The Origins of A Wiser World
Since I was a child I have been interested in understanding everything in the world. My curiosity was limitless and the patience of my parents was considerable. Whenever I spoke, it was usually in the form of a question. “What is that?”, “How does that work?”, “Why is it like this?” The more I learnt about the world, the more I wanted to learn. School was easy, so whenever I got bored I just spent that time analyzing things. When I was 7 I once came to school after having had my hair cut the day before. It was a new hairstyle and I was a bit self-conscious. When I entered the class room, a group of three girls started laughing, and I immediately assumed they were laughing at my new haircut. I got angry and hit one of the girls. The teacher intervened and asked what was going on. I said that they had laughed at my haircut, and the girls’ faces had a confused look. They had not been laughing at my haircut and had no idea what I was talking about. I realized that it had all been inside my head. I had misinterpreted their laugh, because I had been so concerned about what others would think. In that moment something clicked. “Misinterpreting others’ reactions is something that may occur in other situations as well, and if I am careful enough in those situations not to judge too quickly, I might discover that my initial interpretation is incorrect.” The feelings of shame I had experienced for hitting someone based on a misinterpretation were replaced by a sense of excitement. I had discovered a general principle that could help me understand and act more adequately in future situations. It gave me a sense that if I take some time to analyze things that happen in my life, any situation, good or bad, could be used to discover a more general truth, and thus increase my wisdom.
From then on I was obsessed with discovering general principles that could help me understand the world at a deeper level, and allow me to act in more useful ways. Naturally, science and mathematics were the subjects that I was drawn to the most. The laws of physics amazed me. How could one little equation explain so many phenomena in the world (and in space!)? And the things that physicists had discovered using just experiments and reasoning were just mind-blowing. Quantum mechanics. Black holes. I wanted to do the same, and discover yet unknown fundamental truths about the universe. So after graduation I decided to study physics at university and to pursue a career in theoretical physics.
In 2007 I began my studies in physics at Uppsala University, Sweden. I was fascinated to learn about physics at a deeper level than in school. It was amazing to discover that the facts and equations taught in school weren’t arbitrary. They could be derived step by step from fundamental first principles. By learning these principles I could tackle any new example without having any experience of similar examples from before. I could just derive whatever equation I needed from the fundamental ones. Reasoning from first principles became second nature. To me, no other way of tackling a problem made sense.
While studying physics I came across an ad for a course on music psychology. Being interested in both music and the mind I felt intrigued, and decided to take this course in parallel with my studies in physics. This decision opened up a new world to me. I had no idea that psychology was a field of science, that there were ways to study thoughts, emotions and experiences using experiments. I just couldn’t resist. I decided to pursue a career in psychology instead, despite having spent 2 years on physics.
In 2009 I started studying psychology full time at Uppsala university. I was fascinated by what I got to learn, but I was also confused. The textbooks just contained fact after fact, sometimes even just mere theories or speculation. Where were the first principles that would allow me to deduce all the facts just by using logic? Was I really supposed to just learn every single fact by heart? It didn’t make any sense to me. So I decided that for every fact I came across, I would attempt to find a more general principle that could explain that fact as well as others. I made some progress, but progress was slow. The breakthrough would come from somewhere unexpected.
In 2012, I decided I should be more active in politics in my free time. I joined a political youth association to see what I could learn, but I quickly felt frustrated by it all. There was little interest in truth, facts or science. Instead, the political world seemed full of people with very strong opinions, who used rhetoric to persuade people into adopting their ideas. And the ideologies seemed very arbitrary to me too. There was loose talk of values like “freedom”, or “solidarity”, but the concepts were rarely well-defined, and they seemed to be chosen more on a whim than something that followed from first principles. Being the person I am, I naturally decided I also had to find the first principles of politics. And surprisingly, here progress was easier.
In trying to find the first principles of politics I grappled with the question of how to define “well-being” from first principles. To my amazement, I discovered that I was able to do so by combining several different theories from the science of psychology. Having discovered the power of that combination, I let them form the backbone of my first draft of a unified theory of psychology. Over the years I then refined the theory by trying to explain more and more facts, concepts and even whole branches of psychology from first principles. After having completed my masters degree in psychology I started working as a clinical psychologist, where I learnt to apply psychological theory to the practice of helping people improve their well-being. I also expanded my knowledge of therapy by learning several types of psychotherapy, and working on finding the first principles of therapy in general as well. I was amazed to find that the complex field of psychology could be reduced to just a small number of first principles. Examples of such principles turned out to be: “a psychological response can only occur if triggered by a stimulus”, “the magnitude of the response is proportional to the magnitude of the stimulus”. Although such principles may seem a little too simple, when simple laws combine they can explain incredible complexity. Just like Newton’s laws of motion could explain the most diverse phenomena both on earth and in space.
In parallel with my work on psychology, I also started looking at questions of philosophy, and to my excitement I discovered that the unified theory of psychology that I was creating could be used to answer some of the most fundamental questions in philosophy. Descartes had been right. In order to find the first principles of philosophy, it was necessary to start with the first principles of the mind. So I quit my job for a while to study philosophy at university, and completed the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree of philosophy. By the end of those studies I had figured out the first principles of several questions of philosophy.
The trouble was, so far my work on first principles had been carried out by writing a collection of disparate notes. Only occasionally did I write a longer text on a topic that would allow another person to take part of the principles I had discovered. This also meant there could be things I had missed, that would show up when it all was put together. So I decided that I had to launch a project where I could both share my results so far and where the world could collaborate to find the first principles of all fields of life. A world of wisdom was within reach, and the project was given the name “A wiser world”.
Let us now look at the plan for this project.
Next: The Roadmap to A Wiser World
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