Peterson Fellow Chronicles #4: Next Great Adventure Fellowship Conclusions and Meta-Rules Technical Wrap-Up

"If you took all 10 of those rules, and you tried to extract out one rule from them that would be at the top of the hierarchy, what would that be? And in western culture the idea there is 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you' is the meta-rule that guides all other rules, sort of like the one ring in Lord of the Rings. It's this consistent pattern of abstraction of ethical guidelines" ~ Dr. Jordan B. Peterson,

This quote is the perfect beginning to the end of the Peterson Fellow Chronicles.

It's taken from Dr. Peterson's 2017 Maps of Meaning Lecture 08: Neuropsychology of Symbolic Representation. You can check the whole thing out on YouTube or Spotify for context.

This central question - precisely articulated so well by the man himself - is the one that I sought to answer for myself when I began my journey as a Dr. Jordan B. Peterson Fellow in the "Next Great Adventure" Entrepreneurship program at the Acton School of Business in February, 2020.

That is, I wanted to discover my own Meta Rule(s) for life.

My Own Tale of Adventure: There and Back Again

Through my data-driven investigation of the natural language of ethical guidelines, I had been hoping to learn something deeper and more true about the world than I had yet been able to.

In hindsight I honestly do believe that I have achieved what I was aiming at.

My own tale of adventure out of the Shire (for me that's Dayton, OH, and if you'd like my Hobbiton is Oakwood, OH) - probably not unsurprisingly - follows a "classic U-shaped curve," and maybe also not surprisingly actually looks like a Shire too...

Departure

In late 2019, amidst a torrent of personal and professional anguish, I had to get out of Dodge and go looking for that special vague sort of "more." So at 31 years old and at long last, I left; I went to live in a small room in my buddy's new house in Raleigh, NC in early 2020. I had been waiting more than a decade for this.

Almost as soon as I had escaped the geography and the externals that I felt had been holding me back so much for so long ... BOOM ... the world shut down completely. Hello COVID-19, nice to meet you.

Again, classic.

Initiation

Luckily, upon leaving the Shire, I saw a LinkedIn post from Jordan Peterson himself about the Acton Next Great Adventure Program.

So I applied...

I got in.

Encouraged by Acton NGA leadership and my fellow cohort members, I dug deeply into myself to figure out what I was going to do with my miserable life. I dug deeply to figure out who the hell I really was.

I found out. And I'll tell you - it was hard.

What did I learn exactly? I'm glad you asked.

I learned about how to own my strengths, my weaknesses. I learned how to articulate where I'd come from, where I was, where I was going, and how I planned to get there. I learned about what I needed to do to live a life of meaning, from those who had done it themselves.

I also learned the nuts and bolts of serial entrepreneurship; that is, cash and valuation, customers and sales, and operations and costs. Again, from those who had lived their lives using these tools the right way; that is, with skin in the game.

I reminded myself about everything that I had already learned prior to finding myself in this time and in this place, and I worked to integrate it. Past, present, future; personal, professional; here, there, everywhere. I iterated, I narrowed, I continued to hone my aim until I had what I wanted to pool together.

What resulted was the sharp point on the end of my spear to go fishing out in the world with...and I affirmed it every day.

Advanced Manufacturing | Artificial Intelligence | Ed-Tech | Entrepreneurship

If you're starting to feel inspired, maybe let Steven Tomlinson help you take it to the next level, like he certainly did for me.

But it didn't stop there. Even though I had made it all the way through the remote portion of the Next Great Adventure program, I was still just getting started.

As roadblock after roadblock presented itself, I made pivot after pivot.

• I got in and then dropped out of Data Science boot camp - I realized what not to do.
• I moved out of Raleigh almost as abruptly as I had decided to move in - I realized what not to do.
• Literally in route (albeit a meandering route) to Austin to finish out the Fellowship program in the Fall and to start my new life down there, the whole thing was canceled at the last minute - another no-go. Things got so crazy the Acton School of Business building itself is actually up for sale. No kidding.

I found myself adrift like Odysseus after he thought he was just about home.

As I missed target after target, I realized what not to aim at. Things were becoming more focused and clearer as a result of theses rapid transformations.

The Return

All of a sudden I found myself back in the Shire, wondering where to go when the world was closed to everyone.

So I started asking people that I knew, and who knew me, for small and mutually incentivized opportunities. I knocked, and doors started opening. A layer of purpose that I had never quite fulfilled presented itself to me.

Teaching? And actually getting PAID for it? Wow. I'm in.

That was four months ago; I haven't stopped knocking and doors haven't stopped opening.

I decided to double, triple, and quadruple down on everything that I'd be running from. Then amazing things kept happening. The world gave me lemons and this time around, I actually made lemonade with them. I wasn't a scared kid anymore.

2019 Greg: "I'm done with teaching, I'm done with defense, I'm done with Aerospace, and I'm done with Dayton."

2020 Greg: "What did you say again last year, bruh?"

My Hero's Journey

So to sum up...

Adventure beckoned, I heeded the call, went off to fight the dragon, got the gold, and brought it back to share with the community. 

It's been a perfect year for me, and I'll be forever grateful for all of the experiences and the opportunities, but most of all I'll always remember the people. 

You all know who you are. Thank you.

How I Discovered What Matters

As Dr. Peterson likes to put it, "the duality you have to contend with is not simply just "matter," but also "what matters."

So what matters then, exactly? Is it the golden Meta-Rule that we started our journey with?

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Or is it something else?

Personally, I prefer it Nassim Taleb style (as you might be able to tell from the presentation I gave about my journey at the Advanced Manufacturing Olympics) ... Via Negativa.

In my humble opinion, I tend to agree with Taleb (and Isocrates) - silver beats gold.

"Silver Rule (negative golden rule): Do not do to others what you would not like them to do to you. Note the difference from the Golden Rule, as the silver one prevents busybodies from attempting to run your life.” ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

Or current-events style, if you'd prefer...

Recall my own personal version of the Meta-Rule for Life:

Figure out what not to do first. Then aim at something.

The world seems to have shown me this year that even if my Meta Rule #1 isn't perfect, there seems to be something to it. And if nothing else, it's good enough for me.

Why? Because it worked for me.

Try it. It might work for you too. I hope it does.

At least if you try it and it doesn't work, you'll know what not to do ;)

Technical Details of the Meta-Rules

Originally, I had wanted to keep going with my Natural Language Processing analysis of these Meta-Rules throughout the Fellowship - but alas, time is finite, and I'm quite happy with how things have progressed without throwing everything under the NLP/AI kitchen sink at the problem.

I guess I'm following advice I often give to students, proteges, clients, and collaborators alike - the simplest solution really is the best.

No Rube Goldberg machines for me on this one.

No scientism either.

Just straight up enough work to get me to something that works.

Now I have a baseline, and I can iterate on it moving forward.

That being said, although extracting semantics from Dr. Peterson's 42 Rules for life never did make it into my "what to do" design space (see #3 of the Chronicles for more on this), the task has instead been folded into a future, longer-term endeavor of mine.

What's Longer Term Endeavor, Exactly?

I plan to continue combining Rules for Life from many sources (e.g., The Ten Commandments, Peterson, Taleb, my own best quotes about life, those of my good friends, mentors, and acquaintances, other authors, you get the gist) to see what I can glean from the world on a larger scale, on my own terms, and on a timeline that is maximally meaningful.

One thing that I can guarantee for any of you readers and supporters out there is that anything that I offer up in the future that is so bold as to suggest ways for people to live their lives will be approached with deep humility and respect for the unknown. There's simply no other way to go about it.

I hope to balance my life and these future investigations on that razor's edge between order and chaos, narrative and optionality, and in between paradox and contradiction.

Wish me luck fellow, adventurers.

I believe that this endeavor will be one that I pursue for the rest of my life, so look out for more content from me in the coming months, years, and (hopefully) even decades.

For now though, I've determined what not to do, and it's become clear to me what I need to do next.

After all, figuring out the best way to take each subsequent step of my journey was, in fact, and in the first place, the true genesis of the Peterson Fellow Chronicles.

On to the Code!

You can find the codes, data, and everything that you need to reproduce the original analysis shown in Articles #2 (Meta-Rules) and #3 (Visualizing the Space) of this 4-part series in my new GitHub repository, which is also the place that I will include future work that follows this thread and merits public demonstration.

Farewell Folks, I'm Going on an Adventure!

For now that's it that's all, but the next chapter is coming soon, and many incredible things are just over the horizon for me.