People as the Primitives
On relational systems | June 11, 2024
Rapid Reflections: A series in which I sit down to write whatever’s on
my mind without thinking about it too hard. The goal is to write + share
once a week.
A system primitive is the building block for all higher level functions
and processes.
The core of the human experience is fundamentally relational, defined by
relationship with self and others.
If you look at the world with people as your primitives, what does it
look like to augment your brain’s capacity to make meaning of this? To
create higher level functions and processes? And to capture changes over
time?
![](/blog/people_1.png)
• • •
From first principles, let’s start with self - whoever the “I am” is for
you. While we’re calling self / self-concept the most basic unit in your
higher level relational system, it is of course anything but. Roughly,
let’s say the self-concept is made up of thoughts, actions, and habits.
Next, you have person A. Your access to Person A’s self-concept is
limited to the facts about them that you have observed or trust in, the
actions/experiences they’ve had that you know of, and your shared
experiences.
Across the two primitives of self and person A, the first higher level
function is “who is person A to me?”
A coworkerA safe person I can trustA potential future cofounder Ah, there are shades to this. Who someone is to you is ever-changing, as
your self-concept and your understanding of Person A changes over time.
And so our system starts to look like:
![](/blog/people_2.png)
Where each higher level function is affected by the past, with a naive
penalty for how much time has passed. Other features here can include
significant relational events like stark moments of trust or betrayal.
Say we do achieve this time-series system of capturing relational ties,
what next? Well how might a system interpret Who is Person A to B?
![](/blog/people_3.png)
Ok… this is starting to get complicated. Ultimately, I know people and
relationships compose my lived experience. But so what. Within this
system, what’s important is Who is meaningful to me today?
![](/blog/people_4.png)
If I trust my system can capture this, is there any higher order
function we can get to? Given my self-concept, what matters is what I
can think, act, and habituate.
![](/blog/people_5.png)
We end with the highest level output of this system being "what
relational actions should I take today?”. I don’t actually need to
understand the complexity of the system. I need to trust that the system
understands my self-concept and helps me act in alignment with that.
• • •
And so, to augment the brain’s capacity to make meaning of a my
relational system with people as the primitives ultimately looks like
abstracting away complexity and focusing on taking the right relational
actions at the right time to achieve alignment with self-concept.
The next-level could be relying on other cooperative people’s higher
level relational action steps to support mine - like asking for a hiring
referral, getting feedback on this thread, or calling my grandmother.
For 200,000-300,000 years, the human brain has been this system. What
does the evolution of our relational system looks like? 🔥