What's Our Problem?

by Tim Urban

Published date: 2022

Category: Self-help

Insight: The ad hominem fallacy attempts to discredit ideas based on the speaker.
Insight: The easiest way to squash dissenting arguments is to discredit the person who said it, without addressing the argument itself.

Definition: Humans have a tendency to feel that "if everyone else believes it, it must be true".
Insight: Echo chambers (through social media groups) give people the impression that everyone shares the same opinion, which makes people stop questioning whether things are true or not.

Definition: The "invisible hand" of the primitive mind that tries to push you toward confirming your existing beliefs and pull you away from changing your mind.
Insight: Confirmation bias causes us to cherry-pick sources that support our ideas.
Insight: It feels good to have our views confirmed.
Insight: We tend to evaluate information from sources on how much the source confirms our beliefs rather than a proven track record of truth.
Insight: Confirmation bias shows up in behaviour such as: cherry picking, motivated skepticism, and motivated reasoning.
Insight: Sources of motivation for confirmation bias: (1) Social dependence: it is difficult to live in communities where you don't share the common view; (2) Intellectual dependence: echo chambers make people feel perfectly informed without encouraging them to search for truth - crippling them intellectually; (3) Self-esteem dependence: narratives paint the group as righteous protagonists, making believers feel good about themselves.
Principle: Find friends and people that will challenge your viewpoints, and call each other out for confirmation bias.
Principle: Seek out information that contradicts your views.

Example: When no one believes in something, but everyone thinks that everyone else believes, so a status quo is maintained.
Insight: Divergence in what is true and what people believe can occur under dictatorships because we have a tendency to believe what is widely communicated. The consequences of speaking the truth grow with the pressure of going against what you believe your fellow citizens to believe, above the potential punishments from those in power.
Insight: Confusion and fear are contagious, but so are awareness and courage: a few brave people speaking out can be enough to shatter a common delusion.

Example: Politicians regularly need to appear to have strong arguments, so they create weak counterarguments (straw men) and pretend they are the opponents position, argue against the weak counterposition to show that their position is superior and declare victory.
Insight: Using straw men can make you appear strong to untrained observers.
Insight: If straw man arguments are repeated enough inside political echo chambers, people come to believe that they are the opponents point of view.