The Strange Logic of Progress
From Control, to Curiosity
Sometimes our efforts only make things worse.We rush to fix the problem.
We tense up.
We try harder.But often the struggle is the trap.This book explores a simple but unintuitive shift at the heart of how life, learning, science, and even emotions improve:Progress begins not with control, but with curiosity.
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Introduction
The Trap
You’re caught in the midst of a row.
Tempers are rising.
You have that slight frantic sense of “I must fix this!”.
But on a level you can’t quite access,
you're also aware that your urges aren’t helping.The inner tension is making it worse.
Striving to change their mind, seems strangely counterproductive.
And the harder you try, the more difficult things become.Why is this? What are we missing?
The Strange Logic
I have come to view it like this:The urge to fix is intuitive.
But progress happens when people make space for being wrong.The temptation is to avoid mistakes.
The strange logic is to tolerate them.But why would tolerating wrongness be so important?Because learning happens via error correction.
Therefore mistakes are actually a vital part of progress.Although unintuitive we can see this strange logic at work all around us:
Relationships which air disagreements become stronger.
Families that learn from mistakes build resilience.
Societies that protect protest can flourish.At just the moments when everything in us is demanding urgency — is the real answer,
actually… to pause?…And “let go” of the tension?
Letting Go
It is a concept most of us have encountered at some point but only a few take it seriously. Most of us, and this definitely included me, see an ancient spiritual practice that is mostly irrelevant to our life. Buddhists and meditators follow this doctrine but I’ve got to pay the mortgage, pass this exam —
or whatever pressing concern has gripped us.However, I’d like to offer a fresh perspective on the concept.Not a spiritual practice.
Not ancestral wisdom,
but modern systems thinking.Might letting go be the internal equivalent of democracy in politics or systematic doubt in science?
So instead of a mystical and complex practice, a simple (but still difficult) transition from centralised control to distributed learning?From this perspective when a centralised, fixed system “lets go” of ultimate control it becomes distributed and adapting.* From Dictatorship to Democracy* From Dogma to Doubt* From Control to Curiosity
Control as Centralised Power
A dictatorship feels natural.
One strong and wise leader to take control.But this short-term feeling of strength leads to long-term fragility in reality.Control looks and feels powerful but its inability to adapt creates a brittleness.Something similar can be said about an individual mind.
Inside us, control feels like strength.
We work harder, suppress our fears, and silence doubts.It feels decisive and responsible.
But again, it creates brittleness.
By suppressing error signals the systems can’t update.The mind becomes fixed.
Curiosity as Distributed Power
Democracy in contrast, can feel unnatural and weak.
With noisy disagreement and frustrating indecision.But from this emerges self-correction, renewal and therefore resilience.
Democracy becomes a self organising system.Letting go is the same transition to distributed adaptation for an individual mind.Through careful internal listening, and questioning of gut reactions errors can surface.Considering confusions,
and just sitting with our wrongness —
is what makes progress possible.An internal democracy.
No single part of the psyche gets absolute rule.
Power shifts from central control to distributed adaptation.But if this is effective, why is it so rare?Because transitioning to distributed learning runs counter to our deepest intuitions.
And this resistance is especially strong in the beginning.
Why Progress is Difficult
Letting go can feel like giving up.
Replacing control with tolerance for wrongness appears to increase vulnerability and invite collapse.
But the opposite is true.
The same fear appears in every transition:
dictatorship to democracy,dogma to doubt,control to curiosity.The fear spike is not evidence of danger.
It’s evidence of regime change.It is worth pausing on this.The hardest part is the beginning, because:
tolerance for error is lowest,
error signals are loudest,
the system has the least evidence that error is safe.So the work feels uphill and fragile.
People often think:“If this were working, it wouldn’t be this hard.”But that’s backwards.
It’s hard because you’re changing the deepest control reflex the system has.
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Copyright © 2025 L. C. Rowan
This introduction is freely shared in the hope that it spreads. You are welcome to distribute, link, or quote it for non-commercial purposes — with attribution.
Please don’t sell it, alter it, or pass it off as your own.
The Strange Logic of Progress
From Control To Curiosity
The Journey Through the Book …
Section I – The Strange Logic
Part 1 – The Trap
How our instincts can get us stuckPart 2 – The Strange Logic of Progress
The logical solution to the trap
Section II – Where The Logic Comes From
Part 3 – The Logic of Learning
How simple learning mechanisms can scale into flexible intelligencePart 4 – The Source of Error
Why our errors aren’t random — they’re predictablePart 5 – The Discovery of Ignorance
How science and democracy learned to learn
Section III – Applying The Logic
Part 6 – The Logic of Inner Correction
How we improve when wrongness becomes speakablePart 7 – Living The Logic
The reality of life as a learning creature
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