Issue 54: Commonsense with Phil Jackson & Michael Jordan 

We devote each newsletter to one of your primal powers. This week's power is Commonsense. Curious which area of human intelligence might help you the most? Take our diagnostic.

Imagine that you've coached your basketball team to two consecutive national championships. Now you're trying to clinch a three-peat, the series is tied 3-3, and you're down by two with 13 seconds left in the game.

 

Possession is yours, you have the best player in the world on your roster, and the team is looking at you to set the play.

If you're Coach Phil Jackson, you deviate from the norm and tap your supporting players (Option C). 

 

Commonsense is matching the newness of the plan to the newness of the situation. 

 

The situation was new. But not because it was a championship game or because it was down to the wire. 

 

What made the situation different was the fact that everyone— fans, players, the opposing team's coaches, and announcers— knew that Michael would take the shot. There was too much at stake to do anything different.

 

Which meant Phil Jackson knew Phoenix would double down on Michael, leaving his supporting players unguarded. 

 

Watch what happened.

When Michael entered the front court, four defenders stood between him and the ball. 

 

Which left an open corridor between Horace Grant, who had the ball, and John Paxson, who waited, unguarded and alone, at the three-point line. Grant passed to Paxson and Paxson scored. 

 

Commonsense for the win.

 

A few years later, the Bulls once again had only seconds left to win the championship. As before, expectations landed on Michael. 

 

The difference? The situation was now a familiar one, which meant a familiar strategy could work. Knowing he'd be double-teamed, Michael famously instructed Steve Kerr to “be ready.”  Like Paxson before him, Kerr was wide open to receive the ball and scored the winning basket.  

The more you familiarize yourself with real-world, commonsense decisions of the past, the more you improve your ability to calibrate your response to the challenge at hand. 

 

“Commonsense is famously the ability that distinguishes humans from AI, which can ace complex calculations yet fumble a decision obvious to children.” Primal Intelligence.

 

Next week, Intuition.

 

In the meantime, Angus was happy to revisit Nikola Danaylov's Singularity FM podcast and preview Primal Intelligence. 

 

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