Before mixed martial arts (MMA), people were in the dark about which martial arts worked and which didn’t. How would a Wing Chun master fare against a boxer? How would a karate black belt do against a wrestler? Since the rise of MMA, we’ve learned a lot.
These lessons from MMA carry over to intellectual life. ‘Learning about the world’ and ‘kicking someone’s butt’ may be different goals, but some of the same basic principles apply.
Principle #1 - If you are trying to get at the truth but aren’t being constrained by constant counterarguments or damning experimental data, you simply will not learn about the world.
Martial arts disciplines that don’t spar don’t work. If you aren’t practicing against an actively resisting opponent, you don’t know how to handle an actively resisting opponent. Sparring shows you which techniques actually work. You need to know how to use your skills under pressure, without panicking or overthinking your next move. You also need to know if the technique even works at all. It’s one thing to have a theoretical understanding of how something might work; it’s another thing to actually know it. Learning to fight without sparring is like learning to swim without ever getting in the water.
Without sparring with opposing viewpoints or testing your ideas against evidence that could falsify them, you risk becoming overconfident in theories that don’t hold up. It’s easy with confirmation bias and wishful thinking to fool yourself into thinking you’ve arrived at the truth if no one is pointing out the holes in your argument or if you're not testing your ideas. Just like in martial arts, where you don't know if a blocking technique will work until someone really tries to punch you, you won’t know if an argument is sound unless it’s been tested by smart critics and/or experiments. One way or another, reality has to be punching back.
Want to learn techniques to have constructive arguments that are beneficial? Try out our “Productive Disagreement” tool.
Principle #2 - Some disciplines can appear helpful but end up surprisingly unhelpful.
A lot of people can be full of baloney for a long time and never be called on it. Many techniques in kung fu and aikido simply do not work against trained mixed martial artists. Some ideas, like telekinetic energy blasts, obviously do not work. But more subtly, techniques like trapping your opponent’s hands in Wing Chun or certain wrist throws in Aikido often fail against resisting opponents. (There’s a whole genre on YouTube of people exposing “bullshido” i.e. ineffective techniques that I encourage you to explore.) Ineffective disciplines often rely on deference to teachers, contrived training scenarios, or avoiding competition with rival practices. You can be a "naked emperor" for a surprisingly long time, enjoying the illusion of mastery without ever feeling the cold breeze of reality.
This happens in intellectual disciplines too. Plenty of academics do not rigorously test their foundational assumptions or do not allow those assumptions to be debated by people who disagree. When this becomes more widespread within a discipline, it can create echo chambers where deference to authorities and canonical texts reign. A funny example of this happening at an academic journal can be seen in the Sokal Hoax: physicist Alan Sokal submitted a paper that contained literal nonsense to a cultural studies journal to see if that journal had any intellectual standards at all. They published it. Later, editors admitted they published the piece solely because it came from a "conveniently credentialed ally" who flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions and attacked their 'enemies'. When this becomes the way of doing things, those disciplines tend to become unhelpful at getting to the truth. They can get away with being unhelpful for longer than you'd expect.
Principle #3 - Ineffective disciplines often still have nuggets of wisdom.
Ineffective martial arts still have some things worth knowing. Tae Kwon Do, for example, isn't considered effective in many ways—its punching techniques are weak, and it lacks takedowns. But it does have some very effective kicks, and MMA fighters often incorporate those kicks into their broader arsenal. Even disciplines that aren't optimal for a fight can have valuable insights.
Even intellectual fields that don’t meet modern standards of rigor can offer valuable insights. Meditation practices from various contemplative traditions, for example, often arise from worldviews that aren’t rigorously and scientifically tested, yet the practices themselves can be incredibly useful. Similarly, not everything in traditional Chinese folk medicine works, but it led to Nobel Prize-winning discoveries like Tu Youyou's malaria treatment. Good ideas can come from anywhere.
Principle #4 - If you are not optimizing for getting at the truth, you are less likely to get it.
If you are not optimizing for winning a fight, you are less likely to win a fight. If you are solely focusing on mimicking an animal, following the ways of old masters, or using techniques that minimize causing pain, you are going to fail to use all possible techniques that might be useful to win. You need to actually try to win the fight—not do something else that isn’t trying to win a fight.
If, in addition to seeking truth, you are also trying to support a political party or craft a heartwarming narrative, you are less likely to actually find the truth. If your goal is to make a political party look good, you are less likely to find evidence that that party is bad. If your goal is to tell a heartwarming tale, you are less likely to look for ways the world is actually quite bleak. You have to make the truth your goal if you want the truth.
Principle #5 - Certain epistemic practices are ugly or boring, but essential.
Ugly techniques that are effective can be ignored for long periods of time. Brazilian jiu-jitsu doesn’t look cool. When we think of martial arts in movies, we picture flying kicks, not two guys hugging each other on the ground. But jiu-jitsu works. If you don’t know it, you will get your butt kicked by someone who does. It was overlooked for years simply because it didn’t fit the popular image of what martial arts "should" look like.
Just as jiu-jitsu’s ground fighting doesn’t look glamorous, advanced statistical methods may seem like tedious number crunching to the layperson. But these methods are essential for uncovering many truths.
Wrapping it up
In both “fighting” and “learning about the world,” you need to test your ideas against more than just your own hunches. You need to recognize that some disciplines are full of baloney, but even they can offer essential insights. You need to actually fully focus on succeeding at the task at hand—don’t let yourself get sidetracked by secondary goals, and you need to not ignore valuable techniques just because they are boring.
If you want to fight well and think well, remember these lessons.