What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies

by Tim Urban

Technology is a multiplier of both good and bad. More technology means better good times, but it also means badder bad times.

As the times get better, they also get more dangerous. More technology makes our species more powerful, which increases risk. And the scary thing is, if the good and bad keep exponentially growing, it doesn’t matter how great the good times become. If the bad gets to a certain level of bad, it’s all over for us.

Fact 3: My society is currently acting like a poopy-pantsed four-year-old who dropped its ice cream

In 1905, philosopher George Santayana issued a warning to humanity: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.1

Unlike technological growth, wisdom seems to oscillate up and down, leading societies to repeat age-old mistakes.

Instead of seeing politics as a mere horizontal axis of left, right, and center, we’ll use the Ladder to supplement the one-dimensional political discussion with a badly needed vertical dimension.

Genetic mutation is like a bug appearing in the software from time to time, and every once in a while, a certain bug makes the software better—an accidental software update.

It sees beliefs as the most recent draft of a work in progress, and as it lives more and learns more, the Higher Mind is always happy to make a revision. Because when beliefs are revised, it’s a signal of progress—of becoming less ignorant, less foolish, less wrong.

We can define “culture” as the unwritten rules regarding “how we do things here.”

Because while Idea Labs are devoted to a kind of thinking, Echo Chambers are devoted to a set of beliefs the culture deems to be sacred.

The Left focuses on protecting and lifting up marginalized groups while the Right worries about how such efforts could potentially backfire. In each case, the blind spots of one side are seen clearly by the other side, allowing the complete system to function more wisely than either side could on its own.

Real people are complex and flawed, full of faults but almost always worthy of compassion.

Even if you don’t like the way they think, you still love them and very much want them in your lives.

That’s why most Americans who will tell you they’re passionate about politics can barely name ten current members of Congress. They probably can’t name all the U.S. representatives from their state, let alone members of their state legislatures. But they can tell you about the 10 or 15 politicians chosen by the media to be the main characters on The Real Politicians, along with the five or ten hot button issues the show features in any given month.

These viral narratives are then converted into a wave of new junk food media content, which reinforces and legitimizes the ideas circulating on social media.

Unity does not require unanimity of thought.”

“There are no great limits to growth because there are no limits of human intelligence, imagination, and wonder”—was

In a perfect liberal justice system, no one would be punished unfairly, and no guilty deed would go unpunished. But no justice system will ever be perfect, and it’s critical to prevent innocent people from being unfairly punished.

censorship is really control over what the giant can think. For a giant, censorship is mind control.

If someone does speak out, no one will want to join them out of fear that they’ll be the only one to join in, which would spell their own doom. So even if every single citizen wants to overthrow the king, and even if everyone knows everyone else wants to overthrow the king, the censorship policies prevent the giant itself from being able to act.

A filmmaker named Mike Nayna made a documentary about the Evergreen shitshow.

The people close to you advise you that silence is best. And it often is. Sometimes, though, silence makes a lie begin to take on the shimmer of truth. In this age of social media, where a story travels the world in minutes, silence sometimes means that other people can hijack your story and soon, their false version becomes the defining story about you.10

to be human is to be flawed.

As Ronson puts it: “The great thing about social media was how it gave a voice to voiceless people, but we're now creating a surveillance society, where the smartest way to survive is to go back to being voiceless.”13

disguise.⬥

The diversity industry is now also worth billions of dollars, with popular trainers making millions per year. If the companies and the trainers are both getting what they need from maintaining the status quo, why would they do anything to change it?

No neutrality allowed is a trademark of every low-rung movement with way too much power.

When a movement continually cries wolf, it weakens our defenses against actual wolves.

toys.”⬥

on:⬥

When I’m down on the low rungs and I have a moment of self-awareness where I realize I’m on the low rungs, I say in my head: Climb.

But if you’re in a setting where a conversation is happening and your Inner Self is screaming “I disagree!”—start saying, “I disagree.” I can almost guarantee that at least some other people in the room will secretly be harboring the same thoughts, and they’ll respect the shit out of you for saying it out loud.