💡 Remember you can get free copies of my books here.
Bumblebees are males, right?
Me: “Bees are female, and bumblebees are male”.
My wife: gives me the “I’m not getting the joke” look.
Me: Grabs ChaxtGPT, and have my reality shattered.
Turns out my grandma lied. And once I thought about it for longer than two seconds, it makes no sense that bumblebees and bees are even the same type of bee. This realisation happened last summer.
I’d like to remind you that I studied biology in university.
Assumptions are a vital part of being able to navigate reality. We form them through experience, and copy them from sources we trust. Ideally, we update them when new information reaches us.
But what if new information never comes?
Have you had your hearing checked?
My sister in law cannot smell anything. It’s a medical thing. They found out pretty late, because guess what: nobody thought to ever check whether she could smell or was just playing along thinking it was a social game to pretend that smell exists.
Ask yourself: when is the last time you heard crickets? You know, that high pitched chirping you can hear in some places in summer?
Are you sure your hearing can still hear that pitch? My parents in law certainly can’t. When me and my wife point out how loud the crickets are, they look surprised and ask “there’s crickets?”.
What about your mental crickets?
What is the last time you audited your assumptions?
Housing costs are pretty reasonable
A fun example: one of my assumptions has been that housing in the Netherlands has been getting more and more expensive over time. Which is true.
I assumed that this means people pay wildly more for housing than before I was born. This is false. As a percentage of their spending (source):
House owners spend 0.7% less than in 1986
Renters spend 7% more than in 1986
Some change yes. But not the crazy amounts I thought. We also live in approx 20-40% larger houses.
Let’s play a game
As a 90s kid I used to grab an encyclopedia to find out what is true. Answering why a boiled egg turns white took 10-15 minutes of reading a book.
As a teenager I answered questions by “surfing the web”. Answering how Stalin died took 2-5 minutes of clicking links and reading text
Now as an adult, answering anything takes 10 seconds of talking at my phone, 10 seconds to wait for the answer, and 20 seconds to read.
Here’s a game I recommend: a few times a day, ask ChatGPT completely obvious things.
I recommend using the voice typing button (the little mic, not the wave icon), it’s the fastest.
90% of the time the answers are useless.
10% of the time, you’ll learn that bumblebees aren’t just male bees.
It will be worth it.
💡 Remember you can get free copies of my books here.