The Art of Manliness - #623： How to Make Better Decisions by Thinking Like a Rocket Scientist

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast when someone is

00:00:11.860 struggling with a seemingly easy problem someone else might say come on it's not rocket science

00:00:17.000 the inference being that rocket science represents the pinnacle of complexity but my guest day argues

00:00:21.220 the study of rocket science contains some simple overarching principles that can not only be

00:00:25.040 universally understood but universally applied to all kinds of problems and decisions his name

00:00:29.760 is ozon varal he served on the operations team for the 2003 mars exploration rovers project and he's

00:00:35.400 the author of the book think like a rocket scientist we begin our conversation discussing why ozon went

00:00:40.000 from studying astrophysics to going to law school and how his scientific background has influenced

00:00:44.120 his legal career we then dig into ways that's the same thought process that enables spacecraft to

00:00:48.900 travel millions of miles can also be applied to moving forward in work and life ozon explains how

00:00:53.400 scientists deal with uncertainty and why you have to constantly question the way things are done to

00:00:57.180 get better results we enter discussion by talking about how to use thought experiments to solve

00:01:01.500 problems how to test ideas how to actually learn from your failures after the show's over check out

00:01:06.440 our show notes at aom.is rocket scientist

00:01:09.120 all right ozon varal welcome to the show thank you so much for having me on brett pleasure to be here

00:01:23.840 so you just published a book think like a rocket scientist simple strategy you can use to make

00:01:28.420 giant leaps in work and life so you at one time you're you're a law professor right now

00:01:33.060 but in a former life you were actually a rocket scientist tell us about your career your experience

00:01:38.500 with nasa yeah i've uh managed to live multiple lifetimes in this in this one life so i majored in

00:01:45.580 astrophysics at college i went to cornell and one of the professors at cornell his name is

00:01:50.920 steve squires he was when i started there in charge of a project to send what would become

00:01:58.920 the 2003 mars exploration rovers project to send two rovers to mars their names were called spirit

00:02:05.060 and opportunity and i was working for him as part of the operations team of the mission and we really

00:02:12.520 did a hodgepodge of things everything from designing operation scenarios as to what the rovers would do

00:02:18.940 after they landed on mars i helped pick landing sites for the rovers my senior thesis was actually

00:02:25.940 programming some of the algorithms that the rovers would use to snap photos of the martian surface

00:02:31.320 so yeah so it was it was a combination of of different things and i did that for about four years until i

00:02:38.880 decided that i didn't want to do astrophysics long term and did this major 180 pivot which bewilders a lot

00:02:46.660 of people and ended up going to law school what caused that people why pivot to law so i've always

00:02:53.440 been much more interested in practical applications rather than theory and and one of the and this is

00:03:00.180 why i loved working on the mars mission i mean it was like as practical as it gets when you're actually

00:03:05.300 designing the rover and designing scenarios as to what's going to happen when the rovers land on mars

00:03:11.520 but the classes i took in college were all extremely theoretical and i didn't love them and for me to

00:03:19.720 do anything with astrophysics i would have had to go get a phd and that just wasn't for me i mean there

00:03:26.020 was a voice that said like oh you need grit you need to double down on this but there was another part

00:03:31.320 of me that said no you know this isn't the right fit for you i was like a winemaker who enjoyed the

00:03:37.440 process of making wine like i enjoyed the process of thinking like a rocket scientist but i didn't

00:03:43.400 care about the theoretical substance basically so i ended up taking a law class that was taught by a

00:03:49.200 cornell law professor and he taught it only for undergrads and he used the socratic method we read

00:03:54.120 actual cases so this was me dipping my toes in the water and i absolutely loved that class and yeah over

00:04:00.400 time i just grew more interested in the in the physics of society and ended up going to law school

00:04:05.400 i mean how did your science background your rocket science background influence or influence your

00:04:10.480 law career quite a bit actually i think you know science equips you with a set of critical thinking

00:04:18.620 skills analytical skills there was a quote from carl sagan that i love he says science is much more

00:04:25.560 a way of thinking than it is a body of knowledge i think science intimidates a lot of people because

00:04:31.080 when they think about science they think about like all the horrific substance that they had to learn

00:04:36.060 in in high school and they didn't like it but really science is more about critical thinking and and

00:04:42.260 decision making under uncertainty and so i brought the the critical thinking skills with me to law and and

00:04:49.120 then beyond of course and also one of the skills that really served me well in law school and this came

00:04:55.720 directly as a result of my scientific training was the ability to shift perspectives and see arguments

00:05:02.480 on different sides of the issue because one of the things that you do as a scientist is you come up

00:05:08.120 with a hypothesis and then you try to falsify it you try to prove yourself wrong nothing in science is

00:05:14.840 ever proven right setting aside mathematics it's proven not wrong and the way you do that is by beating

00:05:21.920 the crap out of your own ideas and and that requires you to then look at your own ideas your own

00:05:27.860 hypotheses from a very different perspective and ideally from multiple perspectives and that skill

00:05:34.800 is invaluable in law the best lawyers know the opposition's argument better than the opposition does

00:05:42.600 so if you can take your beliefs if you can take the way that you look at an issue and see it in a

00:05:48.680 different lights see it in the light that your opponent is seeing it that will take you really

00:05:53.720 really far in in law school and also as a practicing attorney and so i was able to utilize that in law

00:06:00.720 school and and that came as a as a direct result of my education well let's dig into your book here

00:06:05.800 think like a rocket scientist because basically you take these this idea of this scientific worldview

00:06:09.720 that you learned in astrophysics and helping people just regular people apply that idea or that

00:06:16.600 framework or that way of thinking to their own life or their own work and you break the book into three

00:06:20.740 sections you've got launch accelerate achieve and in the launch section one of the very first principles

00:06:26.740 you highlight and how to think scientifically is how to deal with uncertainty so i think most people

00:06:33.820 most humans like they don't like uncertainty like it's something we're afraid of like what's going on

00:06:38.020 there why are we so afraid of embracing uncertainty and then let's talk about what we can do to counter

00:06:43.940 that sure i think there's a there's a large evolutionary component to our fear of the unknown

00:06:50.560 because if you think back you know thousands of years ago tens of thousands of years ago if you

00:06:56.760 didn't fear the unknown you may not have survived because the unknown presented potential threats

00:07:03.560 the unknown could be something that could kill you and so our ancestors who survived long enough

00:07:10.500 to pass their genes to us were afraid of the unknown and for good reason we don't live in that same

00:07:16.800 environment now but we still are i think embodied with the same same fear of the the uncertain that

00:07:23.840 that's part of it so an evolutionary component i think the other part of it has to do with social

00:07:30.160 and educational conditioning because in the education system especially in primary school in high school

00:07:36.560 there's really no room for uncertainty at least the way that i grew up in istanbul turkey and lived

00:07:42.980 there for 17 years and the way that the education system was structured there like you just learned a

00:07:47.700 series of right answers in in class and then you spit them out on an exam and that's how you get an a

00:07:55.280 there is one right way to interpret history there is one right way to structure the curriculum there is

00:08:01.360 one right path to an a plus it's all about certainty you know if you open up a typical science textbook

00:08:08.780 you'll see like newton's laws as if those laws just arrived by like a grand divine inspiration of some

00:08:16.320 sort or a stroke of genius you don't see the uncertainty the messy reality that newton had to deal with

00:08:22.560 to winnow down the laws to to the ones that that appear in the in the textbook so i think the

00:08:28.920 evolutionary component of of our fear of the unknown is then reinforced by by our education

00:08:35.120 system by our society so then we end up basically being really afraid of of the unknown i think that's

00:08:43.120 the the two primary reasons why it appears in our system although i have to say you know and this is

00:08:49.320 somewhat of a paradox i think even though humans are really afraid of the unknown we're also really

00:08:55.560 adaptable um you know we want to know for certain what tomorrow is going to look like we're never

00:09:00.520 going to know that but when tomorrow comes if you're able to apply some of the strategies i explained in

00:09:05.800 the book like you can quickly adapt to what's going on in the world around you and i think that's one of

00:09:12.240 our advantage as a species over over some of the others our brains are neuroplasticity is a real thing

00:09:18.640 i mean our brains are very adaptable to to what's going on around us so when a crisis hits like

00:09:23.880 the covid pandemic we're recording this in in mid-june of 2020 when something like that happens

00:09:31.060 we see humans and businesses we're certainly struggling but also a lot of adaptation going on

00:09:37.520 as well so what do so like okay scientists know there's uncertainty they're comfortable with it

00:09:42.300 what sort of framework do they or sort of mental models they use to be able to manage or handle that

00:09:47.740 uncertainty more effectively than most people do sure i think the step number one is just knowing

00:09:56.300 that uncertainty is not an enemy i think honestly that's the biggest hurdle that scientists cover

00:10:03.200 that most people don't scientists approach uncertainty with wander with curiosity when they see a blank canvas

00:10:11.300 that excites scientists and i think it terrifies a lot of people a lot of scientists go into science

00:10:17.520 because they are looking for their very own blank canvas to fill they're you know navigating this huge

00:10:23.460 dark mansion and going into these dark rooms and and trying to find some answers to what they're

00:10:28.580 looking for and that excites them because they know that the unknown isn't going to eat you

00:10:34.640 at least most types of unknowns it's just a process of discovery i think that's the the biggest mental

00:10:41.820 barrier is is looking at looking at the unknown with curiosity instead of a fear and that's more of a

00:10:50.640 mental barrier in terms of practical strategies i think scientists have a way of focusing on what they

00:10:58.900 can control and at ignoring the rest i think one of the one of the reasons why uncertainty is is so

00:11:06.680 alarming to a lot of people and it's so frustrating to a lot of people because when we face uncertainty

00:11:12.000 we try to control things that we cannot control i'll give an example from my from my own life when

00:11:19.600 my book was published on april 14th and i had this like big book tour plan that was going to travel around

00:11:24.700 the country and give talks and when when the pandemic happened of course the book tour was was

00:11:30.040 canceled since travel stopped and i spent two very miserable days not thinking like a rocket scientist

00:11:37.260 i was i was wishing for reality to be different than it was and and that's not a very productive use

00:11:44.600 of of anyone's time and then i went back to my training and thought to myself all right you know i i had

00:11:50.520 this thing planned the pandemic happened now there's a lot of uncertainty about how book promotion is

00:11:56.380 going to work but i can approach this with curiosity and focus on actually the variables that are within

00:12:02.340 my control i can't make travel come back i can't restore my physical book tour but there are things

00:12:09.840 that i can do that are within my control so i ended up basically doing a number of virtual events

00:12:15.520 with authors who were in a similar position as me who also had their book tours canceled

00:12:20.720 and and i was probably actually able to reach a lot more people than i would have been able to

00:12:26.720 through a a physical book tour so what ended up as or what seemed that first as a curse ended up as a

00:12:34.800 blessing because it made me question the assumptions that that i was operating under the assumption being that

00:12:41.820 you know the best way to to get the word out about a book is to go on a book tour but if you think about it

00:12:47.240 it takes a lot of time for me to get on a plane from portland oregon where i am and travel to new york city

00:12:53.220 and walk into a barnes and noble and sign books for i don't know 50 people and then fly back home

00:12:59.100 if my strategy is to to get the word out about the ideas in the book there are far more efficient ways of

00:13:04.780 of doing it and i'll share one more strategy about about dealing with uncertainty

00:13:08.860 uncertainty and and i use this on a on a weekly basis and it's a distinction between

00:13:13.760 two-way doors and and one-way doors one of the reasons why we're so afraid of the uncertain

00:13:21.040 is because we assume that if we take a leap into the unknown like if you move to a new city

00:13:26.540 if you try a new marketing strategy if you launch a new product or a business and things don't work out

00:13:33.940 as you hoped the assumption is that the world as you know it is going to come to an end but that

00:13:40.500 assumption turns out not to be true in many cases most of the decisions in our lives come with two-way

00:13:46.520 doors not one-way doors meaning that you can walk into a room have a look around and if you don't like

00:13:52.920 what you see you can move back out you know for me for example i practice law after law school for a

00:14:00.420 little bit and and for reasons that we can talk about if if you like brett i wasn't satisfied with

00:14:06.800 it and and i thought about going into academia and initially i i it took me like months and months of

00:14:13.120 agonizing over that uncertainty of of of whether or not i should i should make the leap and then it

00:14:19.560 occurred to me that that decision to go into academia was a was a two-way door decision it wasn't a one-way

00:14:25.580 door decision i could jump into academia try it for a few years and if i didn't like it

00:14:30.400 i could always go back to to the practice of law so i find that framework to be really useful

00:14:36.640 to ask myself if i'm afraid of of making a decision because there's so much uncertainty

00:14:41.860 i just ask myself is this a one-way door or a two-way door if it's a two-way door then it makes

00:14:47.060 sense to decide quickly and run an experiment and see how things work out and if you like what you see

00:14:53.720 you can double down on it and if you don't like what you see you can just walk back out what did you

00:14:58.960 not like about the practice of law was it having to bill 15 minutes of your life yeah exactly it was a

00:15:04.980 huge part of it i mean it i didn't like thinking of my life in in six minute increments that was that

00:15:12.120 was a huge part of it and and then the other part was honestly i didn't think it was intellectually

00:15:17.960 challenging enough at least the type of law that i was doing it felt like on most days that i didn't

00:15:23.800 need a a license to do what i was doing it was like you know getting the clients to do certain

00:15:30.100 things or interviewing people and i just kept thinking to myself i'm not really putting my

00:15:35.420 my legal training to use here and so it got boring quite quickly for me so you mentioned earlier one of

00:15:43.480 the things that people do to manage uncertainty is sort of rely on these systems or unwritten rules

00:15:49.900 that we have in our culture or in our society and that leads people to like yeah it takes away

00:15:55.000 uncertainty make people feel like okay i know what i'm doing but it can also lead to this thing that's

00:15:59.380 that's in science called path dependence where it's basically like well that's the way we always

00:16:03.880 done it there's nowhere else there's nothing else to do so how how does path dependence get in the

00:16:09.040 way of good science and then also how does it get in the way of making progress in life

00:16:12.760 yeah and i think path dependence exists everywhere i mean if you just look around you

00:16:17.860 in your own life in business what we've done before shapes what we do next and that mentality of

00:16:26.400 we've always done it this way exists in so many places and it gets in the way of change

00:16:33.180 i remember the my very first year of teaching at a law school there was a class called criminal

00:16:39.860 procedure that i think every other law school in the country offers it as an upper level class but

00:16:45.080 we teach it in the first year and i was curious about why that is and i asked one of my senior

00:16:50.220 colleagues why we teach criminal procedure which is a complicated class that requires a strong

00:16:55.340 foundation on other subjects and he looked at me and he said we've always done it that way

00:17:00.640 and then went back to what he was doing i was going to say something in response but

00:17:04.280 i didn't have tenure yet so i kept i kept my mouth shut but the the there might be a perfectly valid

00:17:10.100 reason by the way for teaching criminal procedure in the first year but saying we've always done it

00:17:15.660 this way struck me as a really lousy reason to to stay the course so path dependence is a real thing

00:17:22.040 and the status quo is really really sticky regardless of of what industry you might be in one of my favorite

00:17:30.300 examples is the like the laptop the keyboard that we use on a daily basis i'm i'm looking at it right

00:17:36.620 now it's uh it's known by the first six letters q w e r t y and this layout was designed initially to be

00:17:46.320 inefficient old typewriters would block would get blocked they would get mechanical key blockage if you

00:17:52.700 type too quickly so they designed the layout that would be intentionally inefficient so that

00:17:59.980 it would slow down typing speed and therefore prevents mechanical key blockage and then the the

00:18:05.700 letters that make up the word typewriter were also placed on the first line of of the keyboard so if

00:18:12.220 you want to try it out on your on your laptop right now you can type typewriter by just using the words

00:18:18.720 on that or the letters on that first line of course mechanical key blockage is no longer a problem

00:18:24.000 and we don't have typewriter salesmen going around demonstrating how the machine works by typing

00:18:28.560 typewriter anymore but that arrangement has has stuck so there are just so many assumptions

00:18:34.480 and processes and habits and routines that we're all operating under that are not efficient but they're

00:18:42.620 there simply because that's what we did yesterday so we do it again today and how do you become aware

00:18:48.420 of those sort of unwritten rules that might not be efficient like how do you develop a spidey sense for

00:18:54.820 that yeah that's a great question and it's not easy i think you have to be really intentional about

00:19:01.200 what you're doing and you have to be really intentional about questioning assumptions

00:19:04.300 on a on a regular basis so asking yourself every now and then like why am i doing what i'm doing

00:19:11.780 why is this process here why do i have this habit why am i using this this browser there's a study that

00:19:19.960 shows that people who don't use the default browser that comes with their computer like if they use

00:19:25.680 chrome for example on a mac that comes installed with pre-installed with safari they tend to perform

00:19:32.100 better at work and it's not because using chrome over safari magically makes you into a better performer

00:19:38.820 but it's because someone who takes that mentality of questioning assumptions does it beyond the world of just

00:19:46.540 browser choice and applies that same mindset to other places as well so getting into the habit of

00:19:53.260 just asking that question is a is a huge first first step and then the second thing that's really

00:19:59.940 helpful is bringing in outsiders into the conversation outsiders have a way of asking those what people

00:20:09.580 call dumb questions that are actually not dumb at all they're really smart questions because they tend to

00:20:16.280 be really basic but they go to some like fundamental assumption that you're operating under but you're

00:20:21.920 not seeing that assumption because you're too close to the problem to think differently and that's why a

00:20:27.560 lot of the the gate crashers in different industries tend to be outsider outsiders to that industry so like

00:20:34.060 elon musk comes to mind he was an outsider to the rocket science world he was in silicon valley he co-founded

00:20:41.000 the paypal and then sold it to to ebay and he picked up rocket science by reading textbooks on a beach

00:20:48.840 in rio de janeiro in brazil another example is reed hastings before he founded co-founded netflix he was a

00:20:56.660 software developer jeff bezos came to the retail world from the finance world sarah blakeley who is the

00:21:05.080 world's youngest self-made female billionaire who was selling fax machines door-to-door before she

00:21:12.580 started spanx which is an underwear company and a lot of these a lot of these outsiders were then able

00:21:18.020 to look at an edited industry and see the flawed ways of operating the assumptions that that industry

00:21:24.720 was operating under and then then disrupt those assumptions and pave the way for something much

00:21:31.040 better i mean in our in our personal lives too it's it's not hard to do this my wife kathy is is a

00:21:36.540 sounding board for for anything i do she reads everything i write and and she gives me amazing

00:21:42.020 advice because she has a perspective an outsider perspective that i don't have and she's able to

00:21:48.440 pinpoint assumptions outdated assumptions that that i'm that i am operating under we're gonna take a quick

00:21:53.860 break for your word from our sponsors and now back to the show so another mental tool that scientists

00:22:03.920 use to figure things out are mental experiments mental thought experiments because i think people

00:22:09.240 think oh most science is done with beakers and they're like testing things like physically when

00:22:13.260 that does happen but before that happens long before that happens scientists are often testing this

00:22:18.360 stuff out or doing simulations in their head so any examples of thought experiments and then also i'd

00:22:23.560 like to see like what are some thought experiments that just regular people can use on a daily basis to

00:22:27.500 gain more insights about themselves with their life sure i think one of the one of the most famous

00:22:33.020 thought experiments is is einstein's thought experiment when he was just 16 years old he thought to

00:22:40.140 himself what would it be like to ride next to a beam of light it sounds like a crazy question and it is

00:22:49.460 and i can imagine like a well-meaning parents saying you know go back and do your homework and stop the

00:22:56.520 crazy talk but i'm so glad no one did that because that question that thought experiment of writing next

00:23:02.920 to a light beam and and thinking through what he would observe stayed with einstein for 10 years and its

00:23:10.560 answer eventually culminated in the special theory of of relativity and it all happened in his mind

00:23:18.580 uh nikola tesla the the famous inventor would imagine all of his inventions and how they would work

00:23:24.700 in his mind before he actually built them in in practice there is no you know there is no magic formula

00:23:32.200 for for running thought experiments because by definition each thought experiment each question that we come up

00:23:38.180 with is is unique it's more about creating the right conditions so that you can generate breakthrough

00:23:46.060 answers just by thinking and by the way even that revelation that you can generate breakthroughs just

00:23:52.740 by thinking is shocking to a lot of people because we're so conditioned when we're struggling with

00:23:59.420 something when we're struggling with a question to look externally for answers to pick up a self-help

00:24:05.780 book to jump on google to listen to an expert as opposed to looking within but it's amazing how

00:24:13.020 original original ideas you can generate simply by thinking and so one of the best things you can do

00:24:19.420 for yourself to be more creative to be more original is to actually create more slack in your life it's hard

00:24:26.880 to really hard to come up with creative thought experiments really hard to innovate when you're clearing

00:24:33.060 out your email inbox so that requires being purposeful about creating moments of boredom in your day

00:24:41.340 and i define boredom as spending chunks of uninterrupted time free of of distractions and we have so little

00:24:49.560 boredom in our lives and boredom in many ways is an endangered state because we're moving from one

00:24:55.980 notification to the next from one email to the next from one meeting to the next without pausing

00:25:01.360 reflecting deliberating and thinking for ourselves and that has a number of consequences one is that

00:25:08.800 misinformation thrives when people are in questioning what they hear but also they stop generating insights

00:25:15.540 on their own i mean one of the one of the best things that i've ever done for my own creative output

00:25:21.660 was to build in this like airplane mode into my day that could be just like me sitting on a recliner i

00:25:28.460 have in my office for say 20 minutes or 30 minutes with a notepad and a pen doing nothing but thinking

00:25:35.480 and then jotting down ideas that come up i use the same thing i use a sauna a couple times a week and i do the

00:25:41.140 same thing in there i bring a notepad with me which gets wet but that's okay and i just sit there and like jot down

00:25:47.220 ideas that that come up and and this is why by the way you know the the old cliche about the epiphany coming in the

00:25:55.980 shower is so valid because in these moments of slack you're basically letting your subconscious

00:26:03.440 make the connections that it needs to make and if you're constantly working on something if you don't

00:26:09.560 have slack in your life then your subconscious is not going to have the capability certainly not to

00:26:16.140 the to the same extent to be able to make those connections in your brain between the spirit ideas

00:26:21.600 that will generate breakthrough insights so you have to be purposeful about it especially in this

00:26:28.240 modern modern times when we're just constantly glued to our our smartphones as the saying goes

00:26:35.480 it's the silence between the notes that makes the music so you know a lot of times when people do

00:26:41.700 have a problem and they start grappling with and they go off by themselves and they try to do that

00:26:45.720 what they tend to do i've noticed i do this is like they tend to focus on finding the right answer

00:26:50.440 right and scientists do that but like you talk about how rocket scientists or even scientists in general

00:26:55.700 instead of spending more time on trying to figure out what the answer is they oftentimes spend like

00:27:00.760 reframing the question thinking about am i asking the even asking the right question right because

00:27:05.560 focusing on the answer can actually oftentimes lead you astray yeah exactly for a number of reasons i

00:27:11.760 mean one is there's usually more than one right answer unlike again this goes back to our discussion

00:27:16.940 from earlier about the education system where you're taught that there's a single right answer to each

00:27:20.620 question and that is so untrue there's usually more than one right way of doing something there is

00:27:26.760 more than one right way of of launching your next product there's more than one right way of landing on

00:27:33.040 mars and that by the way is is another key if you're grappling with the unknown and you're looking for like

00:27:39.520 what is the best possible choice just keep in mind that there's going to be more than one right answer

00:27:45.120 more than one way to do whatever it is that that you're trying to do and scientists are very much

00:27:50.460 aware of that and i think a second component of the danger with the right answers is that

00:27:55.420 right answers are really cheap i mean knowledge is no longer a scarce commodity by the time that google

00:28:02.820 or siri or alexa can spit out the right answer the world has moved on now obviously answers aren't

00:28:10.220 irrelevant you have to know some of the answers before you can begin asking the

00:28:14.020 the right questions but the answers simply serve as a as a launch pad to discovery so they're the

00:28:21.720 beginning not the end and breakthroughs contrary to popular wisdom don't begin with a smart answer

00:28:28.380 they almost always begin with a with a smart question one of the examples from the mars mission that i

00:28:34.940 worked on that illustrates that principle is this was in 1999 and at the time our our mission was to send a

00:28:42.040 single rover to mars and we were busy designing you know operation scenarios and building our rovers

00:28:48.120 and that year which was a particularly bad year for nasa another spacecraft which wasn't our baby but it

00:28:55.220 was being sent to mars to land on the martian surface called the mars polar lander crashed and we are our

00:29:02.820 mars rover was going to use the exact same landing mechanism that the mars polar lander was going to use

00:29:08.860 and that landing mechanism had just failed spectacularly understandably our mission was put on hold and we

00:29:15.960 went back to the drawing board to try to come up with a better safer way of landing on mars and i remember

00:29:22.520 distinctly one day my boss came into the mars room where the the operations team used to work and he told us that

00:29:30.340 he had just gotten off the phone with the administrator of nasa and the administrator of nasa asked a very simple question

00:29:38.860 he said what if we sent two rovers instead of one so again our mission at the time was just to send one

00:29:45.880 rover to mars and that was our mission because that's what nasa had been doing every two years was to send a

00:29:51.180 single rover single spacecraft to mars and status quo as we discussed is really sticky and the the question

00:29:58.300 that that nasa administrator asked reframed the problem because the problem wasn't just a faulty landing

00:30:04.800 system of course we were going to fix that but the problem was way beyond that it was just the

00:30:11.460 inherent risk of sending this delicate robot 40 million miles through outer space and crossing your

00:30:18.700 fingers that nothing bad happens along the way but if you send it two rovers instead of one you end up

00:30:25.580 putting your eggs not just in one basket but two baskets so you're you're minimizing risk you're

00:30:30.620 decreasing risk and you're increasing potential reward because two rovers means double the science

00:30:38.740 two rovers means you can send two rovers to very different places on mars and have the rovers explore

00:30:44.400 very different areas and and by the way with economies of scale when you're building two of the same thing

00:30:51.960 the second thing ends up costing much less than the first one so we ended up going with that that simple

00:30:59.540 question changed everything we ended up sending two rovers to mars in 2003 and i'm so glad we did that

00:31:06.000 so the two rovers were called spirit and opportunity spirit ended up roving the martian surface i think for

00:31:11.300 about six years and by the way we built these things to last for 90 days that was their warranty spirit

00:31:17.420 lasted for for six years an opportunity and i still get goosebumps every time i say this

00:31:23.940 roved the the red planet for over 14 years into its 90 day mission all because someone was willing to

00:31:33.600 step back and and dare to to see the problem in a different light yeah and ask a different question

00:31:41.000 yeah exactly so one thing that rocket scientists do is they they test things they're always doing test

00:31:47.800 flights we saw this with elon musk when he was trying to get the falcon going you know way going back a

00:31:52.920 couple years you'd see these just you know just things exploding in the process and that can be

00:31:58.560 frustrating but how do you i mean how do rockets what's their what's the rocket scientist approach to

00:32:04.620 testing things but also still making progress so they're not i'm trying to think like so they're not

00:32:11.280 they're not being held back by the testing but they're still actually trying to move forward while

00:32:15.340 testing sure so there's a principle in rocket science called test as you fly fly as you test and i'll talk

00:32:22.240 about the principle in a minute but i first want to underscore what you said brett experimentation is

00:32:27.300 is really really valuable you don't know if something is going to work until you actually try it and this

00:32:33.840 by the way is a way of reducing uncertainty as well because experiments give you information that you

00:32:38.840 otherwise don't have but i'm a left-brain person and i i tend to sometimes find myself stuck in this

00:32:45.980 mode of like doing pro and con lists and thinking through things rationally trying to figure out the

00:32:51.400 best approach but you don't know what the best approach is until you actually see the consequences

00:32:57.360 play out and so running limited experiments is really really important and and this is important

00:33:05.320 in our personal lives it's important for businesses as well you know before investing so much money in

00:33:10.720 developing a product you can see if the market is a is actually interested in buying that product

00:33:17.460 through a limited small-scale experiment and so that happens all the time in science is that's

00:33:23.740 how scientists gather information is through through testing their their hypothesis so in rocket science

00:33:29.580 that testing that experimentation takes the mold of test as you fly fly as you test which means

00:33:36.420 that to the extent possible the testing has to very closely resemble and ideally be identical to the

00:33:44.900 conditions of flight so in whatever environment that the flight is going to take place you try to

00:33:50.400 simulate to the closest extent possible in a in a testing environment so you try to you know

00:33:56.140 subject it everything down to the screws to the same types of vibrations that they're going to

00:34:01.600 experience during during flight you do the same thing with with computers you do the same thing with

00:34:06.900 the humans astronauts train in this giant pool that simulates microgravity the type of microgravity that

00:34:14.120 they're going to experience when they're say doing repairs or conducting work on the on the

00:34:20.260 international space station and most of the time i think this is true for both people and businesses we

00:34:27.380 violate that test as you fly principle we violate it because we we test we experiment in conditions that are

00:34:35.480 wildly disconnected from reality so even businesses who are experimenting they're not doing it properly which

00:34:42.120 means that they're getting some answers but those answers tend to be incorrect so you know one question

00:34:49.480 that businesses ask in many surveys for example is you know how much would you pay for this pair of shoes

00:34:54.880 now think about it do you ever get that question in real life no never no right never and so when you ask

00:35:04.420 that question on a test on a on a survey you're not going to get a good answer because whoever you're

00:35:11.200 asking that to has never thought about the answer to that question the best way to test for that is to

00:35:18.120 bring the test as close as possible to the flight so actually manufacture a prototype of the shoe put it on

00:35:24.300 a shelf somewhere in a store and put a price on it and see if people are willing to take out their credit

00:35:30.220 card and buy buy the shoe that's going to give you the most reliable information because then the test

00:35:35.820 is is as close as possible to to flight the same thing applies in our personal lives as well you know

00:35:42.520 we we say do you practice job interviews in in conditions that are wildly disconnected from reality we

00:35:48.740 practice a a speech that we're going to give in public for example or if you're doing a presentation

00:35:54.820 when you're at home in a comfortable environment you're sitting in your sweatpants and you know

00:36:00.080 you're giving a presentation to your your significant other but that is not how the actual flight is going

00:36:06.880 to go the flight is going to go when you're in an unfamiliar environment you're going to be nervous

00:36:12.560 you're going to be wearing an uncomfortable suit probably and so you're better off practicing your

00:36:18.740 speech or presentation in the same conditions and so and i've done this before where like i'm

00:36:24.040 practicing a speech i will drink a couple espressos to give me the types of jitters that i might

00:36:29.800 experience and in that particular particular environment and so the the the more that you can

00:36:36.620 bring whatever experiments you're running closer to reality the better the answers will be from those

00:36:45.800 experiments another mental model or way of looking at the world that scientists embrace at least really

00:36:52.280 good scientists do but i think regular people have our time is accepting or embracing the idea of

00:36:57.960 failure like with scientists like you said like the whole point of science is to falsify like you

00:37:02.160 prove something not wrong you know the goal isn't to prove something right your group your goal is to

00:37:06.640 prove it's not wrong right right and so that requires you to sometimes you know sort of you know

00:37:12.240 i'm gonna slaughter your mental children i guess in a way like you know yeah and but i think a lot of

00:37:17.720 people like they don't like doing that they don't like embracing the idea that they're going to fail or

00:37:21.060 their idea is going to be proven wrong because their ego is tied up in it how do scientists detach

00:37:26.660 their ego from their their ideas the very first step is so scientists don't have opinions i mean they

00:37:35.480 might have opinions about subjects other than science but they create what's called working

00:37:40.020 hypotheses so these are and they're they're usually multiple because when you create only a single

00:37:45.800 hypothesis you might become unduly attached to it so you create multiple hypotheses so you're basically

00:37:51.500 giving birth to multiple children so you are not unduly favoring one over the other and then you try to

00:37:58.120 falsify them and and i think the biggest mental shift is not equating your beliefs with yourself

00:38:07.540 with your your hypothesis with yourself your opinions with yourself i think the moment we do that

00:38:13.580 we are in really dangerous territory there's a quote from richard fineman who's a nobel winning

00:38:20.040 physicist that i love he says the first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the

00:38:26.420 easiest person to fool you are the easiest person to fool because the moment you believe in something

00:38:34.860 the moment you declare an opinion and the moment you try you begin to blend that belief or that opinion

00:38:43.340 into your identity you have a very good chance of making a fool out of yourself once our opinions

00:38:49.960 become blended with our identity it's really hard to change them there's a quote i love from um i think

00:38:56.700 it's from upton sinclair he says you know it's really hard to get a um get someone to understand

00:39:02.660 something if their salary depends on they're not understanding it the same thing applies to identity as well

00:39:09.380 if if someone's identity depends on they're not understanding something then they're not going

00:39:14.620 to understand it and in the modern world um our beliefs have become synonymous with our identity

00:39:21.140 like if you if you believe in plant-based eating you're vegan if you do crossfit you're a crossfitter

00:39:28.260 if you believe in primal eating you're paleo all of those beliefs become a part of your identity like

00:39:35.400 i say or we say i'm paleo i'm vegan i'm a democrat i'm a republican and when you do that then changing

00:39:43.000 your mind means changing your identity which is a really really hard sell which is why by the way

00:39:47.920 many disagreements in the modern world turn into these existential death matches because people's not

00:39:54.400 just their beliefs but their identities are at stake so there's a lot to be said about

00:40:00.600 for making hypotheses instead of creating opinions done that moving on to the second phase of actually

00:40:08.860 trying to prove your opinions wrong trying to prove yourself wrong which doesn't feel good

00:40:14.380 but if your goal is and i think this should be our goal not to be right but to find what's right

00:40:21.100 then you adopt a different approach to the world where you're actually actively seeking

00:40:26.520 disconfirming evidence trying to gather data so you can chart the best path forward this is why

00:40:33.940 failure can be the best teacher if you know how to approach it properly failure gives you

00:40:40.360 incredible data incredibly valuable data that you can't find elsewhere but the problem is we don't

00:40:47.620 learn from failure we don't learn from failure either because we're too afraid to even try something so

00:40:53.920 we don't even create the room for failure we just look at that blank canvas and let it sit

00:40:59.940 blank because we're too afraid to to make a mistake or then that can be paralyzing or at the other side

00:41:08.640 of the extreme which is this mantra that's so popular in silicon valley fail fast fail often fail

00:41:14.360 forward where now entrepreneurs are actually in the mode of celebrating failure silicon valley

00:41:19.660 companies are holding funerals for failed startups complete with bagpipes and dj spitting records and

00:41:26.180 alcohol flowing freely and the problem is i mean i get why they're trying to do that to try to take

00:41:31.820 the stigma out of failure but in trying to do that i think the pendulum has swung in the other direction

00:41:36.760 when you celebrate something you don't learn from it the clinking of the champagne glasses

00:41:42.260 masks the feedback you would otherwise receive and research bears this out as well i cite a study in the

00:41:48.200 book of 65 cardiac surgeons and the study show that the surgeons who botched a procedure ended up

00:41:55.700 performing worse on later procedures not only did they not learn from their mistakes but they actually

00:42:01.200 end up reinforcing them and we don't learn from our mistakes when we celebrate them we also don't learn

00:42:07.300 from them if we don't do the type of internal soul searching that learning requires when we fail what

00:42:14.080 happens is we'll say well it wasn't really our fault we just we just got we just got unlucky or we blame

00:42:20.680 it on third parties you know the regulators or the competitors and then we do the same thing that we do

00:42:26.820 we did yesterday and just hope that the wind blows in a better direction and so you fail and fail and

00:42:32.860 fail but if you're not learning then nothing is changing which is why i think the fail fast mantra is

00:42:38.460 is the wrong one the goal should really be to learn fast and that's exactly the approach that

00:42:45.360 the scientists all scientists not just rocket scientists apply in their lives they know that all

00:42:50.920 breakthroughs are evolutionary not revolutionary if you're trying to achieve something transformative

00:42:56.540 you're not going to succeed on the first try einstein's first several proofs for e equals mc

00:43:02.100 square failed spacex's first three launches were spectacular failures we have an obsession with

00:43:08.680 grand openings but the the opening doesn't have to be grand as long as the the finale is and the

00:43:15.320 best way to make the finale grand is to learn from each failure and get better with each iteration

00:43:22.060 all right so embrace failure you know but don't like glorify it because that'll you know you because

00:43:27.200 that'll cause you to overlook what you can learn from the failure exactly but another point you make in

00:43:31.640 the book it's related that success can actually uh get in the way of progress can and can eventually

00:43:38.440 lead to failure so what is it about success in science that can cause scientists to go astray

00:43:44.800 success has a way of breeding complacency and that's true not just in science but in business as well and in

00:43:54.860 our personal lives when we're when we're when we're a string of of successes when we think we're in the

00:44:01.900 lead we stop listening when we declare ourselves to be an expert on something we begin making confident

00:44:08.780 conclusions without backing it up with with the facts when we think we're in the first place we start

00:44:14.340 blaming others when things can go wrong it can be harder for someone for a business to survive their own

00:44:22.560 success than to survive their failure because when we succeed we assume that everything went according

00:44:27.760 to plan we don't do a post-mortem after success we just say you know we celebrate right just like

00:44:34.200 silicon valley celebrates failure we we celebrate success but it's possible to do some things wrong

00:44:41.100 and still succeed and by the way on the flip side of that it's possible to do some things right

00:44:47.160 and still fail which is why scientists focus on the process the goal is to isolate the good decisions

00:44:56.980 and fix the bad decisions regardless of whether the outcome is success or failure so the ideally you

00:45:03.580 would follow the exact same investigation after each success and after each failure you ask yourself

00:45:09.200 what were the the good decisions here and we should retain those good decisions for the future regardless of

00:45:14.020 whether they produce success or failure and then you isolate the wrong decisions the bad decisions the

00:45:19.620 mistakes and then you try to fix them regardless of whether they produce failure or success and if you

00:45:25.800 don't do that you're courting catastrophe um one of the examples i give in the book there's a chapter

00:45:32.000 called nothing fails like success are the the the space shuttle disasters that nasa experienced with

00:45:39.320 challenger and in columbia and let me preface this by saying those launch decisions were extraordinarily

00:45:45.780 difficult decisions and we may have made the same decision to launch if we were in the shoes of the

00:45:51.040 of the nasa managers who were in charge of each launch so there is a you know a hindsight bias here

00:45:58.540 we're looking at at it through the 2020 lens of of of hindsight but we can still get valuable lessons from

00:46:05.840 these disasters in both cases nasa got complacent with its own success the technical flaw in challenger

00:46:13.780 in columbia was different in challenger it was this o-ring that failed that's a flexible supposed to be

00:46:20.540 flexible rubber band that seals the the the boosters and prevents hot gases from escaping from them and

00:46:28.000 the o-rings had been badly damaged on a number of missions before challenger and several engineers raised

00:46:34.400 their hands and said look this is a serious problem if we don't do something about this the result is

00:46:40.300 going to be a catastrophe of the of the highest order but the managers at nasa ignored those requests

00:46:46.080 because they assumed that look if we just do what we did yesterday if we launch the space shuttle the

00:46:52.880 same way that we did yesterday if we follow the same process then we're going to have success because

00:46:58.320 even with badly damaged o-rings in the past the space shuttle missions have succeeded but of course

00:47:04.780 then we get the challenger and the o-rings failed and the entire space shuttle exploded fast forward 17

00:47:10.920 years later to the columbia disaster in 2003 the underlying technical flaw was different but the deeper

00:47:17.600 cultural flaw was the same in that case again this technical flaw of a piece of foam that separated from

00:47:24.380 the shuttle and struck the thermal insulation that's responsible for protecting the shuttle from

00:47:29.560 the heat of re-entry after it gets back into the into the atmosphere and during liftoff you know several

00:47:37.200 engineers noticed this foam strike and they raised their hands while the shuttle was in orbit

00:47:41.880 and said look this looks really bad let's call up the pentagon and reroute some ask them to reroute

00:47:48.460 some spy satellites so they can survey the damage in orbit and see if we can fix it before we

00:47:53.060 send the shuttle back or bring the shuttle back to earth and the nasa managers ignored those requests

00:47:58.560 because they said look the foam shedding as it was called at nasa internally had happened in numerous

00:48:04.560 missions in the past without a catastrophe and the assumption is that since those missions succeeded

00:48:10.660 if we just do what we did that led to those successes then we can expect the same outcome today

00:48:15.880 so success is a way of of concealing mistakes and if we're not careful if we're not performing a

00:48:23.840 post-mortem after a in-depth investigation of what went right and what went wrong after each success as

00:48:31.340 well then then we are courting catastrophe all right so if things are going well for you should

00:48:36.260 probably be paranoid like something's probably going without interrupt the success can actually be a

00:48:40.980 warning sign right well there's a lot more we could talk about where can people go to learn more

00:48:44.760 about the book in your work sure so the best way to stay in touch with me i'm not active on social

00:48:50.460 media is through my email list you can sign up for that at weekly contrarian.com the email goes out to

00:48:58.060 over 22 22 000 subscribers and just shares one big idea that you can read in less than three minutes

00:49:05.320 and then my book think like a rocket scientist it's available wherever books are sold you can head over

00:49:11.060 also to rocket science book.com to find all of the purchase links fantastic well ozon varol thanks

00:49:18.100 so much time it's been a pleasure thank you brett my guest here is ozon varol he is the author of the

00:49:22.520 book think like a rocket scientist available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can find

00:49:26.660 out more information about his work at his website ozonvarol.com also check out our show notes at

00:49:31.060 aom.is rocket scientist where you find links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic

00:49:35.760 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our website at artofmanliness.com

00:49:47.360 where you can find our podcast archives well as thousands of articles we've written over the years

00:49:50.640 about pretty much anything you think of and if you'd like to enjoy ad free episodes of the aom podcast

00:49:55.000 you can do so on stitcher premium head over to stitcher premium.com sign up use code manliness at

00:49:59.540 checkout for a free month trial once you're signed up download the stitcher app on android ios and you

00:50:03.860 can start enjoying ad free episodes of the aom podcast and if you haven't done so already i'd

00:50:07.240 appreciate it if you take one minute to give us a review on apple podcast or stitcher it helps out

00:50:11.100 a lot if you've done that already thank you please consider sharing the show with a friend or family

00:50:14.900 member who you think would get something out of it as always thank you for the continued support

00:50:18.400 until next time this is brett mckay reminding you not only listen to aom podcast but put what you've heard

00:50:22.560 into action

00:50:29.540 you

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

#623： How to Make Better Decisions by Thinking Like a Rocket Scientist

Episode Stats

Misogynist Sentences

Hate Speech Sentences

Summary

Transcript