Adulting Decrypted
We prepare young adults to be independent powerhouses for life.--Who We Are: The Adulting Decrypted team is composed of a Dad and his three sons: Roscoe(Dad - age redacted), Ashton(22), Gene(18), and Gideon(14). How We Started: As a family we have always tried to have at least one meal together daily. The meal that typically ends up being is dinner. One night in particular near the beginning of the COVID pandemic, our conversation started with Roscoe mentioning that he had recently read a news article stating that an Ivy League college was offering “Adulting,” classes. These classes were being offered in the hopes that they might be able to educate students who were struggling with common “Adult” tasks. It didn't make sense to us that someone would have to enroll in an Ivy League school to learn things that nearly every person has to deal with daily. To us it seemed that things like shopping, laundry, mental health, communication, taxes, loans, and so much more should be basic knowledge before taking on the substantial challenges of modern life. Eventually the idea was floated that there should be a podcast that can be accessed for free that would help people gain insight into these things that we thought we knew fairly well. Since COVID-19 had caused unemployment and school schedule changes for all of us we thought that there could be no better thing than for us to take on this challenge. Less than a month later, after several planning meetings and countless hours of research, we had recorded and uploaded our first episode.
Adulting Decrypted
S-6 E-6 Knowledge vs wisdom
I remember when you guys were little, I'd say something that I would get myself in trouble for often. I'd say, Hey, being an adult just means I'm better at Googling or tubing how to fix something. You guys remember me saying that? I think so. So what I wanna talk about today is there's a few different things.
When we, when we talk about, , really the theme I want to get across is Google has all the answers, but not all the answers are always right. So think about this as we get started on this story, , when I was on this trip that with mom, I hurt my arm. I don't know, did you know about this?
So Gideon knew about this. I did not. When I got there, my elbow, my, like, I had a hard time straightening up my arm. I couldn't remember when I heard it. I thought maybe it was when I grabbed some luggage out of, out of the overhead. I wasn't quite sure, but my left arm just hurt really bad.
And for an example, it kind of looked like a torn muscle.
The only problem is it was like two inches up from your elbow. Like the crook in your elbow is about two inches up when a torn bicep would be. Like right in between the middle of that section of your arm, not right near the bottom. So it was really
confusing. Yeah. And there's really two types of torn biceps, which is all I found out from Dr.
Google. Right. I don't know how many times I've spent time on Dr. Google trying to figure it out. Did Web indeed tell you you were dying? Yeah. Happening. Yeah. Something. Well, nobody could really tell me. But that's, we, we'll talk more about that later. So it could have been a torn bicep, a broken elbow, arthritis stretch marks, you know, Google's coming up with every, sometimes it's the quality of the question that's being asked.
Right. That's it's probably because of your pregnancy. Yeah, probably. , and then today, , as mom was getting in the truck, or earlier this week, mom was getting in the truck and the lights come on says the charging system's bad. So of course, I. Google mechanic. Mm-hmm. . It could be an alternator, it could be a wire that's broken.
It could be, you know, you start looking at everybody else's symptoms and you start trying to diagnose.
I need to interject. I hate Google Mechanic. It's so challenging. It's so frustrated. It's so hard. It's like the worst game of match, like, you know, you know the game where you show all the pictures and then you flip it over and then you have to say that one and that one match and Yeah.
Memory. Yeah. Google Mechanic is the same. It's so hard
because of how many ads and. Pay to be the top spot. It's like I am asking for the best type of Cheeto. I don't need to see this like wonder drug that's up here.
Like for other problems that you don't have at 15. Yeah, it's like four 16, so, so number one, Google.
Google has all the answers, but not all the answers are right. There's knowledge, which we're gonna talk about. Experience, wisdom, and then I'm gonna leave a c. That you guys are gonna be super excited about. Sure. So how much data are we creating every day? How much content? We're obviously creating content right now.
Yeah. But have you ever, , ha have you guys heard, do you know how much content we create? Doesn't. As a world, not just, not just adulting, decrypted less than we should. About an hour
today. , no, I, I remember hearing somewhere it was something ridiculous like on YouTube alone, that there was like a year's worth of videos every day or something.
Yeah.
YouTube. I've heard the statistics for YouTube too. It's crazy.
1.5 Quin trillion bytes of data created each. This was in 2018. They estimated that 90
1.5 Quin trillion bytes of data created each. This was in 2018. They estimated that 90% of the world data has been created in the last two years. So, well, yeah,
Ashton:because it's a lot easier to record something stupid on your phone than it was for the Mays to build their calendar So 1.5
Dad:I remember when you guys were little, I'd say something that I would get myself in trouble for often. I'd say, Hey, being an adult just means I'm better at Googling or tubing how to fix something. You guys remember me saying that? I think so. So what I wanna talk about today is there's a few different things. When we, when we talk about, really the theme I want to get across is Google has all the answers, but not all the answers are always right. So think about this as we get started on this story, when I was on this trip that with mom, I hurt my arm. I don't know, did you know about this? So Gideon knew about this. I did not. When I got there, my elbow, my, like, I had a hard time straightening up my arm. I couldn't remember when I heard it. I thought maybe it was when I grabbed some luggage out of, out of the overhead. I wasn't quite sure, but my left arm just hurt really bad.
Gideon:And for an example, it kind of looked like a torn muscle. The only problem is it was like two inches up from your elbow. Like the crook in your elbow is about two inches up when a torn bicep would be. Like right in between the middle of that section of your arm, not right near the bottom. So it was really
Dad:confusing. Yeah. And there's really two types of torn biceps, which is all I found out from Dr. Google. Right. I don't know how many times I've spent time on Dr. Google trying to figure it out. Did Web indeed tell you you were dying? Yeah. Happening. Yeah. Something. Well, nobody could really tell me. But that's, we, we'll talk more about that later. So it could have been a torn bicep, a broken elbow, arthritis stretch marks, you know, Google's coming up with every, sometimes it's the quality of the question that's being asked. Right. That's it's probably because of your pregnancy. Yeah, probably. and then today, as mom was getting in the truck, or earlier this week, mom was getting in the truck and the lights come on says the charging system's bad. So of course, I. Google mechanic. Mm-hmm. It could be an alternator, it could be a wire that's broken. It could be, you know, you start looking at everybody else's symptoms and you start trying to diagnose.
Ashton:I need to interject. I hate Google Mechanic. It's so challenging. It's so frustrated. It's so hard. It's like the worst game of match, like, you know, you know the game where you show all the pictures and then you flip it over and then you have to say that one and that one match and Yeah. Memory. Yeah. Google Mechanic is the same. It's so hard
Gideon:because of how many ads and. Pay to be the top spot. It's like I am asking for the best type of Cheeto. I don't need to see this like wonder drug that's up here.
Dad:Like for other problems that you don't have at 15. Yeah, it's like four 16, so, so number one, Google. Google has all the answers, but not all the answers are right. There's knowledge, which we're gonna talk about. Experience, wisdom, and then I'm gonna leave a c. That you guys are gonna be super excited about. Sure. So how much data are we creating every day? How much content? We're obviously creating content right now. Yeah. But have you ever, ha have you guys heard, do you know how much content we create? Doesn't. As a world, not just, not just adulting, decrypted less than we should. About an hour
Ashton:today. no, I, I remember hearing somewhere it was something ridiculous like on YouTube alone, that there was like a year's worth of videos every day or something. Yeah.
Gideon:YouTube. I've heard the statistics for YouTube too. It's crazy.
Dad:1.5 Quin trillion bytes of data created each. This was in 2018. They estimated that 90% of the world data has been created in the last two years. So, well, yeah,
Ashton:because it's a lot easier to record something stupid on your phone than it was for the Mays to build their calendar So 1.5
Dad:Quin trillion. Okay. So in nine, in, in 20 22, 97. Zeta. set Aytes. Yeah.
Ashton:Okay. In the order of operations there's giga,
Dad:Tara. Yeah, I tried that. I honestly tried. It's like 0.0079 of a gigabyte. So,
Ashton:a gigabyte would be 0.007 of
Dad:that. Of a, of a, yeah. Of aaby. Yeah. So. A trillion gigabytes. Oh, there you go. A trillion gigabytes is one petabyte. There you
Ashton:go. That makes a lot of sense. I was like, that was smaller. That was easier way to,
Dad:yeah, yeah, yeah. Easier way to say it. If you were to store 175 zetabytes on DVDs, your stack of DVDs would be long enough to circle the Earth 22 times, 222 times. So CIA CD 222
Gideon:times around the Earth.
Dad:In CDs.
Ashton:In CDs. Holy crap. Yeah. So every I have another stat for you please, because we're having fun with these. Yeah. let me make sure I have it com complete.
Dad:while you're looking at that, I just wanted to back up the listener to help help'em understand in, 2000 and. There was only two Zetabytes produced for the whole year. In 2022, there was 97 Zetabytes.
Gideon:I, I like how you say, only two zetabytes, but a zettabyte is still massive.
Dad:Massive, massive. It's humongous. But just the growth rate in 10 in those 12 years to go from two zetabytes to 97 zetabytes means there's a lot of data being thrown out there. Go ahead, Ashton, you were saying.
Ashton:Okay, I got it. Every minute on YouTube, 183 hours of video content is uploaded. So poor day per 24 hour. Hour period. That's 7.5 days worth of content. No, I lied. 7.5 days worth of content. Every minute. Every minute. Every minute. Yep.
Dad:so there's a lot of data. Right. That's what I'm trying to get at is there's a lot of data and the irony to me is they're saying, well, 90% of all the data's been created in the last 20 years or less. Right? And And you think about all the generations before and before and you're going, how does that even equate, right? Not all of it can be factual. what is knowledge, right? So that's just data. So what's knowledge? how do you gather knowledge? I think, I
Ashton:think maybe, maybe knowledge is like a commonly accepted, maybe even peer reviewed truth. I'd agree with that. Something that like, you know, that is factually been like two plus two four. Good. It's a good, solid example of knowledge. Definitely
Dad:knowledge. what about a video that's got 678 likes on how to fix a truck? I would say that's probably knowledge. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I mean, people have, especially if there's comments that say, Hey, this worked, you know, there's like three dislikes and they say, you know, didn't I hate Fords? You know, whatever. I don't know.
Gideon:I just, I was trying to figure out what Google might say and knowledge, the root of knowledge is. Correct. Correct. So then you're just, knowledge I think is just like the product of knowing something. So as soon as you know something, I think it's
Dad:knowledge. Right? I, I think that's fair. So
Gideon:whether it's true or not, if you know it, it's
Dad:knowledge. Agreed. That's, that's a very good observation. So when I watched these videos about what all the things that were wrong with my. right? I, I was like, okay, good data, good data, good data. You know what worked, worked on their truck Yeah, I knew. I know what they did on their truck and I know what was wrong with their truck. To your point, Gideon. and then you go, okay, cool. Now I've got this knowledge and I go out there and I look at the truck and go, well, I know it can't be those three things, because the earlier knowledge I gained helped me solidify that it wasn't that. So I think knowledge is, you can read it, you can watch a video, you can ask a friend, you can hear YouTube, you can, right? Because to your point, get in, you know, you've learned, you've vetted it. Some peers are looked at it, something. So then you go to the next step, which is experience, knowledge, versus experience.
Ashton:I think, I think one, they're two different like entities, like knowledge is, is, is, you know, having the conceptual idea of something. Experience is, I think just doing something. So it's like, you know, you can experience driving down the highway. You know, now you have experience, you've done it. And that will lead to a knowledge of things. But the experience is just the, the act of it happening.
Dad:Okay. I like that. Interesting. Yeah,
Gideon:because I like what you said, Ashton, and I think experience has two different versions. Experience as in I have experience. Yep. And The experience is something try to learn off of, I, I went through an experience, like I went through an experience and I have experience cuz I like to think about it like a video game experience where it's, you do something in the video game, you gain experience, like experience points or whatever. but it's just, it's kind of a weird concept
Dad:to think about. Yeah. And, and, and that's why I, I kind of grabbed experience wasn't originally on the list, and I put it in there because I think as you've studied something, for example, you used the word driving. Yeah. Right. Your example is you, you had knowledge of how to drive a car Yeah. Before you ever did it, and then you actually did it. and you can validate with a knowledge with your experience was true for you. Did it work for you? Right. Does it continually work? In some situations you don't know. You haven't had the tire fall off. What do they say to do when you blow a front tire? Take your foot off the gas. Yeah. Chill, chill. Don't jam the brakes. Yeah. Even though it's contrary to I've had it, I've blown out a front tire. take the, take your foot off the gas, let the car slow down. Even if it's going pretty fast, steer yourself outta trouble. And it's a scary experience, but the knowledge helped me from wrecking. Yep. Does that make sense? Mm-hmm. Gideon, fun story about you when you were little. I don't know if you remember this experience or not. Okay. Gideon, the stove's. Yep. I know this one.
Gideon:It is
Dad:hot. Do you remember this? Yeah. So you had, you had the knowledge Cause I told you, but you didn't have the experience because,
Gideon:okay,
Dad:ready? Yeah, because you were like
Gideon:three. I thought that technology was awesome and as soon as you turn off the burner, it turns off the. Therefore when you turn it off, it is not hot. Logic makes sense. Trash. And so I'm like, I'm a little scientist. I'm gonna try and figure this out. Okay. Yep. So I have my hypothesis. Yep. Where it's like, as soon as you turn that burner off, it's, it's gonna be cold, it's gonna be the same temperature as the rest of
Ashton:the everything else. Yeah.
Gideon:So Dad turns it off. Turned his back, whoop full palm on the stove and whoop, ah, my head is pert. And that was, that was my experience.
Dad:That's right. So what, what was your conclusion driven from that
Gideon:side? My conclusion was I was wrong. And that's not quite how
Dad:heat works. Not quite, no. So now, almost now, it would lead me into the next one. We're not gonna jump into it yet, but it would be wisdom. Okay. So, Let's pause that. I want to go back to a couple things that I want to talk about in spirit experience. Jimmy Buffett has a line in, in his song called Min, which is tomorrow, right in Spanish. Yep. One of the lines says, don't try to describe the ocean if you've never seen it, and, and his point is saying you might have knowledge of it, but you haven't experienced it. How are you gonna help me understand it? Right. Don't, don't. And, and I think the, the cautionary tale is that some people, when you look for a coach online, they might say, oh, I'm, I'm Mr. Blah, blah, blah. I'm the best emotionally strong coach you're ever gonna find. Come follow me and I'll give you emotional. And then they start talking about all their emotional problems, not that they fixed, but that they have. And you're like, wait, should I really trust this? Yeah. Now that being said, there are some coaches that can't do, but they know how to coach. Michael Phelps. Coach never won the Olympics. Right. He was not, not a multi gold winning medalist, but he knew what it took to help Michael Phelps get there. Right. So, yeah. So I'd just say caution that as you're, as you're looking for people to be influenced by and, and who to choose who you want to go with. The other thing about experiences is the three of us could be going down the road. Let's, to make it fun, let's say we're all three of us are on a bicycle. The same bicycle. No, we're on three different bikes. Cause it it just less awkward. Triple tandem Triple tandem. As long as as I get to steer, we're good. There you go. And as long as I get to sit in the back so you guys can't see if I'm pedaling or not. It's perfect. And I'll just yell at you guys to keep pedaling. We're three bikes. We're right down the street. We're having experience, right? Yes. We might see something and based on our knowledge, based on our observation of other facts, we might have a different experience. Would we agree with that? Yes. And the reason why I'm pointing all this out is because it's so hard to debate sometimes whether you have the knowledge, whether you have the experience, whether you've Googled it. And really I think the, the last one, which is wisdom. wisdom is the quality of having an experienced knowledge and good judgment. And that's how you get wisdom, right? So you have. the quality of having experience and knowledge, and then utilize the good judgment to make sure you get the right thing. And then you can say, that's wisdom. I have a
Gideon:question, please. cause I was thinking about it. You said knowledge is knowing about something, not necessarily having any experience with it, but just knowing about it and then after that experience. Does it turn into wisdom or does it turn into like trust?
Dad:not everybody that has experienced something and has knowledge, has wisdom, because I don't think they always have the judgment, the good judgment on how to utilize those experiences or that wisdom. It's like I'm, I'm sorry. That knowledge.
Gideon:Yeah. So just cuz driving is a fun example You go through the testing, the permit test or whatever, you know the laws of the road and you know how to drive a car. You've seen people do it your whole. And when you get that experience of actually like, oh my gosh, I am driving home on Geneva and almost just turning that car because I was not paying attention. It doesn't matter.
Dad:So story for another time. Yeah. Story
Gideon:for another time. Yeah. But I have to have that experience. Do you trust the fact that you look in your mirrors before you go into a lane and you check your blind spot? And does that turn into wisdom or does it turn into knowledge because you knew you were supposed to check your mirrors? Does it turn into knowledge with a little bit of trust?
Dad:you're using the word trust, maybe help me understand that a little bit more.
Gideon:Trust is in like, like judgment, like you said.
Dad:Yeah. Yeah. So trust is in judgment
Gideon:rely you rely on the knowledge.
Dad:Yeah. So, so for me, the, the big difference in, in, in that exact example, I might not always use good judgment, therefore it wasn't wise. I can give an example right now. The other day I was coming home from the gym after, after working out with mom and, and it's dark right now. In the mornings we come around the, the 700 right in front of the high school. Some youth was, had walked in front of their parents' car, but they were right in between the headlights, so I couldn't see'em. Like they weren't in front of this headlight, they weren't in front of the left headlight, they were dead center. So I didn't know there was anybody there. As I turned the corner, the person honked their horn. Now what would wisdom. Slow down and figure
Ashton:out what's really going on
Dad:or, and, and proceed with caution. Yes. Right. Because I've already passed it. I've already already drove around and the guy honks his horn or gal, whoever honks her horn at me, wisdom, if I would've showed good judgment, would've been like, okay, my bad. And drove home. Instead, the guy honks his horn. Mm-hmm. I goro my window to say, I'm sorry, you know, my bad. You know, cuz it was my bad. but your mom yells at me. Rosco, just keep driving. Well, now I'm pissed. So I yell at the guy, tell him not to have somebody cross right in front of his blind spot where we can't see, and I'm going, wait a second. He was totally in the right. Knowledge was not on my side, was it? Googling that answer over and over. Still would say that I'm in the wrong. My experience would tell me I'm in the wrong. I had zero wisdom in that moment. Does that make sense? Yeah, so, so, so I think, I think wisdom is when you put it all together. A good friend of mine, and, and you guys know him, Lance Line says about this, that knowledge and experience allows us to ex execute wisdom, cuz it helps us step around the poop, right? And he uses that first consulting example all the time. You might get a. college graduate has an mba, very smart, smarter than me, but he hasn't had the experience launching his programs in his trials and his testing of how it would work in a bigger business. And because he doesn't have the experience, he can't have the wisdom to step around the poop. Does that make sense? But even though we have the know. We have the, the experience. It doesn't mean we always have the, the, the wisdom. So my thought on it is that, that we need to realize that things are changing and we need to contemplate if our knowledge is still valid because we've talked about how much data is being generated, how much new studies, how you guys are totally. You were, you both were born with a computer in your hand, in essence, right? I mean, the internet has always been there. I remember the argument when Ashton was 12 or 13 and he wanted a cell phone, and we're like, you're gonna ride your bike to school if you have a cell phone. He is like, cool, I'm gonna do it. Yep. and then it's like, well, when did you get your first cell phone, dad? Oh, okay. Let's go there. I was 25. Yeah. You know, and I worked for a cell phone company. Ah, you lose so it, it has totally changed. And so now sometimes my knowledge, what I knew in the past isn't holding true in the future. And I have to be willing to think of that. And that's why the, the last thing I want to cover is constant learner. When I was younger getting, you talked about Atomic Habits a couple episodes ago, and, and you were laying it out when I was younger, they said, do something for 30 days and it becomes a habit. Is that still the belief? Not necessarily. Explain.
Gideon:I don't want to act like I'm an expert because I'm not, but from what I understand, first off, it depends on what you're doing. and it kind of, habits are such a hard thing, but it's more about the times that you do it rather than like time period. So rather than like, oh, in 30 days I'll have this as a habit, it's, oh, after I do this 90 times than it'll be a habit. And it also depends on size because
Dad:how big the lift
Gideon:is, right? Yeah. If, if you're trying to create a habit, like. Oh, I have a habit to eat healthy. You're going to think about it every single day, probably forever. It's not just gonna be like, oh yeah, I'm gonna go grab this like salad instead of this cool burger. it might be easier to grab the salad, but you're still gonna think about it. You're not just gonna walk over there. It's,
Dad:it's a, I like that example of, of a diet. but when I was growing up, I was like, Hey, do it for 30 days. And then somebody came out and said, oh, it's really 22 days. And then somebody comes out, says it's 66 days. And the most recent study and the data they have on it. Cause I do believe the human mind is changing and, and not, unfortunately, I don't think we're getting wiser. I think we scratch the surface level on so many things that very few people are digging deep enough to really understand and there's so much misinformation. You don't know what's right and wrong. but if you're willing to think about it and, and, and contemplate it, you can find what you need to do and what, and, and, and what you said earlier get in is like about something else. You're like, oh, we can go try it. We don't have to do it forever. Let's go try this in the podcast, but we, it doesn't mean we're married to it. Let's, let's try it and see if it works. So you're still testing, you know, to, to see if that knowledge, then you're trying to grab that experience and then that will give you some wisdom on how to drive and drag things. but on a habit. They also said it's the why is your why big enough, and and we could obviously, we'll, we've done maybe one or five episodes on habits. One or two. Yeah, one or two Right. Because we're all still, it's a very important adulting skill. But on this one, I really wanted to walk away and the whole intent of this message was always, Be willing to look at something, realize that you might not even have a knowledge of it, cuz you still have to go through the experience, but you might have an un I, I'm sorry, you might not have the wisdom or the understanding, but you're scratching the surface on the knowledge. Is that fair? Like if you said, Hey dad, I watched five hours of YouTube videos on how to scuba dive. I'd be like, cool. Do you know how to swim? Well, I watched on the, on the YouTube. Okay, now let's go out and try it. Let's go make sure you really know how to swim before I'm gonna throw you down there, rapids and all those kind of things. Does that make sense? So the challenge that I have for the listener, for you guys is to be constant learners because that right now, if you, if in this room, if Gideon asked you what you wanted to be when you grow up and you said, I want to be a social media influencer. There might not be any social media to influence in the future, but if you're willing to learn, you can still figure out what makes you juiced and learn those skills and traits and abilities.