Science Isn't Really a Method—It's Your Brain Celebrating Danger and Uncertainty | Beau Lotto

Yes, so I mean a really good question is how do you expand? How do you, in the very least, change your space of possibility? And one way of changing, of course, is to expand it. Especially if doing so requires you to step into uncertainty. Because if everything is really nice inside your little village during evolution, what a stupid idea to see what’s on the other side of the hill. Because now you’ve just increased the possibility of dying, because dying is actually really easy.

So, in fact, we even have a safety bias that our assumptions will gear us towards safety. Because again, it’s easy to die. So, are there tricks? Are there ways? Are there principles that enable people to step into uncertainty? And the answer is yes. Because it’s such an important point. It’s such an important space to be that evolution also gave us a solution to that.

So, if you think, what is the one activity where uncertainty is not simply tolerated, it’s actually celebrated? It’s actually sought; it’s a way of being. And we have a name for that way of being, which we call science. So, science is not defined by a methodology, which is too often thought to be what science is.

If you think, "What defines a good science test or good science?", it’s this way of being that celebrates uncertainty. It’s open to possibility. It’s inherently cooperative. And it’s what we call intrinsically motivating. The reason for doing a discovery, the reward for a discovery, is the discovery itself. Almost everything we do in the world, we do one thing in order to get a reward that’s different from the thing that we did. You work to get money.

But the inherent reward for science, for discovery, is the discovery itself. Now, if you think – and what’s more, science has an intention. Now, if you think about those first three or four principles – celebrating uncertainty, open to possibility, inherently motivated, inherently cooperative – those are the exact same definitions of play.

Which means that science isn’t like play. Science is play. But it’s play with intention. And if you add rules to play, you have a game which is nothing other than an experiment. And what’s true for science, it actually transcends science. Because anything that is creative is effectively play with intention. So this concept of there being a distinction between art and science is completely arbitrary.

Because these are different methodologies for applying the same underlying principle way of being, which is play with intention. And this isn’t – I should say, and this isn’t to say that science is playful and fun and all that, which I find to be a slightly trivial way of trying to get people into science. Because to play well is hard. Talk to an Olympic athlete, right.

To get to gold medal is a really hard thing to do. To play chess incredibly well is really hard. So to do science, to be creative really well, is hard. But nonetheless, it’s a way of putting your brain into a space that where it’s open and celebrates uncertainty and possibility.

Which is inherent in actually good leadership. Because what defines a good leader is how you lead others into uncertainty. Which means you have to create an ecology, an environment that enables people to celebrate the possibility, ask questions, search, discover.