Confusing means & ends: powering up the universe
Note: read a short-story companion piece that illustrates the confusion of means and ends here
Introduction
‘Tears for Titans’ is a sci-fi story full of implausible things: aliens, a world where laws of physics are in constant flux and magical technology; but the one thing that is true to our world is the Abulafian tendency to confuse means with ends.
In the story, the Abulafians were unable to realize that their obsession with improved reproductive ability was a coping mechanism to deal with a particular problem — of constantly changing physical laws on Blumenzal. When Hema (backed by Alien technology) offered her wider community another means, arguably a better means, it isn’t a surprise that they spurned her.
While it is easy to judge fictional characters in a story harshly, humans too are guilty of doing the same. We confuse means and ends regularly in our lives. And just like the Abulafians, we often do ourselves a disservice by doing so. Spare a thought for the US taxpayer: they spend roughly $150 million dollars a year producing pennies worth ~$75 million. Pennies that were originally minted to facilitate small transactions and make pricing goods down to the cent possible, important in a time when every cent held significant value in daily commerce.
We are not living in that era any longer and the cost of minting a penny now exceeds its actual face value, while solving no problem at all. While not a huge amount, that $150m could surely find better use — maybe fund education or support the disadvantaged. But the penny will likely continue — because very few think about means and ends after enough time has passed.
The reader ought to be forgiven for thinking that this is always a bad thing, but is that the whole picture? Strangely enough, unlike our short-story, sometimes this confusion can also lead to innovation and our growth as individuals.
The story of Percy Spencer perfectly illustrates the point. During World War II, Percy was an engineer working for Raytheon, a major defence contractor. His work focused on making magnetrons more efficient for use in radar arrays, which were being rapidly deployed in military applications. Radar technology was crucial for navigation, detecting enemy aircraft, and improving the accuracy of bombers. The goal was to create more powerful and reliable radar systems that could aid the military.
One day in 1945, while working on an active radar set powered by a magnetron, Spencer noticed something unusual: a chocolate bar in his pocket had melted. Forgetting the true purpose of why he was there (remember, the end was making radar tech more efficient), Spencer chose instead to follow his curiosity and scientific experiments (the erstwhile means). That was the birth of the ubiquitous microwave. Something that has undoubtedly made millions of lives more convenient but has absolutely nothing to do with Spencer’s original end of improving America’s military might.
Understanding the phenomenon
The examples listed above hint that many of us are collectively bad confusing means for ends — even the left-brained researchers amongst us. More than that, we’re completely unaware of it when it happens — often thinking the means are the end itself.
Finally, while it may not be surprising that we’re bad at confusing the two or even that we’re mostly unaware of doing so, the frequency with which this phenomenon occurs is a bit surprising. Sticking to the human realm, a lot of humanity’s activities have their origin in our habit of confusing means for ends. This ought to be reason enough to study the phenomenon. But for those who are still on the fence, perhaps an intriguing proposition for further study could be to reduce the impact of negative outcomes, while still benefitting from positive ones. While we may not be able to achieve this lofty goal perfectly, it is my belief that a brief exploration and investigation of the said phenomenon is a decent starting place.
We begin our investigations by thinking through how to avoid such a confusion: a very clear link between the action and desired outcome ought to be established. But this is easier said than done, for this to happen the underlying problem that your actions are geared towards must be evident, AND the means with which you’re solving this problem must be (self-evidently) the best one of potential options.
One might ask, if these conditions are ever met in day-to-day living, and that would be a good question. To me there are specific niches where such conditions are indeed met: engineering challenges, lab setting at research universities etc.
Most often, however, such clear linkages are not evident. Let us explore why.
Diving deeper into why it’s hard to see our true goals
We begin our investigations with trying to understand the reasons for this confusion. Broadly, and at a 10,000 feet level, there appear to be a few primary reasons for this confusion:
a. It is usually quite difficult to clearly see what the true ends are for one’s actions, they are hidden — at least psychologically
b. There isn’t a clear one-to-one relationship between our actions and our desired outcomes. The same action often solves for multiple goals
c. A better means to the same end has emerged, but inertia or ignorance is preventing adoption
d. The end/ true problem is not a problem anymore, but we haven’t updated our mental models
Let’s discuss each one of these through the use of examples.
A. Hidden ends
The best example of hidden ends goes back to discussions about proto-incentives, (and more broadly the concept of lifeOS as explored in the book Boundaries: At the Centre of Everything). As discussed previously, it is astounding how much human action, in all its diversity, is primarily concerned with the five human proto-incentives. Namely:
1. Activities that demonstrate or aid in in-group / tribal connections
2. Ensuring that one’s tribe has a greater ability to impact change/control the environment
3. Ensuring that one’s tribe monopolized in-demand resources
4. Ensuring one’s own self has greater ability to impact change within the tribe
5. Ensuring that one’s own self monopolizes the in-demand resources within the tribe
When I talk about my love for my culture (1), or when I try to convince people that I’m right about a topic (2 and 4), or even when I work to get money to buy resources and safety (3 and 5), I’m acting upon these proto-incentives. Even though I’ve never consciously thinking about it in those terms.
But they’re always there — the spring from which many of my actions arise. Hidden in plain sight.
B. No clear one-one relationship between means and ends
In the real world, problems we encounter are usually complex amalgamations of smaller problems. Unlike the [super forecasters], an elite group of people who regularly beat prediction markets, most of us do not even attempt to decompose complex problems into smaller, more manageable components. Instead, most of us are guilty of being unaware that we’re even trying to solve multiple problems at once, and thus continue to look for that one magic bullet that can solve everything for us. But the downside is that we generally aren’t even aware of the desired impact we want our actions to have.
As if that weren’t enough, instances of this category are still subject to the fact that even when we’re solving for 4 different ends, we may be consciously unaware of even one of these ends.
C. Better means available, but not used
Oftentimes, the patterns of thought and behaviour we exhibit originated in vastly different contexts, and over time we get habituated to these behaviours. Going so far as to stick with them even when there are better alternatives available.
The QWERTY keyboard could be considered a good example of this. When it originated in the 19th century, the way that typing technology worked was very different from today. One of the biggest differences being the mechanical nature of equipment. Specifically, mechanical typewriter keys were prone to being jammed if people went too fast. QWERTY was designed specifically to solve this problem.
With the advent of digital technology, we now have the ability to go with more efficient alternatives like Dvorak system which minimizes finger movement and wasted effort without having to worry about jamming keys. But often inertia and familiarity are too difficult to overcome.
Interestingly enough — this is not always a bad thing. Evolution has likely built in a resistance to change because humanity was forged in an environment that was slow to change and where drastic change was often too risky of a strategy. After all, completely revamping your ways could lead to disaster if the world remained the same for thousands of years.
This leads us to the last category.
D. Means solving for changing ends
Sometimes our actions were geared to a very particular problem, but that problem no longer exists. And yet, as described in the previous example, we will continue to act in a certain manner — our actions solving for outcomes that may be different from why they originated.
The rise of industries that perpetuate hierarchies through exclusivity and introduced scarcities are a great examples. Work on social hierarchies often hint that hierarchical organization of a society has many benefits, especially in the agricultural era. As populations grew, hierarchies became crucial for organizing labor, defending territories, and distributing food, often leading to more complex societal structures like kingdoms or states.
The edifice upon which this entire logic rests is the ‘scarcity of in-demand resources’ — only when there are scarce resources that people would like to compete for, does it make sense to worry about things like labor, defense and distribution of food. An often overlooked phenomenon, resource scarcity is the impetus for a lot of human and animal action.
But there are spheres of human influence where scarcity doesn’t apply, and yet hierarchies are perpetuated. Not because hierarchies are helpful in these cases, but rather because they satisfy an evolutionary need (refer to proto-incentives 2 and 4 mentioned previously). Natural diamonds used in jewellery are a great example of this — more abundant than are assumed, and identical to lab grown diamonds, this entire industry rests on the edifice of manufactured scarcity — purely for the sake of signalling status & establishing hierarchies.
A philosophical take
If I observe my actions with intentionality, it becomes undeniable how pervasive confusing means (actions) and ends (outcomes/goals) can become in my own life. And I know am not alone — simply asking “What are we solving for?” early and often enough has helped me save my clients, senior-management at large global companies, countless hours and wasted effort.
But as hinted above, this is not always a bad thing.
Often, I find myself in completely unexpected situations because I focussed too much on the means and not enough on the ends. And even though this is not always a good thing, it sometimes is. Like Percy Spencer, sometimes things have worked out much better than I expected because I focussed too much on the means and not enough on the ends.
The fact that confusing means and ends can go both right and wrong, and that too in innumerable ways seems important. As a believer of [Sacred Nihilism], I believe that the three general laws of boundaries are the basis upon which much of our reality seems to rest. Recall that a ‘boundary’ is simply a way to distinguish one thing from the rest of the universe. The three general boundary laws state that:
1. The specific mechanism for boundary formation is dependent on context and the scale/size of reality being observed
2. Law of width: the total set of possible interaction-types between boundaries continues to grow over time
3. Law of depth: Law of width leads to emergence of newer and more complex boundary-types
Sacred Nihilism claims that the boundary laws (especially ones concerned with width and depth) are means that solve the ultimate end goal — allowing the universe (the largest most encompassing boundary) to experience its fullest potential.
To achieve the end, i.e. to continue to increase both interaction and boundary types, we need different means that prevent status-quo from taking too strong of a hold. As stated previously, many natural laws do end up working with each other (in opposition and co-operation) to lead to the perfect reality that provides a heady mix of both stability and change — necessary conditions for the laws of width and depth to play out.
Similarly, any life (not just human) regularly confusing means and ends too helps open up possibilities. Regardless of whether these possibilities are ‘negative’ or ‘positive’, an argument can be made that the sub-optimal confusion of means and ends, usually adds uncertainty and variance to the outcomes. This is another way of saying that confusing means and ends is an effective strategy to increase the potential set of interaction types (law of width). Which in turn can (sometimes) lead to increase in boundary types as well (law of depth). From a philosophical perspective, this is a great thing!
But Vichar, I hear the reader asking, “How is this a good thing if we’ve clearly shown that it often leads to negative outcomes in our lives?”
Here in lies another dichotomy that deserves its own dedicated exploration (coming soon): what’s good for ‘the part’ may not be good for ‘the whole’. Or in simple words: many things can be both good and bad, depending on who’s perspective one takes.
“Is stinging an invader and dying good or bad?” It would be difficult for one to answer this for a bumble bee. On the one hand, it seems like bad news for the individual bee; but it also seems like a great adaptive mechanism for the entire hive itself.
I suspect that moral judgements around confusing means and ends would face a similar issue. Confusing means and ends may not benefit the individual doing the confusing; however, it also adds a layer of new interaction and complexity when one takes a more zoomed-out view.
Philosophically speaking, it is a means that serves the true end: helping the universe know itself.
