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Sparks + Embers Episode No. 009: The Demiurge Problem - Axioms for Complex Thinking
115 Plays3 months ago
Discover three essential axioms that prevent rigid thinking from contracting your world. Learn how to navigate complex questions about human development, leadership, and meaning-making without falling prey to false certainty. Explore the difference between useful conventions and absolute laws through the lens of RadioLab's Zeroworld episode.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Sparks and Embers'
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There's something about a campfire. We gather around it, stare into the flames, and find ourselves in conversations we never planned to have. I'm Tiffany. And I'm Tyler. And this is Sparks and Embers, 10 minutes of what sticks when we step back from the fire.
00:00:21
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Each week, we distill insights from our Kindling newsletter, sharing the questions that won't let go, and the connections that surprised us. We hope this creates space for whatever wants to emerge around your own fires.
Challenge of Conventional Knowledge
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In 2023, I was exposed to a Radiolab episode to which I have returned multiple times over the last two years. It's called Zero World, and it explores something we all learned in elementary school in a mutable law that you cannot divide by zero.
00:00:52
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Except you can. And that simple revelation opens up a much larger question about how we hold knowledge itself. The episode stuck with me because it perfectly captures something I've been wrestling with, this tension between what's useful and what's absolutely true.
Good Pain and Series Anticipation
00:01:09
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How do we use frameworks and ideas without becoming their prisoners? Today's discussion is a sidebar discussion about some of our beliefs and approaches here at Good Pain in anticipation of the next series we are jumping into starting next week.
Impact of Zero on Technology and Thought
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There's an archetypal figure called the Demiurge, a lesser creator god who believes he's the ultimate creator of everything. Zero is our mathematical Demiurge.
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It revolutionized accounting, made computers possible, enabled everything from ATMs to automated manufacturing. Zero literally built and created our modern world.
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But then zero convinced us of something else, that we cannot divide by zero. And for most practical purposes, this works fine. Our calculators won't explode if we follow this rule. But here's the thing.
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When we treat a useful convention as an absolute law, our world starts to contract.
Advancements Through Ignoring Rules
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We stop exploring the territories that lie beyond that rule. Mathematicians working in quantum mechanics and novel number systems are dividing by zero all the time now.
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The universe got bigger when they stopped treating no dividing by zero as gospel.
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This gets to the heart of how we approach complex questions at GoodPain.
Working with Axioms for Exploration
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We're about to dive into a series on the apprenticeship leadership model, and we'll be drawing from frameworks that are 30 years old, alongside cutting-edge research, as well as wisdom traditions.
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Some of the underlying science has been challenged, and some of it hasn't and some of it will be. Rather than throwing out everything that isn't perfectly current or treating old frameworks as sacrosanct, we want to work with axioms instead of rules.
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An axiom is a starting point we accept so we can move forward in the conversation. It's a given truth until it's proven otherwise or it no longer proves useful.
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Different from a rule that tells us what we're allowed to do. The reason is this important as well is because the moment we treat our axioms as sacred, like zero, we've created our own demiurge.
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There's three axioms that we're gonna go over, and these guide how we'll navigate these complex territories together. Axiom one is a lack of empirical support does not automatically equal false.
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Just because something hasn't been proven doesn't mean it's wrong, And when we read research papers, this shifts us from asking, is this study definitive? To what territory does this illuminate?
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And where does it cast a shadow? We might find a framework for understanding team dynamics that recent neuroscience has partially contradicted. Rather than discarding it entirely, we ask, where does this still help?
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Where has it proven limited? What insights does it preserve, even as its biological explanations need updating? When I'm designing a workshop or writing an article, this means I might draw from attachment theory, systems thinking, and indigenous wisdom traditions without demanding they form a perfectly consistent system.
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Each lens reveals different aspects of human experience. Axiom 2 is simplify as much as possible and no further. This one can be tricky.
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We can oversimplify, force complex realities into neat categories that don't actually fit. But we can also get lost in complexity that serves no one. When I write about leadership development, I resist creating seven-step programs that promise universal application.
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Instead, I look for essential principles that appear across cultures, then explore how they manifest differently in various settings. This means acknowledging when simple answers don't exist.
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Leadership requires both confidence and humility, solitude and community, structure and flexibility. The simplification comes not from reducing complexity, but from finding the through lines that help us navigate it.
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Finally, axiom three. Controversy is an invitation to explore and not a mandate to polarize. Here's what I noticed about that dividing by zero revelation.
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People get defensive when you suggest their foundational rules might not be absolute. Mathematicians have built careers on systems that assume this rule is inviolable. But controversy usually signals we've hit something worth understanding more deeply.
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When smart, thoughtful people look at the same evidence and reach different conclusions, we're probably looking at a place where multiple truths intersect. Instead of rushing to determine who's quote unquote right, we want to understand what each perspective reveals.
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The traditional educator worried about AI might illuminate concerns about deep learning that AI enthusiasts need to address. The progressive parent advocating for children's autonomy might reveal insights about human development that traditional parents could integrate without abandoning structure.
Limitations of Context-Dependent Tools
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So why does all this matter? These axioms address something we all face, the temptation to grasp frameworks that feel solid and treat them as universal laws.
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This creates predictable problems. We become defensive rather than curious when encountering perspectives that challenge our adopted frameworks. A parent builds their identity around a particular educational philosophy and becomes unable to learn from different approaches.
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An executive, a leader, trained in one model of leadership, dismisses insights from other traditions that might serve their team. We miss the dynamic nature of human systems.
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What works for developing leadership in one cultural context may need significant adaptation in another. When we treat context-dependent tools as universal truths, we create unnecessary suffering, real leadership development, authentic community building, meaningful contemplative practice, all the things we're trying to explore here.
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They all require holding multiple perspectives at the same time. They demand thinking that can navigate paradox rather than demanding resolution.
Apprenticeship Leadership Model
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Next week, we launch our next series that explores the leadership pillar of Good Pains philosophy.
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We will be exploring the apprenticeship leadership model, and it is an inheritor of these axioms for complex thinking. It's not another universal system promising to solve all leadership challenges.
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It's a way of engaging with the ongoing question of what it means to grow into our capacity to serve something larger than ourselves, both the most creative expressions of ourselves as individuals and the most imaginative possible versions of our collective expression.
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We'll explore it thoroughly, test it against experience and evidence, and hold it lightly enough that we can continue learning from what works and what doesn't.
Expanding Wisdom by Challenging Rules
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In zero world, the mathematicians discovered their universe became much larger when they stopped treating no dividing by zero as an absolute law.
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Our world becomes larger too when we approach wisdom with this same spirit of rigorous exploration rather than defensive certainty. The challenges we face in our families, organizations, and communities, they're rarely resolved by applying single frameworks with rigid consistency.
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They require the kind of adaptive intelligence that emerges when we hold our knowledge lightly enough to keep learning, to keep becoming, in our own space and together.
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We here at GoodPain are not people who have arrived at final answers. We are fellow travelers committed to the ongoing work of becoming more fully human together.
Engagement and Community Encouragement
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Thanks for sitting around the fire with us.
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If these conversations sparked something, subscribe to Sparks Numbers and all our shows on Apple and Spotify. And if you're moved to, please leave us a review or share this episode with your friends. Both help us build this community.
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For the longer material that feeds these episodes, subscribe to the Kindling newsletter at goodpainco.com backslash kindling. That's goodpainco.com backslash kindling.
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We release it weekly with the kind of content that keeps these unexpected conversations going. We provide the kindling, you bring the fire. Until next time, keep the questions burning.