Are Success and Deep Philosophical Thinking Correlated?
Useful Research Question of The Day.
A Quick Summary
Below are thoughts to help us examine the relationship between deep, philosophical thinking and success, that may offer useful pointers to, and for, research, or simply make it to your Sunday or holiday conversations. These have been sparked, perhaps, by a post about using AI & LLMs for better reading with context, the holiday season and associated contemplation, reading someone wonder about deep thinking/ philosophical thought related content by successful big & small tech leaders, or a mention of ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ (the movie), The wiser among us may distill these thoughts further into a more parsimonious paradigm for the skeptic.
Food For Thought
What differentiates viable, deep philosophical thinking from thinking, contextualizing & synthesizing as core skills for any success?
Do factors like grit/ persistence, curiosity, ability to face reality, reality bending, contrarian thinking, greenfield thinking from fundamentals, generating optionality and openness to ‘different’ ideas and experiences, apply to deep philosophical thinking?
Is having a (or multiple) ‘different’ mental model(s) of the world correlated to deep philosophical thinking and success, or certain types of success, at certain times? Is having a ‘different’ mental model(s) of the world (sometimes) a ‘proxy variable’ for deep philosophical thinking? Are there certain professions that encourage building a ‘different’ mental model(s) of the world, like engineering, writing, economics, etc.?
Are there factors, like pragmatism for example, that negatively correlate with one and positively correlate with another, in this potential relationship between success and deep philosophical thinking?
Do deep philosophical thinking, and other areas of life & personality, function as a two way street? Does this imply ability to self-correct, as a function of being able to face reality, noted above? Does some sort of hierarchical or pyramid structure- a la Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and some branding models- better encapsulate this relationship?
Do habits like carving out ‘do nothing’ time, meditation, or keeping higher order thinking functions running frequently, especially during tasks that don’t require those higher order functions, matter in this correlation?
Since life is messy, do consistency and discipline factor into this too? Is discernment in applying deep philosophical thinking a useful tool? Does this discernment lead to missed opportunities? Is it really a missed opportunity if you never know?
Is getting to high signal to noise ratio in high noise environments, not just engineering or space-engineering speak, but also a fundamental metric for all human endeavors?
Does the correlation between success and deep philosophical thinking get a bump during interesting, volatile times?
Is displaying success & deep philosophical thinking, simply a function of good communication paired with either anxious thinking, or the human ability to generate really good plotted lines through anecdotal data points?
In an era of visible, larger than life personalities with power over populations, are we wired to look for narratives for philosopher kings?
No navel gazing on definitions of success here- pick one. Or many.
What do you think?
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