Pulling Back the Curtain on Conventional Wisdom - February 7, 2024

We're pulling back the curtain on conventional wisdom. We're talking curious cats. Good fences.

The second mouse. And all the jacks. Blood, water, and their relative viscosity.

All this, and a good deal more, after the break. Welcome back, all you beautiful people. Today we're pulling back the curtain on conventional wisdom.

As always, I'm Nick, that's Erick. We're the Get Good Guys. And this is the Get Good Guide. Hi there, good buddy. We're back at it. How are you? It's the weekly release.

Thanks so much for joining us. We appreciate you. It's good to have everybody back.

We are pulling back the curtain, my friend. We are revealing, hopefully, in kind of a non-sexual way. I think.

Well, you know, it's a little bit, it is what it is. Yeah, but we're talking conventional wisdom, which is, in and of itself, an interesting little phrase there, historically. Yeah, we're gonna delve into it, for sure.

But we're gonna talk about that and a bunch of different phrases that are pretty common. Right, most people have an idea of and have heard of, and maybe how those differ than what we might think. Yeah, maybe over time they've changed, or maybe purposefully, even maliciously, they've changed a little bit.

That's interesting. But how does this relate to the sort of the get good thesis? Why are we talking about this as the get good guys? We talk about this idea a lot, about going against the conventional wisdom of things. Sure.

Now, we'll admit that we didn't know how far that conventional wisdom kind of phrase went. Yeah, we did not know how far the rabbit hole went down. Yeah, the opposite of what we're searching for in the get good guide.

So that was kind of exciting to see, right? That we're even better than we expected, so that's pretty cool. Yeah, it's interesting, right? I think we start out more so as simply contrarian, in some way, sort of saying, hey, look, this is the way that a lot of people do it. That doesn't make it right.

Perhaps it even, it could be argued, it's easier to do it a different way. But then actually starting to look at conventional wisdom, these phrases that become sort of so popular and so hackneyed and overused, that their meanings can change or are misconstrued or sometimes purposefully misused. Yeah, and I think they, one of the other things that we find in the guide often is that they tend to drift into the realm of motivational phrases as well, right? That same kind of realm of not really helpful, just saying, oh, you should do this, right? Yeah, well, let's talk about that, right? The early bird gets the worm.

We've all heard it, maybe we've even said it. You know, we're taught what it means. Hey, look, get up, get out there, get working.

But that's only half the phrase. Yeah, the other half is the second mouse gets the cheese. Interesting.

Gets the cheese. And true, if I'm not mistaken. The first mouse doesn't fare too well.

No, no, he maybe finds those traps quite nicely. Yeah, well, and this is, I think, significant for the Get Good Guide especially because so much of what we discovered in the writing of the guide was, hey, man, probably someone knows the answer to that. Yeah, almost assuredly.

Almost assuredly. If you're, unless you are at the very forefront of a field doing sort of pioneering work, chances are someone has at least thoughts about the question that you're asking. And you can find them.

Yeah, well, that's it, right? The human population is large. And at this point in time, at our fingertips, which is pretty cool. Absolutely, it is.

Yeah, we carry it in our pocket. And that was actually the genesis of the 90-second resource unit, which was like, hey, man, just take 90 seconds and see what's out there real quick. Stand on the shoulders of giants, or in this case, be the second mouse.

Yeah, and this is an easy trap to fall into, even ourselves, right? Let's just work harder. Let's just try to get up earlier and do more. And then maybe we've stepped back, and we've said, let's look into this for 90 seconds or five minutes, and we find a better way or a better answer.

And we're like, oh, hmm, should have been that second mouse. Yeah, instead of trying to be the early bird getting the worm, how about we step back and be the second mouse a little bit? What's another one we like? I like curious cats. Curious cats, right.

Curiosity killed the cat. Curiosity killed the cat. Oftentimes used to sort of suggest, hey, look, be a little bit conscientious, be a little bit cautious.

Maybe don't worry about what's out there so much. Curiosity killed the cat. If you overstep your bounds, you could find yourself in trouble.

But again, that's only the first half of the phrase. Yeah, yeah, the second half is satisfaction brought it back. And this really refers to the idea of you should be seeking knowledge.

Right, you should be seeking knowledge. Curiosity kills the cat. Makes it feel like you shouldn't be out in that realm that you're not comfortable with.

That it's not for you, right? Just because if you don't already know it, or I've heard people say, if I had to explain it, you wouldn't understand. And it's like, well, no, that's not how that works. Well, and I've heard people talk about, it's a commentary on anxiety.

This idea of if you let something remain unknown and you just worry about it, and you just are anxious about it instead of exploring it, or if you're afraid to explore it, that's where, that's the death of the cat. But satisfaction, in this case, the finding out brought it back. Well, I think this is an interesting one for the guide as well, because we're kind of on both sides, actually, of this, I would say, because we very much caution you against getting kind of sucked down those rabbit holes of curiosity of, oh, this looks interesting, that looks interesting, just read this, just read that.

We work very hard to be intentional about our curiosity. But what's important is that intentionality helps the satisfaction happen, right? It helps us reach those goals or what we're searching for. And then we can come back to that much, much easier.

Our energy is much easier to find in that realm again. Yeah, yeah. Now, before we get to what is perhaps the most important phrase for, as far as relations to the guide, or relationship to the guide, let's talk about the word conventional, or the words conventional wisdom.

Now, this was a surprise to both of us. We do a bit of research before we launch into each episode, before we write the crash in and all that. Yeah, of course.

The phrase conventional wisdom first appears in the late 1800s, but it is kind of, it falls into disuse. It's not a common phrase. Sure.

It was in the 1950s, in fact, 1958, it's a guy named Galbraith, G-A-L-B-R-A-I-T-H, an economist, we love talking about economists from many decades ago, apparently. It's almost like they had a big influence on the world. It's very strange.

And so he sort of came out and said, hey, I'm gonna start using this phrase. And he meant it as a pejorative. He meant it as an insult.

He said, hey, that's, in other words, that's just conventional wisdom. That's merely conventional wisdom. And I don't remember his exact phrasing.

You can probably look it up, the quote, but it's something like, things that are so widely accepted as true that we don't bother finding out that they're not. And if we're presented with facts about why they're not, we just sort of cast them off. We don't worry about the facts.

And so that was a very interesting find, that there was a moment in time, and not just time, but the mid-20th century, where this phrase, conventional wisdom, was coined or re-coined and used to sort of point out that these phrases, these bits of wisdom, whatever, oftentimes aren't true and not at all useful. Well, and most importantly, even if they are true, what ends up happening is because it's common knowledge, you might say, people don't bother to look into it. They just accept it.

And that's really the issue, is that you're just accepting it because other people accept it, and that's not always the best way to go. Not necessarily. And oftentimes, you're accepting whatever they said, as opposed to fully understanding the background.

Almost like what we're talking about today. Right, which is crucial for this, especially for this next phrase, which is jack of all trades. Jack of all trades.

Right, oftentimes used as kind of an insult. Oh, he's just a jack of all trades and master of none. But the following sentence in that phrase is oftentimes better than one.

Right, this idea that a jack was a sort of apprentice level, journeyman level, skilled tradesman. And that having a jack of all trades would be profoundly useful. Yeah, yeah, a lumberjack is the one that people would know and come to mind.

Essentially the low end of the gentry or the high end of the skilled trades. But yeah, that jack of all trades, master of none, but oftentimes better than one. Another phrase that is complete, but profoundly misunderstood, is good fences make good neighbors.

Right, and this phrase existed before the Frost poem, but the Frost poem that popularized it. People will assume it means, hey look, having boundaries, having good fences between property and having a clear delineation is what makes positive relationships in neighbors. Not the case.

Yeah, yeah, in the poem, right, what ends up happening is the two neighbors share a fence. Right. So they have to come together to work on that shared fence for both of them to kind of gain and thrive.

But when we hear this phrase, it very quickly comes to mind of, I'll stay on my side and just do my stuff, you stay on your side. Right. Which is the exact opposite of how it's kind of intended.

Right, right. And then the sort of last one we're gonna talk about on the main feed here, and we have a couple more for the Patreon as well as a little bit more in depth conversation about the progression on some of these over there on the Patreon. But blood is thicker than water.

Not even close to the actual original phrase. And this was originally a biblical phrase, which is that the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb. In other words, it is the exact opposite.

Opposite. Of what it seems. If you actually know the phrase.

Yeah. If you actually read the phrase. So this idea that the blood of the covenant, the agreement, whether it's a sort of compact that you enter into or a contract that you enter into or a brotherhood of fellowship, you know, oftentimes talked about in military settings, is thicker than the water of the womb.

In other words, simply merely being related genetically. Yeah, and that's super interesting because it's the exact opposite. Right, some of these have kind of, oh, you could see it this way or see it that way, but this one is so very clearly opposite and it's super, super interesting how these things start to kind of meld and change over time.

Absolutely. Well, good buddy. Should we talk a little bit more about this in the Patreon? I think so.

I think so. We will see all of you in the outro. Well, gee, thanks everybody.

We sure do appreciate you taking the time, spending that time with us here in the Get Good Grotto. We've been talking about conventional wisdom and pulling the curtain back a little bit on some of that. And if you want to catch quite a bit more, by all means, we'd love to have you join us over at the Patreon, patreon.com slash getgoodguide.

You can catch up with a transcript of this episode over on the getgood.guide central point of the Get Good Galaxy. And there you can also download yourself a copy of the Get Good Guide. As always, I'm Erick, that's Nick. We're the Get Good Guys. And this is the Get Good Guide.

Tough time to be a magician, I think.

I tell ya.