you get arithmetic\u2014plus and minus, multiply and division. What if you multiplied the multiplier? That gets you to exponents and logarithms. What if you took partial numbers, extended the number line backwards or allowed it to rotate? That gives you the continuum, negative numbers and complex numbers, respectively.<\/p>\n

The hallmark of mathematics is to take one level and generalize it or extend it in some way. This goes on and on and on until eventually you have things like commutative rings in abstract algebra, which are completely opaque to anyone without advanced mathematics degrees.<\/p>\n

Meta-levels have a similar flavor. There\u2019s the layer you understand. There\u2019s the layer above that you can see exists, but can\u2019t really work with. Then there\u2019s the layers above that which you don\u2019t understand at all.<\/p>\n

Depending on your feelings towards the topic, you may feel those meta layers are genuine, and represent a deficit in your understanding, or you may feel they represent and increasingly elaborate form of intellectual masturbation, with people coming up with increasingly esoteric descriptions of a fundamental lie.<\/p>\n

The existence of a meta-generating process doesn\u2019t say anything about its veracity, unfortunately. A genuinely useful process may get derailed if it introduces a falsehood at a lower layer. Then, you might get increasingly sophisticated elaborations of that falsehood. Alchemy and astrology had tons of smart people as adherents, but the sophisticated abstract understandings collapse since that\u2019s not how stars or substances actually work.<\/p>\n

Pathways to Finding the Meta<\/h2>\n

While I don\u2019t think you can \u201cforce\u201d a meta-level understanding where the object level is insufficient to support it, I do think the opposite is possible. That is, I think it\u2019s possible to have a rich object-level and simply not notice the meta level sitting above it.<\/p>\n

This explains why discovering the meta, for many, is an \u201cAha!\u201d moment of insight. Discovering habits is such a personal development leap for many because they\u2019ve trained themselves to take action to reach goals, but it didn\u2019t occur to them to think about the processes that generate the behavior itself. If you\u2019re ready, that insight can be digested relatively rapidly.<\/p>\n

This suggests a path for finding the meta in many areas of life, whether it be self-development, chess, physics or art:<\/p>\n

1. Acknowledge that there are levels beyond what you can currently perceive.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is especially important if you have a tendency to dismiss them. \u201cHistory is just one thing after another,\u201d or, \u201cAll modern art is bullshit,\u201d are meta-dismissing comments. Now it\u2019s certainly possible that established views are wrong. It may be the case that historians are overconfident in their conceptual understanding of how events unfold, or that modern art\u2019s philosophy is suspect.<\/p>\n

However, if we accept that virtually everything has meta layers and meta-meta layers, turtling all the way up, then one needs to be careful dismissing the layers one can\u2019t currently see as not actually existing. As I explained earlier, I simply couldn\u2019t see the chess concepts the grandmasters were talking about. If chess had been a more subjective domain, I might have wanted to dismiss their concepts entirely simply because I lacked the ability to see them.<\/p>\n

2. Probe your own meta-levels. You may be ripe for an \u201cAha!\u201d moment in one of them.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ask yourself what would be the meta level of the problem domain you\u2019re trying to work in. What would it mean to \u201cgo up one level\u201d in your business, career or philosophy? The answer may give you clues as to how to climb up there, if you\u2019re ready.<\/p>\n

3. Develop richer understandings one level below.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re not ready, the answer will probably be vague or unintelligible, just as the advanced chess concepts were to me. The solution here isn\u2019t to dismiss the meta or ignore it, but to work on enriching your understanding of the layer below. As that foundation ripens, it will be easier and easier to think of it abstractly until you\u2019re ready to move up to the layer above.<\/p>\n

Climbing Meta-Ladders<\/h2>\n

This idea, that meta-layers can only be reached with sufficient understanding of the layer below, I think prevents the biggest worry of this chain of reasoning, namely that if you obsess over the meta layer, where does it stop? Don\u2019t you just go off into an increasingly heady realm, detached from the object-level concerns until you start asking those bizarre philosophical questions like what the meaning of the word \u201cis\u201d is?<\/p>\n

This worry, of course, is perhaps a symptom of runaway abstracting without first trying to get a grip on the layer below. Properly construed, a higher meta layer should have even greater familiarity with the objects below it, so that they are enriched by that understanding, rather than forgotten.<\/p>\n

That being said, perhaps there is a \u201cmeta\u201d to this entire chain of meta-reasoning I\u2019m presenting right now. Namely, when to think about the meta layer and when to focus on the ground-layer itself. If that\u2019s the case, then perhaps I haven\u2019t developed a sophisticated enough understanding to access that rung in that meta-meta. However, I\u2019ll keep thinking about it, and perhaps I\u2019ll discover something once I do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my favorite early lessons in entrepreneurship was the idea of working \u201con\u201d your business instead of merely working \u201cin\u201d your business. To see the distinction, imagine running a restaurant. Here, working \u201cin\u201d the business is clear. Make delicious food. Offer great service to your customers. Keep the place clean and inviting. Being able […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3,682],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7277","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-personal-development","7":"category-nc-learning","8":"entry"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nDiscovering the Meta - Scott H Young<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What is Meta and how do you discover it when it comes to learning? 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