The curse of Knowledge Overload

Talking to my successful fitness trainer at Alpha Gym Sydney, I expressed, “Look, I think I am messing up my life by working at night,” to which he casually replied, “Ah, so you got a job?”. Well, that was as straightforward as it could get.

However, I didn’t give up. I wanted him to appreciate my struggle, so I continued, “Well, look, it’s sort of affecting my circadian rhythm.” Gently laughing, he shared that he sleeps for only four hours to rise at 5 am and train his clients, who happen to be students of Jujitsu. He stays fit, probably sporting a six-pack, always smiling, and an absolute gem of a guy! In short I think he almost said — “Fuck it mate” in that Australian style!

Within a span of a minute, all the theories, books, videos, Instagram stories, and social media pages of fitness trainers that had cluttered my mind with over-consciousness vanished into thin air!

The Most Sensible Adjective of our Current Knowledge is Little

The biggest curse of our lives is information taken from highly opinionated books, writings (such as this one), videos, and role models, and the act of guesstimating ourselves, others, situations, and opportunities.

Let me get slightly technical here, without hopefully annoying those who are not into it.

The most accurate judgement is still a probability

Heard of AI, machine learning? Obviously, in 2023, the answer is yes!

Imagine having trillions of rows of data, where each row is filled with hundreds and thousands of variables, each carrying a label like yes or no, failed or success, true or false, evil or good. Now, in your mind, can you accurately assign a label to a new data point that shares the same variables but with different values?

Now, let’s simplify things. Picture just 10 rows of data, each having 10 variables. Can you analyze these rows and make predictions about the 11th row for those same 10 variables? Take a deep breath and ponder the answer within yourself.

Back when I worked for Mitsubishi Electricals in Tokyo, the data points seemed more straightforward than the complexities of my own life! I managed to create a data model predicting “failures” in their machinery as a proof of concept, achieving a 70 percent accuracy. We celebrated that 70 percent!

There is no such Line that you can follow in Life to predict the outcome with 100 percent accuracy. Maths is God due to Pi (LOL) and even Differentiation in Maths to any level cannot solve it my friends!

Confusion Matrix of Life

In machine learning (or AI or deep learning), a fundamental idea floats around — namely, the Confusion Matrix. The confusion matrix serves as an indicator of the model’s performance. Remember, model is that equation in our brain/machine that is formed from different learning to predict the next outcome. This confusion matrix consist of a count of true positives, true negatives, false positives, and false negatives, offering a comprehensive overview of its accuracy.

• True Positive: Successfully recognizing and nurturing positive relationships in life. We found — We happy!
• False Positive: Misjudging or investing in relationships that, in reality, were not positive! Bhoom!
• False Negative: Failing to acknowledge potentially positive relationships, missing out on meaningful connections. Missed it bigtime!
• True Negative: Recognizing and avoiding toxic or harmful relationships. Well done!

And we all still fuck up yeah?

None of us possesses an intellect rivalling that of a machine’s precision. In fact, when it comes to life, even identifying variables itself is difficult. There is no principal component analysis to pick and choose the right variables in life. There is no innate linear regression in life to get that fine tuned line of prediction. There is no testers to predict the performance. We are on our own!

Dangerous False Negative

The Information Age, where we’re constantly bombarded with knowledge, can lead to a significant fallout: False Negatives. In life’s journey, the most dangerous and boring pitfall is the False Negative. Imagine bypassing an opportunity because it seemed risky, only to discover later that the perceived negativity was unfounded. It’s like walking a tightrope of caution, and paradoxically, avoiding all risks might be the riskiest move, as someone wisely said.

Let’s ease our mind that — that we got that one single life and why keep fine tuning it’s matrix of mess with scattered knowledge just to get another matrix of mess?

In simple terms, Fire and Execute it— ALL THE TIME!