Five years ago, I chased a new and very scruffy rabbit down its rabbit hole. I proclaimed myself an angel investor and founded a company with what I thought was a spiffy name for an early-stage investments company; I called the company Seed/Pod.

My vision was that my capital and sage advice could be like the pod of a seed, nurturing it until it sprouted out of the ground, basking in the sunshine, watered by the rains of good fortune. Maybe so, but nobody understood the name—everyone thought it was a cannabis dispensary.

Nevertheless, Seed/Pod has been a success, particularly if my measure of success means…

pouring large amounts of money,
into all kinds of businesses and technologies,
which I don’t really understand,
that are founded by people I barely know, and…
with deal terms replete with legal terminology,
complete with documents that are totally foreign to me.

But it’s been a blast! And I am up for the challenge.

“We’re all born naked. The rest is drag.”

The one thing that gets to me most, though, is all of the magical thinking involved in the process of pitching early-stage (“seed” stage) companies. By definition, seed-stage companies don’t have much of a track record, but they do their best to project the most fantastic version of themselves, not only in the present but even more so in their future. Simply put, they are all FABULOUS. Even if it’s all slightly RuPaul. Wasn’t it RuPaul who said, “We are all born naked. The rest is drag.” ?

Nowhere is this more evident than in start-up valuations. Valuations, even if they are made up (which most seem to be) are fundamental because they determine how much of the company investors acquire for the amount of investment they make. If a company is “valued” at 1 million dollars, and an investor puts in 100 thousand dollars, they acquire 10 percent of the company. Right?

Not so fast, bucko.

That would be too real. As I have learned, the world of early-stage investments is built mostly around imagination. Why wouldn't it be? This is the rabbit hole we have all been scampering down over the past few years.

“Everything you can imagine is real.”

...Says none other than Pablo-freakin’-Picasso (mic-drop).

Now, I feel like I’m gonna sound as if I’m dumping on all of the dreamers of the world, but... REALLY??

Some say we are living in the “post-truth” world—an age in which people are making things up right and left. They imagine stuff, and then do a full Picasso on what they imagined. Shazam! It's now real! Moreover, they insist that we share in all of this lovely realness by accepting their reality as our reality.

Back in the 1950s, a behavioral scientist named Solomon Asch conducted experiments (aptly named the “Conformity Experiment”). These experiments demonstrated that people would yield to a majority to “believe” things that were clearly not real. The researchers posing as fellow participants would present images, such as three lines, and then cajole the participants to accept the “fact” that the three lines were actually two lines, defying their own eyes and good sense. A consistent 30 percent went along with it.

Allow me, dear readers to be brazen; I am tired of all of the nonsense being labeled as real in the world. And tired of all of the real being labeled as nonsense. We have lost our bearings. We need a new and improved sense of discernment. And it's not just because I need more realistic valuations for my investments. It's also because I, and a lot of y’all, need to find a way to climb out of the rabbit hole.

How did we get down this rabbit hole?

I am a weather nerd. Can't help it. When I was a little kid, I did not want to grow up to be a fireman or even Superman. No. I wanted to be a weatherman. Still do.

One of my favorite features of the nightly weather report is the adjustment meteorologists make to the ambient air temperature to the "what's it actually feel like” temperature (or “feels like,” for short) the "heat index" when it's hot, and the “wind chill factor,” when it's cold. This helps explain why some 95-degree days feel even hotter than hell (hell being at least 100 degrees), while some 45-degree days feel colder than the North Pole.

Making Our Own “Feels Like” Scale

The "feels like" temperature scale is meant to provide scientific reasoning for what we are feeling about it. It can be a wonderful affirmation of what might otherwise be whining and complaining about how hot or cold it is; bonus points to prove that it really is hotter than hell or colder than the North Pole.

We humans extend this reasoning to almost everything. What a situation feels like can be more potent and real to us than the actual situation. For example:

Everything just keeps getting more expensive.
This trip is taking forever—we are never going to get there.
They don’t love me as much as they used to.
This town was way better before all of these people moved here.
They don't make music like they used to.
That election was stolen.

Don't get me wrong. “Feels like” temperatures can also skew positive, as well. Here are some examples:

This shirt still fits me and I look really hot in it.
I know I have been losing at blackjack for two hours, but I feel a winning streak coming on.
There’s always next year (says the Boston Red Sox fan).
Just one more drink—the night is still young.
My karaoke version of this next song will knock your socks off.
This investment will pay off if I just hang in there.
He’s not crazy. He’s crazy like a fox.

So, why do we do this to ourselves? The simple answer is that we are human. But then, why do we HUMANS do this??

Was Picasso Wrong?

Both the answers to the Picasso question and the human one are the same: We are powerful imagineers. And the rocket fuel of our imagination is our feelings.

An explanation can be found by swimming in Austin's most famous pool, Barton Springs.

It’s a place where natural springs flow up from deep within the earth, creating a magnificent, crystal clear swimming pool filled with water that’s always 68 degrees Fahrenheit.

It’s lovely! But here’s the weird part. Swim in the summertime when the ambient air temperature is 100 degrees, and the water feels ice cold. Swim in the winter when the ambient air temperature is 40 degrees, and the water feels lukewarm. Same water, same constant temperature of 68 degrees. But the "feels like” temperature varies wildly. We IMAGINE the water to feel a certain way.

According to Picasso, this imagined temperature must be "real.” Any thermometer placed in the water will announce an entirely different reality.

But if Picasso’s Wrong, Then What?

Isn’t this just good, old-fashioned cognitive dissonance? Not exactly. The water does not feel colder or warmer just because we imagine that it is. I can tell you from personal experience swimming in Barton Springs that it really does seem to feel colder and warmer depending on the air temperature. The “feels like” temperature really does kick in here.

Turns out, “feels like” can seem just as real as “real.”

But which one is more important: the “feels like” temperature, or the measurement on the thermometer?

Does the shirt fit because I imagine it does or does it not fit because I can’t get the danged thing on? Has the trip added more distance because it feels like it’s taking forever, or does the odometer never lie? And why do we always believe that the odometer is “truth,” anyway? Maybe “truth” is what we “feel,” after all.

Well, no. I reject that.

This is the rabbit hole we have fallen down. There must be some objective, shared truths in addition to our own personal realities based on “feels like'' temperature readings. Can there be aggregate wisdom, built on verifiable testing, repeatable observations and calculations, and collective wisdom? Absolutely.

In a world rife with fabrication, is it really all that surprising to find that truth itself is under attack? It doesn’t need to be this way. Most truths can be precise, verifiable, defended, easily explained, and commonly accepted. Yes, it is true that some truths have none of these features, yet can still be held as true. For me, spiritual truths which require faith are like this.

Call it an oversimplification, but anyone trying to stretch the truth is selling you something. They’ve got skin in the game, stock in the falsity. Sometimes, literally. After all, even those company valuations can be a collective and accepted truth based on our best guesses, hopes, and dreams—but they’re still a stretch of what reality really is. Let me be clear here: there is nothing wrong with that, just as long as everyone accepts that we are betting on the outcome, not the reality.

Monkey In the Middle

Let’s rediscover some shared realities based on truth. It doesn’t even have to be that gravity is real and true, even if it’s still technically just a “theory.”

(Here’s a particularly fun piece of satire from the National Center for Science Education about what it’d be like if we treated the theory of gravity the way we treat the theory of evolution—their own take on the stretching of “truth” published back in September 2007!)

But we don’t even need to go that far. Let’s take some baby steps. We can start with some easy realities, the ones that have a thermometer to back them up. Even if Barton Springs feels more like 50 degrees, and even if a bunch of researchers who are actually just actors hired by the experiment are telling me it's 50 degrees, can’t we just commit to believing the thermometer anyway?

Of course, not all realities are as quantifiable. But some are. And others have history, cultural norms, and yes, laws, to back them. Some truths are even self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.

But for starters, here are some universal, easy truths we can all get on board with (though some of us still might not…):

The world is round and revolves around the sun.
Water is necessary for life.
There are seven days in a week.
E=MC2
Rain helps plants grow.
What goes up, must come down.

Then, there are some slightly more difficult ones:

If you cut a sandwich diagonally instead of down the middle, it *feels* bigger.
If you grab a movie seat in the back row, you have less of a chance of talkers distracting you.
If you accidentally forget to take pepper spray out of your bag to a show at the ACL Live at the Moody Theater in downtown Austin, you *will probably* get it confiscated.
If you swim in Barton Springs in the summertime, you will definitely feel cold (at first—though it is refreshing, all the same).

It's not just about fact-checking others, it's also about questioning our own certainty. The next time you use the phrase, “to tell you the truth,” “frankly,” or “the reality is,” reach for your thermometer and make sure your “feels like” temperature isn't preventing you from knowing the real temperature. We can do this, folks. And that's the truth.

"Everything You Can Imagine is Real." Really?