CxD #225: CIA's top Secret 🦁

1. Perception vs. Perspective

I listened to an interview with a retired CIA agent. When asked about the most impactful and valuable “trick” he could offer that helped differentiate normal people from high level intelligence professionals, he described the difference between perception and perspective.

Perception is that which we see and take to be real from our personal subjective point of view. Most of the time we navigate the world based on our perception of how things are, even though, in reality, our perception is a construct, and an approximate one at that.

The CIA agent, however, is trained to think instead in terms of perspective, moving outside her own subjectivity to ask and consider how the person she’s talking to sees the world. What is their perspective, what conditions led them to believe what they believe, what views must they hold for their own perceptions to make sense to them?

The ability to disengage from our perceptions in order to enter the perspectives of others is extraordinarily powerful.

If used for malevolent purposes, you can easily manipulate people and take advantage of them.

If used with compassion and care, it will help you better understand others, and allow a more direct path toward empathy and kindness toward them. This way of being will help us be less dickish to each other…

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