What’s Our Problem? by Tim Urban is a book that introduces a new framework for thinking about our chaotic political environment. The book examines the core issues that drive our current divisions, from immigration to climate change, and offers a fresh perspective on how we can move forward as a society.
The book also explores the dynamics between our two mindsets—the High Mind and the Low Mind—and how we can use them to create more productive conversations and more meaningful progress.
By using this new framework, Urban argues that we can bridge the gaps between us, find common ground, and make a real difference in the world.
No hate towards other people
Don’t hate people or groups. Try to empathize with them by picturing the details of their lives. Remember that everyone is just trying to be happy.
- Alternatively, contemplate the vastness of the universe and how petty hatred seems in comparison.
- Try to think outside yourself and consider other people’s unique life experiences.
- Think “vertically” about society, industries, cultures, and politics.
- Evaluate where high-rung or low-rung psychology is playing out.
Remember that we are all works in progress. While we can never fully eliminate low-rung thinking, we can increase the time spent on high-rung thinking. This should be our intellectual goal.
If golems are on the rise, it’s not because people have changed biologically – it’s because something has changed about the environment.
The Why Game Part 2: Values
Evaluate your values. If a political party or movement no longer represents your values, don’t stick with it out of tribal loyalty. Stick with your own values instead. People might accuse you of “leaving” the party or movement, but in reality, it left you. Stay true to yourself.
Consider the beliefs of those you disagree with. Are there any valid points? Can you articulate their views in a way that they would agree with? If not, you don’t really understand their position. Remember that everyone believes they are fighting for a good cause.
Your identity is not defined by a political label. Don’t let yourself be defined by these categories, as they limit your personal growth and exploration.
Idea Labs Vs Echo Chambers
Idea Labs are environments of collaborative high-rung thinking, where the rules of the group’s intellectual culture reflect the values of critical thinking, debate, independent thinking, and viewpoint diversity. In Idea Labs, people see each other as experimenters, and their ideas as experiments.
The culture values humility and self-awareness, and people don’t hesitate to point out biases or logical fallacies.
Echo Chambers are cultures of groupthink and conformity. The culture is devoted to a set of beliefs that the group deems to be sacred.
Echo Chambers discourage dissenting opinions and differing viewpoints. They are closed off to new ideas and outside perspectives and reinforce existing beliefs, making it difficult to challenge them.
Intellectual Cultures
Culture is defined as the unwritten rules regarding how things are done within a group. It influences members with a social incentive system where playing by the culture’s rules is rewarded, while violating them results in penalties.
The struggle between the Higher Mind and Primitive Mind also happens on a larger scale within groups. Higher Minds can band together to form a coalition, while the collective Primitive Minds can do the same.
Two Selves
Aside from the Higher and Primitive Minds, every human has two selves:
- Outer Self: the part of oneself that interacts with the world. It represents what the person says out loud.
- Inner Self: the part of oneself that thinks and feels privately. It represents true thoughts.
When a person is honest and expresses their true thoughts, their Inner Self communicates freely through their Outer Self.
But when someone is not allowed to express themselves, their ideas are trapped inside, hindering neural communication with the outside world.
From a communal perspective, this is like hijacking neural pathways, which can prevent real communication.
Outer Self Project: Courage
Awareness alone is not enough. To improve the world, we also need courage. Courage is about becoming part of the high-rung immune system instead of enabling the low-rung virus.
When we find the courage to share our ideas, they can spread and build awareness in others.
- Start with the first level of courage: stop saying things that you know aren’t true. Don’t contribute to misinformation or falsehoods, even if they support your political views.
- The second level of courage is to speak up when something is wrong. Don’t be afraid to challenge authority or social norms when they are harmful.
- The third level of courage is to take action. Don’t just talk about change, but actively work towards it. This requires bravery and perseverance.
- Finally, remember that courage is contagious. When we find the courage to act, we inspire others to do the same.
The Why Game
Examine your beliefs by playing the “why” game.
When did you adopt these ideas?
Were they imposed by others or influenced by groupthink?
If they are genuinely your own, when did you last update them?
Remember that your beliefs are hypotheses, not sacred objects carved in stone.
If you aim for the high rungs, be prepared to use the eraser.
Our environment and its components
Human environments are complex, including physical surroundings, people, cultures, beliefs, and laws.
These environments are made up of a fabric of norms, values, laws, beliefs, and culture. Changing any of these elements can trigger further changes, leading to a complicated network of cause and effect.
Today, our environment is changing faster than ever before. While civilization has many benefits, our brains have not had enough time to evolve to this new environment.
As a result, we find ourselves living in a world that is vastly different from the one for which we were originally adapted.
Higher Mind Part 1
The Higher Mind illuminates our minds with clarity when it is winning the tug-of-war. It understands that primitive pleasures like sex, food, and all-in-good-fun tribalism like sports fandom are enjoyable, and often necessary, parts of human life.
When the Higher Mind is in control, it recognizes the Primitive Mind and its desires. Like a good pet owner, it lets the Primitive Mind have its fun but in moderation and for the right reasons to avoid hurting anyone.
Environment changed faster than the human mind
Human nature is like a software program that was optimized for survival in a small tribe a long time ago. However, the modern world is vastly different from the environment for which we were originally adapted.
Despite these changes, human nature remains a constant. When placed in different environments, human behavior can vary greatly, making the environment the independent variable.
Inner Self Project: Awareness
The first step to improving ourselves is awareness, which requires humility.
We must remember that our rational and moral thinking is limited by the Primitive Mind, an ancient survival tool.
By acknowledging this, we can tap into our wisest selves and reach our full potential.
The Problem
“What’s our problem? Why, in a time so prosperous, with the stakes so high, would we be going backward in wisdom?”
Exponential technology means higher stakes:
- It’s natural to assume that the world we grew up in is normal. But nothing about our current world is normal. Because technology is exponential. More advanced societies make progress at a faster rate than less advanced societies—because they’re more advanced.
- 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.
Emergence Tower
Society can be visualized as a giant human, a living organism made up of many smaller parts joining together to function as more than the sum of its parts. This concept is called emergence, and it can be represented using an Emergence Tower.
Just as individuals move up and down the Ladder, they can also move up and down the Emergence Tower, as if taking regular trips on an elevator.
Golems
Golems are emergent properties of human obedience, resulting from humans acting like ants. They are certain of themselves, unable to learn or change their minds, and worse at thinking than the average human.
Golems rely on confirmation bias tricks like cherry-picking, motivated skepticism, and motivated reasoning, benefiting hugely from economies of scale, as the snappiest and most convincing articulations of the sacred ideas spread quickly through the system.
Individual biases scale up to make the golem’s ultra-biased macro-mind, and the social pressure of Echo Chamber culture keeps the giant as a whole steadfast in its beliefs.
Golems prefer the Us vs. Them mindset and rely on conformity, anchored by its members’ steadfast belief in its guiding narrative.
The Ladder
The Ladder is a framework that the author has developed over six years to help people better understand the world and themselves. It is like a pair of glasses for the brain that provides a thinking lens.
The Ladder helps people focus on how they arrived at their beliefs, rather than just where they stand. It is used as a “how you think” axis, in contrast to the Idea Spectrum, which is a “what you think” axis.
Wise People Good Times, Foolish People Bad Times
Our minds have two different types of intellectual motivation, which create internal disagreement in various aspects of our lives. This constant tug-of-war in our heads revolves around our thoughts, emotions, values, morals, judgments, and overall consciousness.
Primitive Mind:
- The Primitive Mind is a set of coded instructions for how to be a successful animal in the natural habitat, with natural selection as the coder.
- Its goal is survival and reproduction, along with helping its offspring reproduce.
- It believes that holding beliefs generating the best kinds of survival behavior is important, regardless of their truthfulness.
- The Primitive Mind installs beliefs early in life, based on the prevailing beliefs of family, peers, or the community.
- It views beliefs as a fundamental part of identity, essential for being in good standing with the community.
- It wants you to treat your beliefs as sacred objects and hold them with conviction, preferring viewpoint/identity confirmation, out-group bashing, and gossip.
The Ladder: High-Rung Thinking
The Ladder can be thought of as a pair of glasses for the brain, helping us better understand the world and ourselves. It is a tool that focuses on the “how” of our thinking, rather than just the “what.”
High-Rung Thinking, exemplified by the Scientist and Sports Fan, is a mindset that values truth above all else. It prioritizes productive and independent thinking, which allows for the revision or rejection of ideas.
This mindset is humble, self-aware, and free of bias, with the ability to recognize and expose logical fallacies.
In High-Rung Thinking, hypotheses are formed from the bottom up, following evidence wherever it leads, with a default position of “I don’t know” on any given topic.
Awareness Contd.
The first call to action is to prioritize our own needs before helping others.
Conduct a self-audit to identify where the Primitive Mind controls your life.
- What triggers its activation and leaves you in a fog?
- On the other hand, when do you perform at your best?
- What gives your Higher Mind the advantage in those moments?
Try to replicate these conditions in other areas of your life.
The problem of Golems and what we can do
Golems have infected the societies’ vital organs – their institutions – impeding their ability to function properly and causing a mass crisis of trust.
The Solution:
- To get out of a downward spiral of confusion and fear, a society needs an upward spiral of awareness and courage. In a super high-tech era like ours, entering the “bad times” phase of the merry-go-round is a scary prospect.
- We live in a time of magical technology, and the power of the human species grows more godlike every year.
- This power is a double-edged sword, paving one road to utopia and another to dystopia.
- As we move into the deeply uncertain future, there’s never been a more critical time to have our wits about us.
- Exponential technology has given us countless gifts, but in the frenzy, we’re forgetting the most important lesson of all: the worst of our nature never lies far beneath the surface.
- We can’t afford to get ourselves from foolish to wise the usual way, via bad times.
- Somehow, we have to figure out how to become wise people directly.
High Rung Thinking is fading away
Rather than accepting conventional wisdom, High-Rung Thinkers create their own ideas from scratch, unattached to any particular belief and always willing to revise their beliefs.
However, this type of thinking is losing its hold on our society, and its members must be willing to stand up for open discourse, debate, and moral consistency against those who would try to shut it down.
Higher Mind Part 2
The higher mind:
- Seeks to see the world as it really is
- Recognizes the advanced civilization we live in and aims to think and behave accordingly
- Thinks beyond itself, reflects, and gains wisdom through experience
- Acknowledges that humans are often delusional and strives to avoid delusion
- Views beliefs as a work in progress, always open to revision as learning and growth occur
- Struggles to manage the Primitive Mind
Low-Rung Thinking
Low-rung thinking is characterized by working to serve our ideas, being arrogant, short-sighted, small-minded, low on self-awareness, and high on hypocrisy.
This kind of thinking is rooted in our Primitive Mind, which puts us in survival mode.
Low-rung thinking and behavior are on the rise.
It’s a catch-22 situation for humanity as low-rung thinking persists as the best defense against the biggest threat to humanity, which is low-rung humanity. Idea supremacy is a result of low-rung thinking combined with authoritarianism.
Ladder Emergence: Genies
The brain is a network of 86 billion neurons, and language is important because it allows individual brains to connect and form a communal brain.
A diversity of biases helps the communal brain reduce blind spots, resulting in a multi-mind thinking system that is superior at learning and separating truth from fiction.
This thinking system is called a genie.
- Collaboration in a genie does not come at the expense of the individual, as genies flourish when their members are independent thinkers.
- In a genie, individuals can simultaneously thrive as free thinkers and as smaller pieces of a larger system.
- The civilization we live in today, with all its incredible technology, was not created by humans alone.
- Humans are not smart enough to do that.
The amazing world around us was created by genies.
Not enough wisdom
We find ourselves without mentors, editors, or anyone else to ensure that our work turns out okay.
Given the high stakes, it’s imperative that we be our wisest selves. Unfortunately, lessons in wisdom don’t always stick. Unlike technological growth, wisdom seems to fluctuate, causing societies to repeat mistakes from the past.
As humans, we’re supposed to mature with age. However, the world seems to be growing more childish with each passing year. Political divisions and tribalism are on the rise, and outlandish conspiracy theories are flourishing.
Major institutions are struggling, and public shaming is making a comeback. Trust, the cornerstone of a healthy society, is rapidly eroding. These trends are happening in many societies, not just our own.
Not enough wisdom Contd.
This pattern is all too common throughout history. Those who lived through challenging times, such as world wars, saw the fragility of human civilization firsthand.
This realization led them to prioritize wisely and make decisions that safeguarded future societies.
However, during extended periods of good times, people can grow complacent and forget the principles that kept society strong. As safeguards deteriorate, new bad times can emerge without warning. It’s like a never-ending merry-go-round that societies get trapped on.
