The things we know we don't know: an introduction to lygometry | Amin Toufani | TEDxSanFrancisco

Amin is the creator of the concept of lygometry - a methodology he is using to build the world's first hedge fund for the poor and to create the first reverse encyclopedia, Reversopedia, which is a collection of things we know we don't know. His talk is about the role of lygometry at the present juncture in human history.

Amin is the Vice President of Strategic Relations at the NASA-based Singularity University where he also teaches lygometry as a tool for adaptive leadership.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

I recently visited Paris,

and on that trip this last March,
I made a discovery.

It was a fascinating thing that I noticed.

I discovered the loneliest place
at the Louvre Museum in Paris.

I can tell you where it is.

It's on the first floor, south wing,
room number seven.

North side, not the south side.

It is an amazing place,
and I'll explain why.

But first, I'm just struck
by a thought, actually,

looking at the timer that is in my face,

if I were to end right now, this would be
the shortest TED Talk in human history.

So, on that note, in under a minute,
do you guys want to make history?

Shall we?

(Audience) Yeah!

Finish it here?

Thank you, thank you, you've been amazing.

(Laughter)

In an earlier talk this morning,
you heard about the Louvre Museum.

(Laughter)

No, but why is this room
the loneliest place at the Louvre Museum?

Room number seven.

There are two sides to it,
north entrance and south entrance.

I entered though the north entrance,

and there is a wall
in the middle of the room

that divides the room into two parts.

So as I entered,
this big wall is in front of me,

and there are five paintings
mounted on the wall.

And I am just super excited
because there is nobody around.

I have these five beautiful
paintings all to myself.

So I stand there and I take it all in.

But soon I realised
something very strange:

that I was the only one
looking at the wall.

Nobody was coming towards the wall.

People were walking away
from the wall or around it.

Why? Why wasn't anybody
paying attention to these five paintings?

So I beg the question,
What is on the other side of the wall?

I had a look.

More than 300 people
were on the other side.

And they were all trying to catch
a glimpse of Da Vinci's masterpiece,

the Mona Lisa.

The wall epitomizes
a core vulnerability for all of us.

A fear that we share.

Which side of the wall
are you going to end up on?

Is what you're working on today
going to stand the test of time?

Will you matter?

And it is not all about,
not at all about fame or fortune;

it is about values, about beauty.

It's about creating
something that has impact.

So let me share with you
my personal beacon of guidance

for how to choose projects that have
the best chance at having impact.

I call the process "lygometry."

"Lygo," L-Y-G-O,
is Latin for shadow or darkness.

"Metry" is measurement, quantification.

Lygometry means quantifying
things you know you do not know.

The open questions.

Picture a circle.

Inside the circle is everything you know.
Outside is everything you don't know.

Lygometry is the edge of the circle.

The segue to creativity.

Things you know you do not know.
Quantifying lack of knowledge.

This is quite powerful

but is not as prevalent
as you would expect it to be,

given that it is the segue to creativity.

I have a degree
in artificial intelligence,

I studied economic policy at Harvard,
I got an MBA from Stanford,

and I am quite grateful
for the education that I got.

But in 10,000 hours of lectures
that I have sat through,

never did I see a professor
walk into the room and say,

"Here's everything
we know about this topic,

and here's everything we don't."

Why?

Why not?

Why is that our educators feel compelled
to project perfect knowledge

when there isn't any.

Our education system is predicated
on the needs of the Industrial Revolution.

They needed to dump a lot
of information on a lot of people.

But guess what?

Information has become abundant and cheap.

Imagine what we could do

if instead of asking our students
to regurgitate established knowledge,

we expose them to the open problems.

Imagine the type of creativity
we could tap into,

the type of passion we could fuel.

Lygometry is a bit counterintuitive.

We all seek certainty
in an uncertain world,

so it creates cognitive dissonance
to talk about open problems -

problems that might not be resolvable.

Our brains love solving problems
that are solved.

I believe we're going to look back
at this period in human history

and recognise a big flaw
in how we're doing this.

We are mistaking abundance of information
for sufficiency of knowledge.

Mistaking abundance for sufficiency.

I have a picture of Isaac Newton's house

on top of my desk.

It is a reminder to me about lygometry.

In the picture, you can see the tree.

Yes, the tree from which
the apple fell on his head,

he discovered gravity,

and as a result,
we all had to take physics.

(Laughter)

And we did.

In those physics courses,
we learnt about gravity, all the formulas,

how to do calculations.

But did any of your teachers ever say

that gravity as a whole
is a big open question in physics?

We don't understand it, can't explain it,
don't know where it comes from.

The best theory we have
about gravity is from Einstein.

And even that theory has not been
reconciled with quantum mechanics.

Big open question.

But why is it

that today is probably the first day
that a lot of you hear about it?

Why don't we talk
about these open questions?

I decided to do something about this.

I have started a project
called "Reversopedia."

It is a reverse encyclopedia
of things we know we don't know.

And it is online.

It's an open-source project,
and I encourage you to check it out,

especially if you're an educator -

go there and incorporate some of
the open questions in your lesson flows.

But the challenge is absence of lygometry
does not affect education only;

it affects how we run our organisations.

The modern workplace suffers

from an epidemic of knowledge inflation
and knowledge pretension.

Folks believing and claiming
to know more than they do.

Collectively we have failed to create
a safe environment for people to say,

"This is what I know I do not know."

So we compound our assumptions
and pretensions and lack of knowledge.

I coach executives on this,

and it is amazing the type
of discoveries they make

about new opportunities
and about how to handle threats.

I personally believe we
could have avoided the financial crisis

through a lygometric process.

It is important to recognise
that the most important type of knowledge

is lack of knowledge.

But we have stigmatised it
in the workplace.

I'm positive we will get over this

as our language around
knowledge becomes better,

as we increase
the calibre of that dialogue,

as we become more sophisticated
and more secure in what we know,

we'll be better prepared
to talk about what we don't know.

But let me switch to a positive note.

Who does lygometry well?

Two groups:

children and artificial intelligence.

Children are born with
an innate ability to do lygometry.

They're very good at keeping track
of things that don't make sense to them.

And they're not shy
about asking, are they?

They ask those questions;
their egos don't get in the way, yet.

We're all born with an ability
to do lygometry,

but we are educated out of it.

We're educated out of it.

Surprisingly, machines
do this extremely well too.

Our best methodologies
in artificial intelligence

keep track of things
about their hypothesis

that don't map the data they're given,

the difference between
what they know and what they don't.

So effectively, they are following
a very methodical lygometric process.

They're honing in on the open questions,

and as a result,
they're adapting in real time.

This is my hope for humanity's future.

I started with a conversation
about vulnerability.

Lygometry,

acknowledging the open questions,

acknowledging things
you know you don't know

is a very vulnerable process.

But if you endure the pressure,
if you can get through it,

on the other side there is creativity,
there is innovation, there is liberation.

No pressure, no diamond.

I want to share with you a personal story.

If you google the phrase
"the world's best guitar player,"

I'm it.

(Laughter)

You can try it.

You google that -
"world's best guitar player" -

search for it, I'm the first result.

There's a video of me somebody posted,
I don't know who; it went viral.

It has 32 million views.

By the way, 32 million views -

I want to share a secret with you guys,

privileged information,
please don't share outside this room.

(Laughter)

Of the 32 million views,

31 million is my mother.

(Laughter)

Big fan. That's how you become
the world's best guitar player.

I'm definitely not
the world's best guitar player.

The reason I share this story with you

is the fact that I've only had
seven hours of lessons in my life.

I'm grateful for those seven hours.

But I've benefited from the absence
of my instructors in a strange way.

I could see what
other guitar players could do,

the types of sounds they could create.

And I knew I couldn't.

Lygometry.

But that led to a creative process.

I tried to create my own sounds.

The easiest way to think outside the box
is to not know where the box is.

I have big belief in lygometry.

And I think, over time,
a paradigm shift is in order

to upgrade our conversation
about knowledge,

about how we think about
humanity's big problems.

Because if we do, and we should,

because children are doing it,
machines are doing it,

there's no reason why we can't.

If we do, our biggest problems
will become our biggest solutions.

I would like to end
by playing you a little song.

It is a song that I wrote
called "Gratitude."

I call it "Gratitude,"

and the title perfectly captures

how I felt for the opportunity
to be here with you this morning.

Thank you.

(Applause)

(Music)

(Music continues)

(Music continues)

(Music ends)

(Cheers) (Applause)