Four levels of wisdom

   In my view, there are four levels of wisdom - knowledge, understanding, acceptance and application/adaptation.

   The first level is of course very important, so considered the very root - knowledge or learning. One start learning right since they are born, and this continues through out life. Of course the ability and rate of learning new things may slow down as one grows old; but to say one is alive means he is learning new things every day, every moment. Knowledge is not just the complicated things that one read or listen, but also the constant chatter going on every moment in the mind allowing to learn about oneself better and learn about others and things around.

   Second level in my view is the most important, and also the most neglected. Unfortunate to say, its not just ignored by individuals, but parents, education institutions and teachers themselves sometimes discourage a child to follow through this level; so I got to say a lot about it. Understanding doesn't mean just to remember things read, heard or learned; but to truly appreciate it, by understanding its every aspect, like its nature, behavior, relations, etc. Since childhood, one is often encouraged to take the words as told, read or taught; and discouraged to think otherwise. If only they know, if Nicolaus Copernicus didn't had understanding against the knowledge been taught those days, we probably still would have considered Earth as the center of the Universe.

   To understand something, the very first step should be to leave some place for denial. Then think in every other way for its validity; think contrary, contradict, argument, experiment, test and validate; and then only one can truly understand and appreciate that knowledge. Its not to say that we have to verify every piece of knowledge, but to know how it can be verified, gives a deeper understanding of it.

   Ignoring this level of wisdom is detrimental, and often dangerous. Problem with fundamentalist and fanatics is that they jump from the first level of wisdom to further levels, skipping this very important level. Quite often they are encouraged to skip this level with arguments like, its sin to question and doubt the veracity and validity of religious symbols, traditions and stories.

   Some people who ignore this level, are the kind, who constantly seek for any knowledge irrespective of its source. And very often, they are the ones who keep changing their views and position. Whereas, those who are persistent and unwavering in their views, are the ones who experiment with this wisdom level, and so they truly appreciate and cling to their knowledge and understanding.

   Third level, that's acceptance, doesn't always means to consent, rather also to reject, if its realized in the understanding level that knowledge is not true. Whatever be the acceptance type, agreement or rejection, it should be firm. And as said before, more we spend time in the second level of wisdom, strong and firm becomes its acceptance.

   Fourth and the last level, application or adaptation, often is the hard one and requires commitment, diligence and perseverance. Quite often there are wisdom that are known, understood, accepted yet failed to be applied, e.g. ill effects of anger. Wisdom that fails at this level are often related to addiction, emotion, compulsion, obligation, etc.

My understanding of talk by Daniel Kahneman - "The riddle of experience vs. memory"

   I would like to discuss a talk titled - "The riddle of experience vs. memory" by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, and later my comments on it.

   Daniel says that layman and even scholars seems to be confused with what happiness really means. One big reason is because of its complexity, we can't restrict it to one particular meaning. Another reason is the confusion between experience and memory, that is to say being happy in your life vs being happy with your life. For example, someone who had really good 20 minutes listening to glorious symphony, but in the end one dreadful screeching sound; told that his whole experience was ruined by it. But it did not ruined his experience actually; what it ruined is his memory of the experience. These are two completely different entities - one being "experiencing self" that lives and knows the present, and other being "remembering self" that keeps stories and scores of events in past.

   A study done in 90's, on two patients going with painful experience of colonoscopy, shows this difference. They were asked to report their experience every 60 second. As we see in chart, clearly patient B had longer procedure and so seems to have suffered more than patient A. But patient A, when asked, had much worst memory than patient B, because it ended when pain was at its peak. If for same patient A, colonoscopy is done a little longer to make a better ending, that sure will worsen the experiencing self, but makes remembering self a lot better.

Stories we make up in our mind as memories, are made of changes, significant moments and most dominated and important is the ending.

   Experiencing self is continuous, but most of the moments in experiencing self are completely ignored and are lost in remembering self. For experiencing self a two week vacation, where second week is as good as first one, would be twice as good as one week vacation; but for remembering self there is barely any difference since no new memories are being added.

   Decisions we take in life are guided by the remembering self, cause we don't make choices based on experiences but based on memories of our experiences. A very nice thought experiment - A vacation, where in end all your pictures will be destroyed and your brain memories would be erased; would you choose that vacation? If answer is 'no', then there is a conflict between your two 'selves'.

   So these two notions give answer to - "how happy a person is living their life" vs "how satisfies the person is with their life".

   Another reason for complexity of the concept of happiness is because of differences in opinions of the person's own memories. So in opinion of a person living in Ohio, those living in California must be really happy, because lets say they are thinking in terms of contrast of climate. But when someone from Ohio migrates to California, their experiencing self won't have any difference because climate is not that much important for experiencing self. But they sure would think they are happier and satisfied because that will remind them of the horrible weather of Ohio.

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   This is one awesome piece of talk and I truly admire Daniel Kahneman; but I have one argument against his idea of what makes the experiencing self and remembering self. I argue that ending is not always as important for making the remembering self; as a bad ending has bigger impact and creates bigger difference between the experiencing self and remembering self as compared to a ending with relatively good experience.

   In example of a person in concert, having good 20 minutes but that ended with rather bad creepy sound, ruining his whole experience. Here Daniel found a gap between experiencing self and remembering self, and seems remembering self is completely constructed by the way the story ends, explaining the significance of ending in construction of a story of remembering self.

   I argue that, if the person in the concert instead had a rather boring 20 minutes, but in end, really good final moments, it won't make his remembering self better to same degree, as it ruined it in above example. In this case, person did had rather bad experience for a length of time, but ends rather in a better way. Ending in this case wont be of that much significance, and even this good ending wont change his ruined remembering self, making it any better.

   The reason I give, individual differences set aside, as very human nature we cling easily to negative than to positive. And this also explains the example by Daniel, why remembering self did not considered the good 20 minutes of music, but stuck to one moment of bad creepy sound.

Any thoughts?