LAO TZU AND LIFTING

Today’s post comes inspired, once again, by way of Will Ruth over at r/strongman.  He and I share a nerdy bound over many different topics, and will have a series of different discussions going on regarding lifting, strongman, philosophy and general frustrations over all of the above.  He shared the following quote from Lao Tzu with me, after being disappointed with how it was handled in a recent article he had read:

“Those who have knowledge, don't predict. Those who predict, don't have knowledge.” 

A rebuttal 

Before going further, I’ll cop to the fact that I’m far rustier on my eastern philosophy/religion/spirituality than I am on western thought, so I’m already living up to the stereotype of out of touch white dudes trying to ham-fistedly co-opt eastern philosophy to a separate interest (hello every business student with a copy of “The Art of War”), but let me at least re-share the story of the time in undergrad that I asked my philosophy of religion professor “The Tao Te Ching says ‘the Tao that can be spoke of is not the true Tao’, so does that mean if I leave the question about Taoism blank on my exam I get an A?”  My professor confided in me that, if she had tenure, she would totally let that happen.

But I have already digressed before I even began.  Let me just say that I LOVE this quote, and it gets at a ton of great stuff.  And given what I said about western philosophy being my strong suit, we’ve also heard this exact same sentiment echoed by Socrates, who was famous for only knowing that he knew nothing.  Socrates annoyed the wisemen and nobility so much by only knowing that he knew nothing that they made him drink hemlock, so maybe keep that sh*t to yourself, but the point remains that this isn’t necessarily an “original” sentiment, but that just goes to strengthen the truth and value of it.  If two different dudes, held in high esteem by their respective peers and schools of philosophy, arrived at similar conclusions without collaboration, it’s most likely worth listening to.

Besides, it will keep the textbook industry afloat

And honestly, we’ve seen his sentiment reflected with even more modern psychological research as well, as the ever popular “Dunning-Kruger effect” highlights.  If you’re not privy to the latest and greatest in internet insults, the basic premise of such effect is that people who are inept at something are, by definition, too inept to understand how inept they are at something.  In order to objective evaluate your placement in terms of skill/knowledge at an activity, you need to possess a high level of said skill/knowledge to be able to recognize what a low level of it resembles.  When you only have a low level of said skill/knowledge, you can’t actually grasp just how much you DON’T know, so you falsely assess yourself as possessing greater ability than you actually do.  This results in those that are inept believing themselves to be quite talented and, in turn, making the kinds of mistakes that can ONLY be made by people with just enough knowledge to be dangerous and not enough to be effective.  The truly dumb people recognize that they are too dumb to try anything stupid, and the truly smart people realize when something is stupid, but those folks riding that razor’s edge of critical ineptness end up making truly amazing, catastrophic mistakes as a result of their small degree of knowledge.

Now that my introduction has taken up the majority of my workspace (the true sign of someone that spent too long in academia), what is this all getting at in simple terms?  The fact of the matter is, those that truly have knowledge DON’T predict, because those folks know enough to know that they don’t know crap.  They’ve both learned enough AND seen enough to know that plan fail at such a comically frequent rate that it’s almost silly to make them at the first place.  Something that we take for granted having occurred one thousand times out of one thousand will fail us at the exact moment that we need it to, and suddenly all of our plans fall apart and our predictions were meaningless.  Hume presented this very notion in his works, that all actions and reactions one observed were merely coincidental and there was no guarantee of sustained cause and effect, and it so terrified Kant that he dedicated himself to refuting Hume’s work, which gave us the categorical imperative, which means we should all be very mad at Hume.  But enough about that.

Although this trainer could stand to have a little more categorical imperative in his life...

People without knowledge LOVE to make predictions, and this is because there’s something SUPER reassuring about predictions.  A prediction is a security blanket: as though one were an oracle, gazing into the future and seeing events before they unfold.  Its soothing in a chaotic world to be able to say “I know that, if I do 3 sets of 5 reps on squats each time I train, I’ll be able to add 5lbs to the bar each training session, and if I do it 3 times a week, I’ll add 15lbs to the bar each week, which means I’m going to increase my squat by 180lbs in 3 months!”  And think of how little knowledge was needed to make such a prediction!  It operates off the premise that progress itself is predictable, and the outcome mathematical method (the perfect amount of reps, sets and frequency of movement), as though there are no external variables such as fatigue or nutrition to manage, or that injuries large or small can upset the outcome, to say nothing of the chaos of daily existence throwing a wrench into the plan.  The one without knowledge says “You’ll add 180lbs to your squat in 3 months”, the one with knowledge says “I will happen when it happens, and no sooner.”

Those with knowledge have no need for predictions, for there is nothing to be concerned about when things do not go “according to plan”.  Those without knowledge need their predictions, and they will suffer NO deviation from those predictions, as they lack the skillset necessary to adapt to and overcome those deviations.  A trainee whose toolbox extends only as far as the number 5 for reps will have no ability to make progress once those sets of 5 stop working.  The trainee who has knowledge, that made no predictions, did not plan for WHEN those sets of 5 were going to stop working, but has a solution for when it happens.  They tap into that knowledge and come up with a new way forward, absent, once again, of a prediction for it succeeding, but at least with a willingness to try it and see if it works.  And, if it does, they keep moving forward until it doesn’t.  And, if it doesn’t, they try something else.  Because there are no guarantees, nothing is set in stone, and if you have knowledge, that’s nothing to worry about.