Chapter 20: Life Isn’t Complicated, its what you make of it.
- Feb 5
- 6 min read
If you want Simplicity, its simple - Box Breath. Live in the Present. For the physicists amongt you, employ the Principle of Least Action. Box Breathing/Mindfulness/Meditation/Naturephilia/Presence is The Stationary-Action Principle applied via techniques well validated by both Cognitive Neuroscience and in perfect alignment with core principle also seen in Game Theory and Relationship Dynamics.
If you wish to pursue the ultimate truth, due to inherent curiousity about reality itself, instead employ Baysian Inference.
There are several internally coherent maps/models of reality, the Baysian approach to learn about all of them, and the fastest way to get dumb is to marry any single one of them…
We are wired to see analogies and those analogies birthed many maps
Playlist of Logically Consistent Models/Maps of Reality:
A “map” can be coherent and still be wrong in the only way that matters, it doesn’t predict your life well. Humans confuse coherence with truth all the time. It’s why smart people get trapped inside elegant systems the way a fly gets trapped inside a spotless window. Clear. Shiny. Unescapable.
The sane move is Bayesian. Especially given cutting edge research developments in late 2025 using Bayesian inference to emulate intelligent reasoning in LLMs.
Treat every worldview like a working hypothesis. Give each one a weight, a probability. Update the weights when reality hands you new data. Don’t treat your beliefs like sacred heirlooms. Treat them like a forecast on the probability of a sunny weekend.
That’s literally how the best prediction systems work. They run a bunch of models, compare outcomes, and keep adjusting based on what actually happens. Your mind should do the same. An intelligent individual wouldnt “believe” the first thought they have. They keep exploring alternative possibilities and keep multiple candidates alive, scores them, then revises as more evidence arrives. Your brain should run like that, not like a one-ideology monarchy driven by the first emotion that strikes it.
Even your “best” model almost never deserves total confidence. If you’re being intellectually honest, the probability that your favorite worldview is the One True Map is rarely even coin-flip territory. Thinking your top pick is above 51% is usually your brain doing what it loves most, compressing uncertainty into a comforting story.
It’s like a court deciding a case based on the prettiest argument, not the strongest evidence.
It’s like picking one “best” investing strategy after three good weeks and declaring the market solved forever.
Real intelligence looks less like certainty and more like portfolio management.
Diversified bets. Regular rebalancing. Low drama when you’re wrong. And a refusal to turn “I currently think X” into “I am X.”
A few upgrades that make this work in real life
First, separate identity from hypotheses.
The moment a model becomes your identity, you stop updating. You start defending. You become a PR agent for a theory instead of a scientist of your own mind.
Second, demand predictive power.
A worldview that can explain everything after the fact is cheap. A worldview that helps you predict what happens next, and helps you behave better under stress, that’s the good stuff.
Third, watch your “confidence inflation” reflex.
Brains hate ambiguity. They turn uncertainty into certainty the way a phone turns a low battery warning into panic. So your job is to reintroduce calibration. Ask “What would change my mind?” If the answer is “nothing,” you’re not thinking, you’re worshipping.
Fourth, keep a “model sandbox.”
You should be able to try on a model the way you try on a jacket. Wear it for a week. See what it does to your attention, your relationships, your anxiety, your creativity. Then decide if it earns more weight. Don’t tattoo it on your soul on day one.
I’m inviting people into a buffet of popular and alluring models across time, Vedic frameworks, philosophy, neuroscience, CBT, DBT, contemplative practice, and newer “mind-pointer” material. The point is not “pick one and pledge allegiance.” The point is “notice the recurring invariants.”
When very different traditions keep bumping into similar conclusions, it doesn’t prove they’re right, but it raises the odds that they’re touching something structural about human experience.
Across most (if not all) these models, a few recurring insights emerge.
“Trust the Universe.”
But that phrase needs teeth, otherwise it sounds like a poster in a yoga studio. Better stated…
Reality is bigger than your control, and bigger than you could possibly comprehend.
Your nervous system is not an omniscient manager, it’s a risk engine with a negativity bias.
When you stop treating life like a rigged courtroom where you must win every argument, you recover attention and energy that were being burned on defense.
Life can still be hard. You just stop adding useless suffering on top of necessary pain. Helpful to this is acknowledging that some degree of stress and suffering are neccesary to allow for growth and triumph. They are neccesary to make life meaningful and fulfulling and escape the fate of Universe 25 (read that chapter next).
The different models all seem to converge on three cheat codes that I will present from the neuroscience perspective (but they are valid from spiritual perspectives as well).
These work because they are not metaphysical but they do perfectly align with the metaphysical models as well. From a neurological perspective, they are attentional technologies. They govern what your brain amplifies.
Cheat Code/Cognitive Technique 1
Gratitude
This is not forced positivity. It’s threat reallocation.
Your brain is a headline machine. It highlights danger because danger used to kill you.
Gratitude is you grabbing the editorial desk and saying “Cool story, now also print the assets.” A strengths inventory or gratitude journal is basically reallocating cognitive budget. You’re training the reward system to notice what’s stable and usable, not just what’s missing and scary.
Add a tiny twist that makes it practical.
Write three things you’re grateful for, then write one action you can take with each of them.
Gratitude becomes fuel, not just sentiment.
Cheat Code/Cognitive Technique 2
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is not “be calm.” It’s “stop being yanked around by your own prediction errors.” Box Breathing is the easiest method but there are many effective ones.
Your nervous system constantly predicts, then freaks out when reality doesn’t match the prediction. Mindfulness is learning to witness that process without immediately obeying it. DBT is especially good at this because it treats you like a complex system, not a moral failure.
Another clean way to say it, from an analytic framework.
The past is data. The future is simulation. The present is the only place you can steer.
Cheat Code/Cognitive Technique 3
Optimism
Catch the ANT and upgrade the model
Optimists live longer, feel happier, recover faster and are more likely to succeed by every measurable metric. Optimism isn’t pretending everything is fine. It’s refusing to run a buggy mental model that overestimates catastrophe and underestimates your ability to respond.
Automatic Negative Thoughts are basically low-quality forecasts. CBT gives you a debugging toolkit. You write the thought down, label the distortion, test it against evidence, and replace it with a higher-accuracy statement. Not nicer. More accurate.
When you stop wasting cognitive bandwidth on phantom disasters, you free up resources for problem-solving, flexibility, creativity, and connection. Your stress hormones drop. Your attention returns. Your life starts to feel less like survival mode.
Here is a playlist of therapy exercises to help you utilize these techniques…
Analogies to better align with this view…
Beliefs are an operating system.
Some OS choices run certain apps beautifully and crash on others. Don’t swear loyalty to an OS. Use what runs your life better. Patch aggressively.
Your worldview is a pair of sunglasses.
It changes what you see, and it changes what you miss. The goal isn’t to find the “true” sunglasses. The goal is to know you’re wearing them, and to switch lenses when the task changes. This is The Secret.
If you want to explore this with the right mindset, start with the first minute of the video below, not as a conversion ritual, but as a calibration exercise. And then consider what model you opted to marry yourself to, if any, and how that helps you feel superior to others who embrace a different model. Admit that you maybe wrong.
(start here, just watch the first minute):
Then carry that humbling perspective into the rest of playlist and let the models compete inside your mind like candidates in a debate, not like gods in a temple.
Playlist of Other Models/Maps of Reality:
The rest of this chapter is still under construction, which is exactly how it should be. A living mind doesn’t publish final editions. It publishes versions.
Concluding vantage point:
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