Those Who Have Everything

Finding out what you're doing wrong is not a pleasant experience And it means that you have to sacrifice part of yourself Usually a burned out, stupid, bitter, corrupt, arrogant, nasty, vengeful part of yourself But nonetheless part that you like I think that room for those incremental improvements exists within everyone's grasp And I think that it's a humble thing to do to ask how you could improve incrementally Without interfering with anyone else, like it's your problem not their's But I think that the consequences of maintained incremental improvement are anything but incremental You get compound interest on incremental improvement You know, there's another rule in the New Testament called the Matthew Principle, economists use it To those who have everything more will be given And from those who have nothing everything will be taken It's actually a description of the way the world works, you know that if you've ever played Monopoly To those who have everything more will be given And from those who have nothing everything will be taken And there's a reason for that that's a deep reason And it's a very harsh rule because it means as you start to wander off the path The probability that you will wander further off the path increases non-linearly And that's a terrible thing to know As you walk closer to the edge the probability that you'll fall off the cliff increases And that's statistical justification for the concept of Hell But as you improve the probability That each improvement will produce a further improvement increases And so perhaps the downside is the cataclysmic catastrophe That you can engage upon if you reproduce your moral failings But the upside is that each improvement produces and increment In the probability of the next improvement To those who have everything more will be given And from those who have nothing everything will be taken It's actually a description of the way the world works You know that if you've ever played Monopoly To those who have everything more will be given And from those who have nothing everything will be taken If you're a behavioural psychologist And I am a behavioural psychologist What you do is you help a person establish their aim Then you break down what they're trying to do into attainable units The general consequence of that is that every time They manage an accomplishment they get a little stronger in character They get a little bit more confident in their ability They get a little bit less racked with self disgust They get a little bit more hopeful about the future And they get more confident that they can make another change And if you're patient, and you have to be patient with yourself that way It's like you reward those incremental improvements And you don't get all cynical about them and you think "Okay, just imagine what would happen if you keep doing that every week for 10 years" And the answer to that is things would be so much better for you That you can't even imagine it with that much improvement Or maybe even with half that much improvement To those who have everything more will be given And from those who have nothing everything will be taken It's actually a description of the way the world works, you know that if you've ever played Monopoly To those who have everything more will be given And from those who have nothing everything will be taken And so that's a, that's a very good way of progressing --- Those Who Have Everything - Akira the Don and Jordan Peterson