Context is King

Investigating the illusion of expertise without context.

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.

Yogi Berra

Artificial intelligence is incredibly powerful, but it shares one critical limitation with humans: both require context to function effectively.

The large language models that power tools like ChatGPT have been trained on essentially every piece of the public internet, so these LLMs have a human-like mastery of almost every topic.

However, if you ask them about something that’s not on the public internet, they become completely useless and start making things up.

Humans are equally reliant on context to understand complex situations and make effective decisions.

The Illusion of Expertise

What matters more than the breadth of our context is our perception of our understanding.

If we underestimate our understanding, then we may miss some opportunities or move too slowly. But if we overestimate our understanding, the results can be catastrophic.

Imagine a deployment of military troops stationed in a foreign country for several months. After being boots on the ground learning about where they’re stationed and how the locals operate they have a rich contextual understanding of how things work in this part of the world.

Then a new leader fresh out of a prestigious training program is sent to serve as the new leader. On paper there is no one better to lead the troops and make strategic decisions on how to operate in this situation, except they’re missing the most critical piece of the puzzle: context.

Without context, this new leader might make all the right decisions and build a flawless plan only to send their troops into a compromised situation that could’ve been avoided with a deeper understanding of the region and the preceding months’ activity on the ground.

The biggest mistake we can make is making consequential decisions in an area of life where we lack full contextual understanding.

Collecting Context

This leaves us with two options when we’re operating in a new area of life. We can dedicate our time and energy to collecting the context we need before making any decisions or we can refrain from making any consequential decisions all together.

The more consequential and complex the situation is, the more important context becomes.

As leaders, operators, or just people, the best way to collect the context we need to make informed decisions is to go straight to the source. We can read and research as much as we want, but nothing is more powerful than discussing things directly with someone who has their proverbial boots on the ground.

We’re all capable of achieving incredible things, but only if we ground our efforts in the nuanced context that shapes the real world.

Prompts

1. In which area of your life do you have the richest contextual understanding?

2. Where might you be making important decisions without the correct context?

3. What can you do to increase your contextual understanding in key pursuits or areas of life?

Deep Dive

• The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis

  • Explores the consequences of expertise without context from the lens of the US government.

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Thanks for reading! I’ll see you next Sunday.

Kevin