How to become dangerously intelligent

Get addicted to thinking, because they want to keep you silenced.

Society has made you think that increasing your intelligence is impossible.

Intelligence is not an IQ score.

It has nothing to do with how much you know.

It has nothing to do with your genetic makeup or how lucky you are.

The world is designed to make you consume and comply rather than think and create.

Of course you’re going to let “smart people” tell you what being smart means.

There are plenty of “intelligent” people who hate the career they’ve been building their entire lives. Who don’t have a spare cent to their name. Who don’t feel remotely comfortable in their own body and mind. Who have no friends, hobbies, deep interests or curiosity for living.

And are absolutely dead-fucking miserable.

And there are plenty of dumb people who are extremely happy, healthy, and wealthy with a lot more things than just money.

I am writing this essay for a select few people.

To those drifting through life believing they will never feel smart.

To those who never saw themselves as one of “the smart kids.”

To anyone who feels they have this frustrating inability to think deeply, articulate their beliefs and opinions clearly, and organize their disorganized, chaotic thoughts.

In this essay, I will give you a 3-part framework for thinking clearly, and therefore more deeply, and overcoming any problem that life throws your way.

True intelligence is the ability to think.

True intelligence, which we will talk about, is a habit.

It is the ability to distinguish appearance from reality, and thus pick apart reality, to get what you want out of life.

You have the same fundamental brain as every mathematician, physicist, polymath, and philosopher genius who has ever lived.

You only think you’re incapable of thinking because you have never thought about thinking in the correct way.

Until this essay.

It starts with one thing

It is inevitable that we face problems, but no particular problem is inevitable.

- David Deutsch

Everything (eventually) falls apart.

Your body will weaken if you don’t strengthen it. Your relationships will disappear if you don’t maintain them. Notice how your bedroom always gets messy, even when you don’t consciously do anything to make it messy?

Yeah, because you’re not consciously doing anything to keep it clean either.

The default state of the universe is chaos and uncertainty.

Physics is harsh.

It does not care about who you think you are, how you feel, or how much you hate cleaning your room. And if the baseline state of reality is decay and disorder, that leads us to the following profound idea:

life is problems

This is why Jordan Peterson (regardless of your opinion) always used to say that life is suffering, and therefore a tragedy. Problems will always appear out of nowhere, randomly, and try take you out at the knees if you don’t have a defense against them.

We’ll get to that defense mechanism in a second.

Problems are also infinite.

No matter how much you think you want that new shiny object or that new goal that will finally make you happy once and for all... once you get it, there’ll be a new problem making you unhappy.

For every problem you solve, a new one appears.

Greek mythology had the Hydra. A beast with multiple snake heads. And if you cut off one head, two more would regrow to take its place.

The Greeks knew what they were talking about...

Here is our definition of intelligence.

Before any “intelligent” people start complaining at me, who themselves use IQ or grades as a shield for their own identity, and psychological survival, so they can feel higher status than those around them, by defining intelligence as something static, instead of going out and testing their quote-unquote intelligence against reality, and defining it by real-world outcomes.

IQ and grades become super useful there, I’m sure...

Intelligence is habit.

Intelligence is adaptation.

Intelligence is behaviour change based on feedback.

Intelligence is not repetition, no, but iteration.

Really, we can say that intelligence is just... thinking.

Everything I just mentioned results from thinking. Thinking is how we solve problems and create beneficial solutions that help us get what we want. Solve problems, suffer less than we have to, impose order against chaos.

Thinking is the defense mechanism, the shield, or the counterforce against the decaying, chaotic, and uncertain nature of reality.

I hate repeating it.

This quote has been beaten to death online.

But Naval, he’s just so fucking right:

The only true test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life.

- Naval Ravikant

If you do not think that thinking makes this profound idea true, you have some thinking to do.

The “what-why-how” framework

If intelligence is getting what you want out of life, and there is no difference between intelligence and thinking, then we must learn how to think.

I’m not going to teach first principles thinking, systems thinking, or any other mental model that doesn’t give a fundamental, big picture approach for thinking about anything and everything in a simple way. Without needing to know which of the many models to use and when etc. etc.

You can use this model (framework) to think about anything in an intelligent way.

And it’s so damn simple.

Really, all you need is this one framework for helping you think clearly, before thinking deeply, and thus straightening out your thoughts, half-formed opinions, and beliefs that have been implanted in your mind by external sources (school, parents, governments, algorithms).

This is how you can use thinking to get anything you want out of life, solve any problem, and suffer less.

Step 1: What (Make a claim)

What do you believe to be true?

Pick a problem that’s bothering you right now.

Think of how your health, career, or relationships are looking. Or think of a question you thought of on a morning walk, or a topic you can’t stop thinking about.

Write down, think, or state aloud what you believe the solution is.

Be bold here. Be wrong. It doesn’t matter.

For example:

• “Writing is the greatest skill I could be learning.”

• “I need to quit my job.”

• “I need to go on more walks.”

These are just claims.

A claim is an idea someone believes to be true about the structure of reality. Very abstract, I know. In relatable terms, you are stating a belief from your perspective.

Nobody else has your perspective. Nobody else has been shaped by what you’ve been exposed to. Information sources. People. Your algorithm. Where you live, who you live with, and what you do every day.

Nobody has the complete big picture (what’s called epistemic humility), and this is why war, conflict, and misunderstanding is a universal thing. People disagree because of differing beliefs, which is what your perspective is. It’s a world-view. Made up of a set number of beliefs, or claims, that you believe to be true about the world.

Enough explaining.

Start with a claim. Don’t try to be right or perfect. Just get it out, so you can get what you think out of your head and into words so you can actually examine it, as objectively as you can. Most people skip this, let alone the why and how parts.

You can’t say you believe something to be true if you can’t say what you believe clearly in the first place.

Say the thing. Poorly even, at first. Then test it.

Step 2: Why (Test the claim)

Now ask why is the claim true?

You need reasons.

This is where stupid thinking starts falling apart.

You can say you should learn to write... okay. Why?

Because you can’t think? Because you don’t know what you think? Because you want to build a body of work, a personal brand, or start accruing wealth through creating digital assets by writing?

Or did you just look at a motivational, philosophical YouTube video that romanticized the writing process for you inside your head?

Think of this step in the thinking process as cutting away dead wood. Separating wheat from the chaff.

Like a sculptor, sculpting away at a block of marble to test whether the marble itself is solid enough to create something valuable from it.

Some reasons will hold up, while others will die away. Which is the point. We’re looking to remove as much dead wood as we can (you’ll realize while doing this that you are mostly dead wood, and that most of what you believe to be true just isn’t true whatsoever).

I call this “the rule of 3”:

If you can’t give three reasons as to why you think something is true, you need to think again about the claim you’re making.

Probably the ultimate way to check if you’re acting based on a feeling you mistook for a thought...

Step 3: How (Make it useful)

You have your claim, and your reasons for why it’s true.

Now what?

Well, how would it be beneficial to your life? How is it relevant? How is it important, and what other claims, facts, or profound ideas does it connect to?

Example:

“If you learn to write, you learn to think. Thinking is what determines every outcome of your life.”

Great!

How do I start writing? 30-60 minutes a day? In the morning? On paper, a phone, a laptop?

This is how you turn thoughts into a plan for action. Which I have heard is an important thing, for actually going out and getting what you want out of life...

My example

I recommend writing while doing this. Everyone thinks they’re good at thinking until they write...

This is the claim I’m making:

Learning to write long-form content (essays, articles, newsletters etc.) under a personal brand is the highest-leverage skill you could develop right now.

That’s my what. Now for the why and how.

Here are three reasons as to why this is true.

1. Writing is formalized thinking - You can’t write about something you can’t explain aloud. Anytime you do stumble or get “writer’s block...” you research. You learn. You consume great writing so you can write something great yourself. Writing is also how you communicate the value of your knowledge, which is what you think. Writing, then, is the ultimate thinking and communication tool there is.

2. Writing builds a body of work that people can’t help but explore, and as a by-product, an audience to support your work, along with deep expertise and online authority - Long-form is more dense compared to short-form. A newsletter like this one can be read 10 years on from now, whereas short-form disappears pretty quickly.

3. AI cannot replace a human perspective - It does not have one. It can generate words words words... but what about experience? Trial and human error, mistakes, or lessons learned by YOU? A long-form post is an attempt at solving a problem from your unique perspective. The word essay literally means “to attempt.”

Cool.

How do you go about writing, then?

• Start a newsletter - Choose Substack. Or use X. If you record yourself reading your newsletter to a camera you can post your video to YouTube and podcast platforms like Spotify

• Choose one topic to write about each week - Hopefully it’s (1) validated, and a high-performing topic (which proves lots of people are clicking on this topic to hear a perspective on it), and (2) something you are genuinely interested in learning about yourself. I talk more about this in this long-form writing guide on my Substack.

• Write your perspective on the topic - What is your relationship with the problem? What do YOU have to offer in terms of a potential solution? Even this newsletter I have written isn’t 100% “right.” But it’s a perspective based on what I currently know now. Which will change in a weeks time!

• You need only one long-form post each week to grow - 2000 words each week

A routine for increasing intelligence

Go on a walk for 20 minutes, 1-3x a day

Walk with a question, problem, topic, or title/headline for a long-form post in mind

Think about it using the what-why-how framework

Come up with 3-5 key points on the topic

Run each of those under the what-why-how framework

If you have an idea, run it through the damn framework.

I’m not asking you to do this for hours and hours a day. But I do want you to do this for hours and hours across months. I would say this isn’t marathon it’s a sprint, but really it’s a marathon’s worth of daily sprints.

Sprint, then recover.

Think as hard as you can, then wait until tomorrow to go again.

It doesn’t take 10,000 hours of doing this to become a genius-level thinker. It’s 10,000 iterations.

Sorry for the AI-sounding “it’s not this, it’s that” pattern. It just sounds more impactful when I put it that way.

Intelligence is a habit you can choose to start implementing into your life right this second.

Pick a problem you are currently suffering from.

Think about it.

And smash it against the brick wall that we call reality.

I really appreciate you being here. I value your time and attention a lot more than you realize.

You’re an absolute legend.

- Craig :)

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