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by
Tim Urban
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February 22 - March 22, 2023
Carl Sandburg once wrote: “When a nation goes down, or a society perishes, one condition may always be found; they forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what had brought them along.”
Mass confusion allows divisive ideologies to indoctrinate more people, who join their armies of intimidation, causing more people’s lights to go dark as the danger of speaking your mind rises. Silence is contagious, and as it spreads, the big brain loses its ability to think straight and society grows ever more confused. This is the vicious cycle that makes a society forget history.
The first part of our solution is awareness, and the gateway to awareness is humility.
When it comes to the beliefs we hold most sacred, we’re all prone to confirmation bias. In one way or another, we’re all gullible, all in denial,
Think about your beliefs. Play the “why” game with them, like an annoying four-year-old. Why do you believe what you believe?
Think about your identity. The truth is, you’re not a progressive or a conservative or a moderate or radical or some other political noun. Those are words for ideas, not people. Your mind is way too weird and particular to be locked in a noun or adjective prison.
Read about the universe. Nothing makes hatred seem more ridiculous than internalizing how vast time and space are. Doing so makes me want to turn to anyone who will listen and hug them and say, “We both exist! On the same tiny planet at the same exact time! Hi!”
Where are people seeking truth vs. seeking confirmation? Where do you see moral consistency and where do you see hypocrisy? Who’s using persuasion to get what they want and who’s using coercion?
Awareness is a necessary but not sufficient condition for us to right the ship. Because awareness + silence changes nothing.
a lot of what the Primitive Mind is terrified of isn’t actually dangerous at all.
Marcus Aurelius once wrote, "If it is not right, do not do it. If it is not true, do not say it."
you find yourself being forced to speak up in a training or classroom in a way that will misrepresent yourself, or being pressured to apologize about something you don’t think you should have to apologize for, see the situation for what it is: a Maoist-style struggle session. And struggle sessions are fucked up.
whatever you’re putting out there in the world will win you the respect of some people and lose you the respect of some others. And ask yourself: whose respect do I care about?
When a person finds the courage to share their real ideas, those ideas spread and build awareness in others. Golems rely on the delusion of pluralistic ignorance (when no one believes but everyone thinks everyone believes). A few brave people speaking out shatters the delusion and makes others realize they’re not alone. When more people start saying what they think, it becomes less scary for others to follow in their footsteps.
Special shoutout to my 97-year-old nana, who has provided additional motivation by threatening to die before the book comes out every time I see her.
5What was revolutionary about the Scientific Revolution was not the concept of objective truth itself but the concept of cumulative, methodological progress toward it. John Henry,
What constitutes a scientific observation?” Senses are unreliable, he says, and technology is expensive. “No money, no proof—and that means no verification of statements and no truth. The games of scientific language become the games of the rich, in which whoever is wealthiest has the best chance of being right.” Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge,
60Helen Pluckrose, “Why I No Longer Identify as a Feminist,” Areo Magazine, December 29, 2016, https://areomagazine.com/2016/12/29/why-i-no-longer-identify-as-a-feminist/. ↩
2Allan M. Brandt, The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America (New York: Basic Books, 2009),
3Lydia Saad, “Tobacco and Smoking” (Washington, D.C.: The Gallup Organization, August 15, 2002), https://news.gallup.com/poll/9910/Tobacco-Smoking.aspx. ↩
