Sumu jikoni, saa ishaiva
Umeona nimedumu, mwisho umekuwa believer
Vichwa vigumu ndio hufika mahali nimefika
Kwama na worth yako, waseme we ni diva
— Nyashinski
I decided not to publish the manuscript because if I did, I risked getting failed by my lecturers.
The idea I had in mind was to show that the degree of effort exerted by medical students did not contribute significantly to their success. Between luck and intelligence, the former was more crucial. Already popular among my colleagues because of my affiliation with research, I knew the paper may stir discomfort. So I shelved it. I have little to lose now.
It’s called the paradox of the skilled. The higher you go, the more luck takes a stronger role in one’s success. However, the way our minds are wired, luck does make for a better story than one who thrives despite being riddled with hardships at every step.
Think of sprinters. Those who qualify for the finals will make for a sensational 10 seconds for the 100 m dash. However, do you think the winner, when interviewed, will say that it was luck that earned them the gold medal? Luck is not a good story.
In contrast, luck was the major decider. When everyone has pushed their body to the near limit, whoever wins is going to do so largely from a point of luck.
Randomness is at the heart of the most powerful theory in our world. Quantum field theory does not predict with certainty, but with probability. Some outcomes have higher non-zero probabilities than others. These probability landscapes create the quantum field where a particle is likely to be positioned.
Zooming out, luck too impacts our lives. Since they are not powerful motivators, we have grown to delude ourselves into believing our achievements are principally caused by our efforts. We have deluded ourselves. I believe this delusion is useful and necessary. Or as Nyashinski beautifully puts it, “Kwama na worth yako waseme we ni diva.”
Success and evolution
Kaa ninayo, jua nilifanya kazi na nikai-earn
Kaa ni luck, basi I’m as lucky as they come— Nyashinski
Success is like an infection. There is always patient zero. How they infect others depends on the virulence factors. How fast will it get to the susceptible? How quickly will it create a symbiosis with its new host? Will it kill the host?
The infectious agent can also mutate. At some point, Rihanna was a newbie singer. As a budding young man, she confused me after releasing her hit song, Pon de Replay. I was infected, as were other young women. Today, many women would prefer having Fenty for their makeup. From music to makeup. That’s a form of mutation.
Mutations are chance events. You cannot tell which will succeed and which will not. For organisms as small as bacteria, genes are their working tools. A bad mutation cannot be corrected through sexual reproduction. Bacteria are asexual reproducers. The wrong mutation can kill.
As with luck, the ones who die are quickly forgotten. The survivors live to tell the story. In antimicrobial resistance, it’s usually the resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae and not the others that have been wiped out. If bacteria could tell their stories, I’m certain Klebsiella pneumoniae would mention how it valiantly fought wave after wave of antibiotics in varying doses but proved victorious. This tale would spread to other bacteria, like a viral success story.
In this story, this bacterium is delusional. Yes, it may have pushed itself to mutate its genetic tools, but it never would have known whether it would work or not. Luck sat at the centre of its actions and outcome.
Usually, some mutational hotspots are known to spark beneficial mutations. It raises the odds of positive outcomes, but it’s never a guarantee. Nevertheless, to succeed, K. pneumoniae had to be delusional. Despite luck having the upper hand, the protagonist in this story needed to believe they were closer to solving their problems.
This is the basis for the powerful role of agency in evolution. A lion cannot run far from a savanna grassland fire if it did not believe it could escape it. A snake could not chase a prey if it did not believe it could snatch it.
When a cheetah chases an antelope, we pick sides, usually dependent on what story we were told prior to the chase. If we had been taken through the life stages of the growing antelope, we would want it to escape. If we saw how hungry the cheetah has been, we would want it to get the kill. Stories shape our desires.
In this story, we have the fastest land animal. And yet, they are not usually successful at every hunt. Their abilities can only take them so far. Luck is the other director who gets left out of the screening credits. True power does indeed remain silent.
Without this agency, organisms could never push themselves. Without being delusional about our success, humanity could not have conquered the world.
Consider a world filled with rationalists. First of all, it is difficult to imagine a world full of rationalists because the world has been shaped by delusional figureheads. These are people who adamantly believed in their ideas and pursued them even when the rational thing at the time was to drop it. Anyway, assume these people have been killed by a virus that notices you’re a dreamer. Those who are left are the rationalists.
Ever witty with numbers, they would have figured out how little their rationality contributes to their success. It would therefore make little sense to make unnecessary effort to come at the top. Without effort, no new progress would emerge. What we would have is a steady drift to low performance.
In systems dynamics, drift to low performance is a classical archetype where a system steadily gets worse over time. Like the shared washroom that nobody opts to clean, because every individual user believes someone else will take up the role and clean it. It’s a strange case of tragedy of the commons, but uniquely shaped by the perception of others who verily know that they should not put that much effort.
In this case, it would be a perverse one, because one would measure your effort with that of others. You wouldn’t want your efforts to be greater than any other person’s. The actual state at time T1 will get worse by time T2, because nobody puts effort into improving the prevalent state. When the goal shifts lower, so do the actions. Decadence creeps in. The very people who had elevated everyone, the dreamers, are no longer around, and the rationalists have reasoned themselves into mediocrity.
The moment any one of them notices that they are mediocre, they can get censured and shamed for trying to prove they are better than the other, when the math shows something else. Any effort to dispute the status quo will be thwarted. Sounds very familiar to the current cancel culture and postmodernist movements.
Now, flip the script. Dreamers exist. Everyone chases them regardless of what everyone says. They are deluded. Occasionally, one or two take flight, like the Wright brothers (forgive the pun). These are the success stories we share. To succeed, we need to be deluded.
Persistence is more interesting than success. In and of itself, it is delusion manifest. The universe has a single gradient. Decay into disorder. Heat death. Organisms persist despite this universal bent. It’s useful delusion.
Useful delusion is what Nyashinski means when he says:
I’m the best ever, lose never, can’t complain
Already in the hall of fame and I’m still playing
G.O.A.T. shit, I’m forever in my own lane
Useful delusion is the reason we still chase theories about consciousness. I may not have published in a peer-reviewed journal, but I shared my ideas about the primary condition for consciousness.
Useful delusion led Darwin to pitch his ideas against authority figures like Louis Aggasiz and the whole biological fraternity. He even went against the numerical genius of Lord Kelvin.
Usually, because delusion of this stripe can get massive censure, it can cripple or even kill the proponent. Remember when I talked about the virus that kills dreamers? Well, there is something similar but not in biological form. Shame.
Shame prevents people from acting. Shame stops civilizations from evolving. Shame can cull the useful delusion that acts despite knowing that luck still plays a role. Shame dictates the current fields into believing that if you’re not hyperspecialized, you should not be talking or even questioning certain ideas. Shame stops one from questioning what one has written on social media. It also stops anyone from sharing. Shame is a virus that can kill dreamers.
And yet, for you to be deluded, usefully so, you have to be shame-resistant. With the odds stacked against you, as indeed they are and will be, one has to cling to their deluded ideas to persist. Persistence, I have argued, is itself a version of victory even though it does not reflect in popularly accepted ways.
The opposite of a loss is either a win or a profit. Economists would rather lean towards profit than wins. They use this to generate terms such as ROI. And yet, that you sold or made an exchange is in itself a win. The deluded dreamer persists through these small wins, even though they don’t result in profits.
The thought experiment of the rational society reveals that the true loser is the one who doesn’t do anything. Since nobody does anything, the entire society has lost. Rationality has convinced them not to act.
Useful delusion is the reason humans have set foot on every dry piece of land on our planet. There were mosquitoes in Africa, but useful delusion convinced the colonial masters to proceed with their conquest. Useful delusion led Kinjeketile Ngwale to convince the natives of Tanganyika that by bathing in the waters of Lake Tanganyika, they would be impermeable to the bullets. It didn’t turn out as they anticipated. However, some of the whites died.
This confidence is the reason Ethiopia and Liberia were never colonized. Guns, germs, and steel did not penetrate the barriers of these two countries. A rational person would say how pointless it was to bring a spear to a gun fight, and yet the weapons and tactics used by these two nations secured their independence. What is that if not useful delusion? I would not be talking about them if it were not so.
In Papua New Guinea, the most beautiful of male birds take their precious time to clean their stages and woo female birds into courtship. They have thus evolved to acquire the most unadaptive traits. Natural Selection ought to have eliminated them, and yet, sexual selection has kept them going. The Emperor of Germany bird of paradise, for instance, is one of the most beautiful birds you will ever encounter. Its metallic green breast, which shines in the sun, should be a clear marker for predators. And yet, these birds boldly announce themselves, hoping to secure a mate. Sexual selection has resulted in the most obscure, adaptationally irrelevant organs in the biosphere, but which continue to persist because the wielders believe it will garner more successful courtships.
Rationalism advocates for adaptation. Sexual selection says: not on my watch. Sexual selection must be deluded. But it turns out, this delusion has created a paradise of beautiful birds in Papua New Guinea.
In honesty, delusion can sometimes appear “deluded”. A fine line exists between the foolish and the fortunate. Usually, one has to appear foolish before they turn fortunate. Lady luck, that fickle mistress, favours the bold. Nothing spells bold more than someone willing to look foolish. Worse, foolish before their peers.
Foolishness, the kind that builds metallic frames that end up flying, is the kind that I would call useful delusion. The Wright brothers did not read the New York Times. If they did, they would have been discouraged. On the 8th of December, 1903, the reputable newspaper advertised that it would be millions of years before man could fly. At the time, you would have to be deluded to think you could prove the New York Times wrong.
Ten days later, on the 17th of December, 1903, useful delusion won the bet. Honestly, “Ni nini kaa si divine?”
What I’m trying to say is…
Honesty keeps us in touch with reality. Delusion is, however you view it, abnormal. And yet, delusion is the reason evolution happens in the first place. Useful delusion has led to the beautiful adaptive and maladaptive features we see in evolution.
Luck is powerful, but lacks the narrative superiority of a good story. A good story follows the popular trope of the Hero’s Journey. Evolution without agency is not complete. It is the substance of success stories.
I started by talking about the role of luck in passing medical school. I doubt there would have been doctors who inspired others to pursue the course if they were not usefully deluded. And even then, I still think I need to publish the paper, in the spirit of useful delusion.
Evolution and success need useful delusion.
This song inspired some of the lines used in this article. Source — YouTube