Primal Intelligence

Primal Intelligence: You Are Smarter Than You Know

https://www.amazon.com/Primal-Intelligence-Smarter-Than-Know-ebook/dp/B0DN9GQ84V

Core Message

My theory is that intuition, commonsense, and the rest of Primal Intelligence are driven by narrative cognition. Or to put it in regular speak: The human brain is real-life smart because it thinks in story.

Expert Paradox

The pilot calls this the paradox of expertise: “The paradox is that an expert is a learner who doesn’t learn. To become an expert, she had to learn. But an expert is someone who knows. And when you know, you don’t need to learn. Meaning that the expert has mastered a skill—learning—that she’s now wasting.”

Intro

To probe the incredible while avoiding debacle, the Primal trial would need to be run by individuals with big imaginations but no patience for bullshit. Such individuals were uncommon, but the Army did have a pipeline for making them. A pipeline at U.S. Special Operations.

Magic happy was nice ideas that broke on contact with reality. Magic happy was stoner mysticism and college philosophy. Magic happy was a rearguard luxury and a frontline catastrophe.

The training worked. The Operators saw the future faster. They healed quicker from trauma. Faced with life-and-death situations, they chose wiser.In 2023, the Army awarded the Fletcher lab a medal for “groundbreaking research,” formally recognizing the existence of Primal.

Intuition: Exceptional Information

Every intuition has the same real-world source. The source is: exceptional information.

Identifying exceptional information requires initiative.

Exceptional information demonstrates: Intuition detects a rupture in a standard narrative, driving a break with the past. To make that break, we need what the Army manual calls initiative, which is another way of saying running ahead of data.

U.S. SPECIAL OPERATIONS HAS A method for activating intuition.

If you can’t see what’s exceptional, then treat everything as exceptional. “Treat everything as exceptional?” I verify. “That’s right. The way you saw the world as a child.”

Assume that everything you see is special.

“Well, can you show me a way to mind travel?”

Mind travel in museum. Or Pineland

'Shift to narrative' technique.

Storythinking

While logic computes what is probable, story creates what is possible.

The possible is an event that has never happened but could, because it doesn’t contradict the rules of its environment.

The possible has two biological advantages over the probable. First, it can accelerate evolution. Instead of sticking cautiously to what worked yesterday, it can leap into the future, grabbing opportunity. Second, it can act with initiative in uncertainty. It doesn’t need lots of reliable data.

Operators think in story. When Operators storythink about the past, they reflect on events they’ve witnessed, asking why. Why did that happen the way it did? Why did it happen at all? When Operators storythink about the future, they imagine events that could happen, asking what if. What if I try this? What if my adversary tries that?

How to develop storythink? “Planning is the main use of imagination,". What’s the reason that plans fail? The reason is, they didn’t consider enough possibilities. They had too narrow a view of what could happen. They were unimaginative.

Story's primordial biological purpose isn’t verbal or wishful. It’s cerebral and practical: planning.

Long term strategy. One goal, 100 ways to get there. Defined strategy, unlimited tactics. Establish a clear one. Or when pressure hits, priorities conflict. Strategy defines why. What ifs are the process of unlimiting tactics. Fusion of dexterity and direction.

Study effective planners. Beethoven.

The Operators have achieved that same inventive pace, their inspiration firing quicker than my eye can process. What’s the source of their rapid genius? How are they hatching effective plans so fast?

When your past is integrated, it clarifies why you live, investing you with long-range direction. When your future is branched, it widens your potential what ifs, expanding your possible paths to get there.

To Act Fast: Emotion

Chapter explains primal reasons for all emotions. Very good.

I discovered a biological explanation for their apparently preternatural powers of self- assessment: Their emotions were monitoring their mental life narrative, allowing them to redirect when the narrative departed from its most effective shape.

Fear is smart. Very smart. It is sending you critical intel. That intel is: You have no plan.

Why is fear the emotion that our brain evolved to signal this? Why out of all the signals that our biology could have evolved, did our brain develop an emotion that makes our knees weak and our mind blank? The answer is: Our brain has evolved a bias to action, because action is how we learn.

To get out of the box, Operators are taught to push their gaze forward, reaching for the horizon.

First-step plan - first step after fear.

Shift your relationship to fear. If you take fear as an opportunity to push your eyes toward your primary purpose, you bolster not only your confidence but also your competence,

To fear, add anger = flight or fight. Fight=tunnel vision and force to use the only one path, which can work. Anger is mojo/focus that breaks through to your goal. OR - create a second plan, which you can create by looking for exceptional information.

Emotion reset - is simply 'i've done it before, i can do it again'

The Origin of Logic and Story

• Eat, is the origin of logic. The second, Don’t get eaten, is the origin of story
• Logic’s three operations: AND-OR-NOT.
• When neuron A extends a path to neuron B, that’s not a MOS transistor thinking A = B. It’s a synapse thinking A leads to B, or in other words, A → B.
• A → B isn’t better than A = B. Yet it’s often more useful, which is why it exists in the brain.
• STORY IS A SEQUENCE OF actions: This event caused that event, which caused another event.

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