People are evaluation machines.
You successfully complete thousands of evaluations every day, like:
How's your day going?
What's for lunch?
What should you do next?
What time is it?
What do you think about... some topic?
Who do you think is going to win... some game?
Is that yours?
Should you buy it?
What are you doing tomorrow?
Is that what you think it is?
Is that safe?
Now, let's imagine that these evaluations aren't arbitrary. But rather, they follow a logical pattern and format.
If they did, and we could simplify it into a simple to understand and learn process, it would helps you better understand your own evaluations, as well as others.
We have done just that below.
Evaluation Format
Our ability to evaluate, like the rest of us, is the product of billions of years of biological evolution.
It's fundamentally controlled by the physical and biological structures that make up our bodies and brains. As a result, it is literally written into our fundamental structure, and doesn't have a risk of changing soon.
Similarly, over the last 50,000 years, approximately ~107 billion people have lived.
Each of them:
Shared 100% of their base physical structure... sharing the same atomic structure, chemicals, laws of physics, same fundamental obedience to these laws and structures, etc.
Shared 99.9% of their base biological structure... sharing almost all their DNA, the same hand design, same organs, same cellular structure, same laws of cellular metabolism, etc.
This means, that you and I and every other human... rich... poor... young... old... liberal... conservative... smart... dumb... strong... weak... tech geek... to free-range hippie...
... are essentially clones of each other.
In the same way, even though the RESULTS of our evaluations may vary wildly, our ability to evaluate and the process we follow is identical from person to person.
This format of Evaluations follows our primary bio-evolutionary question:
"What is the State of MY Self in MY Environment?"
With our primary drive to have "Our Selves" in a "Dominant position" in "Our Environment".
This is a constant.
All behavior is an "attempt to achieve a Dominant position in our environment for our selves".
"Evaluation" has evolved to help us try to do that with 4 Fundamental parts:
States
Full Reality
Summaries
Scope
The Living States combine 2 fundamental ideas.
3 Approximate Amounts:
High Amount
Medium Amount
Low Amount
2 Relationship Types:
+ Positive (Good) for myself / the subject
- Negative (Bad) for myself / the subject
The 6 base states are simply a combination of these.
High Amount of .... + Positive (Good)
Medium Amount of .... + Positive (Good)
Low Amount of .... + Positive (Good)
Low Amount of .... - Negative (Bad)
Medium Amount of .... - Negative (Bad)
High Amount of .... - Negative (Bad)
The ONLY major added complexity comes from our evaluation process itself. To illustrate: Imagine someone knocks at your door.
Now, that knock occurred in physical reality... and obeying physical laws, requires there to be a cause behind the knock.
Until you go investigate the cause, the list of possibilities are infinite.
It could be:
A bear
The mailman
A food delivery
A neighbor
A Politician
A salesman
Your long lost billionaire relative coming to reconnect
Your family
A mass murderer
But we don't evaluate all these possibilities before opening the door. We don't behave that way. And how we would react varies wildly between the possibilities.
Instead, we immediately evaluate and select "what we imagine is most likely", and then behave "as if what we've imagined... is in fact physically true".
So...
If we imagine there's a murderer at the door,
We behave as if there's a murderer at the door,
Even if it just your mailman... until we discover our mistake.
If we imagine it's the mailman at the door
We behave as if it's the mailman at the door,
Even if it's a hungry bear that's about the maul and eat us... until we discover our mistake.
Our imagination makes it "Informationally Real" to us... we imagine it as Real.
So this illustrates this last base state variation, between:
What is Physically Real
What is Informationally Real
We commonly call these differences in "states":
Physically Real = Health
Informationally Real = Happiness
This plays out regularly in our lives.
Tacos make us Happy... but they aren't very Healthy.
Starting a new weight loss regimen at 5am is an attempt to make us healthier... but in the moment often makes us less happy.
This plays out as 'dual states' for every person, at all times.
Over a single day, that might look something like this:
Our "Physical State" is more stable, increasing after meals and rest... and decreasing after effort and at the end of the day.
Our "Informational State" is pretty stable... but far more volatile.
This tracks with our understanding of "emotional" states, that tend to have a fairly steady baseline for individuals, but that can change from moment-to-moment, based on the 'information' available.
But this isn't how we typically think of our state.
We tend to summarize them, which is the 3rd part of Evaluations.
When we do Summarize, they only take 2 Formats:
A Narrative or Story format
A Predictive or Statistically probable format
Narrative simply selects 1-3 events to focus on, and ignores the rest.
Predictive summarizes all events into their respective "state", and then measures how much 'time' is spent at each.
Narrative is the easiest and most common. The 'events' chosen can be entirely factual or entirely fictional. They can do a good job of representing the larger data set OR completely misrepresent it, even with entirely factual event samples. They are the easiest for communication, and how our brains process information.
Predictive is far harder, and is mostly math and measurement. Our brains are literally incapable of doing this on their own. Every attempt by every person to make good predictive evaluations without this process are highly inaccurate guesses. But... it's fun to guess. If you don't want to rely on guesses, this is the only accurate method of representing someone's actual states over time, either overall, by type (physically, or informationally), or by some specific topic. It very powerful, enabling us to get accurate information about large data sets, and do pretty amazing things.
This makes up all the fundamental elements to understand evaluation and well-being.
The last element is really just about how we can adjust 'scope'.
Scope is simply a set of variables that help you understand how much effort is required to achieve what you've set out to, and whether the approach you are taking is capable of meeting those expectations.
You can pick any variables, but you can do almost all scope evaluations with only 5, by understanding which options are included and excluded from all the possible:
People
States
Topics
Space
Time
Narrative formats or anecdotal examples may be true, but tend to poorly represent the larger data set. As as result, they are often found at the bottom of this chart when accurate, and often inaccurate everywhere else, unless sourced from a predictive model.
Predictive formats can cover the entire chart, but need to be translated into a narrative format to be easy to understand.
You can easily dismiss as inaccurate all narratives that make large scope claims, but have no equivalent predictive backing.
The Logical Conclusion
We are working to make evaluations of life's well-being more accurate, and more real-time.
Helping people understand the basic format is an important step in this process.
I hope this has helped.
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