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

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So, what has changed in our environment to enable the rise of the low-rung thinking outlined in the previous section? Update 2: FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) which this book cites for a lot of its data in chapters 5-7, is funded in large part by the Koch brothers and other right-wing foundations (read https://www.alternet.org/2016/09/what... for more details). Hence it seems that Tim Urban has fallen into the very trap that he is warning us for in this book - he has joined one side of the tribal battle on "free speech". While I still can recommend reading this book, I would take chapters 5-7 with a large grain of salt and view it as a cautionary tale that just knowing about these problems does not stop you from falling into the very same trap yourself.

So now we have echo chambers – the breeding ground of the low-rung thinker who doesn’t want to have their sacred views challenged. And this homogeneity leads to people becoming more extreme in their views – the hypercharged tribalism we see today. A golem’s lifeblood is conformity, anchored by its members’ steadfast belief in its guiding narrative. The stronger and more unified the belief, the stronger and more powerful the golem.”Between 2013 and 2016, Tim Urban became one of the world's most popular bloggers, writing dozens of viral, long-form articles about everything from AI to colonizing Mars to procrastination. Then, he turned his attention to a new topic: the society around him. Why was everything such a mess? Why was everyone acting like such a baby? When did things get so tribal? Why do humans do this stuff? Have you ever seen a moth flying uselessly into a light? Stupid moth, right? Well, what’s causing the moth to do that is its primitive instincts – an urge to fly toward the light of the moon. Unfortunately for the moth, its instincts haven’t caught up with changes in the world – the relatively recent introduction of many nonmoon lights.

The third rung is where problems start. Here your primitive mind has a much greater influence. Now you're "thinking like an attorney." You’ll argue or defend a point no matter how truthful or logical it is. You’re not just motivated to be right, you’re obligated. On this rung, you'll see people claiming that the earth is flat or the CIA is after them, with no amount of evidence changing their minds. I also wish he would have written more about his solutions. While he's right that we need both awareness of our fallibility and courage to confront it, he gives very little actionable advice on how to become more aware or courageous. This chapter also has very few notes compared to the previous chapters. Which is puzzling, considering that many of the sources he used throughout the book have written about topics relevant to raising awareness and becoming more courageous. For example, Urban cites both Adam Grant and Peter Boghossian earlier in the book, but he doesn't bring up Grant's book about learning how to question your opinions and open people's minds (Think Again) or Boghossian's book on how to have productive conversations with people who disagree with you (How To Have Impossible Conversations). This book made me rethink my open-mindedness. I used to think of “open-mindedness” as readiness and eagerness to accept progressive ideas. However, what I observe with a lot of “progressives” is they are absolutely terrified of hearing anything that counters their beliefs. So if we want to be truly open-minded, we need to also be willing to listen to the other side, to actually engage with their arguments. After all, if your belief is the correct one, then you should have no problem providing counterarguments to the opposing side and bringing up solid evidence and data to defend your own. And if you do have a problem proving your belief is the correct one, then maybe it’ll help you realize the nuance of the situation. Either way, you will have come out more educated about your own and your opponent’s argument. So to be open-minded is to not blindly accept every incoming idea or whatever your social group beliefs, but to do the hard work to examine and listen to both sides, be equally skeptical, examine evidence and data, and arrive at your own hypothesis and worldview that you will continue testing day to day in your conversations with people. And let’s be clear, everyone is both a low and high-rung thinker, it's not just one particular group or type of person. Certain movements can be low-rung in tendency, sure, but it’s crucial to remember that it's not an identity, just a spectrum that societies ebb and flow towards and away from.Low-rung thinkers always need to have an enemy to fight – a “them” to their “us.” When the wars of the twentieth century ended, the big scary “them” of other countries were no longer a threat, so people started looking to their neighbors for a fight. It’s like how you defended your sibling from bullies in the schoolyard but still fought with them at home.

But due to the evolutionarily recent explosion of literacy and technology, we’ve created a world that this primitive mind isn’t really made for. This is where the higher mind comes in. Our higher minds control our ability to think objectively, analyze the world, and learn from experience.

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The first part of our solution is awareness, and the gateway to awareness is humility… The most important thing for us to remember is that we do our rational and moral thinking with a not-that-smart tool that was designed to keep an ancient primate alive. Staying aware of this can help us be our wisest selves and reach our potential… So the first call to action is: Put your own mask on before helping others.” However, there are a few topics I wish he would have examined more. His chapter on the Republican Party, for example, felt a bit shallow. He did an excellent job explaining what he set out to explain, but there are several other types of low-rung thinking and behavior the Republican Party engages in that I would have liked to see him explore (Jonathan Rauch's examination of "troll epistemology" and Rachel Kleinfeld's examination of political violence come to mind). Human nature is a constant, and when you put that constant into different environments, it produces different behavior. That makes environment the independent variable. And human environments are complicated—they include the physical environment, the surrounding people and cultures, the prevailing beliefs and belief systems, and the laws and rules.”

What makes this book so important and--dare I say--essential is in its ability to simplify. This books offers up a kind of 'new vocabulary' using concepts, analogies, pictures that is sorely needed. Right now, it is easy to encounter people whose retrospection tends to stop at the following conclusions seeking to explain what the hell is happening all around them: "polarization is debilitating us!" or "wokeness is the 'mind virus'" or "democracy is at war". Some may go one level beneath these conclusions and further conclude "we are in an epistemic wasteland now, we can't even agree on a common set of facts!" etc.a set of coded instructions for how to be a successful animal in the animal’s natural habitat (the coder is natural selection). Primitive bliss is great, as long as it’s managed by the Higher Mind, who makes sure it’s done in moderation, it’s done for the right reasons, and no one gets hurt.” In the final section, you’ll learn about some things you can do to help counter this and make society just a little bit better. Making the World a Better Place On the other hand, when a bunch of Primal minds gather, they form an Echo Chamber, a cult. It’s a place where you have to believe everything the Echo Chamber says, and you should repeat it as well. Differing opinions are not accepted, and anyone criticizing the cult will be canceled. The group’s members only care about being right and will go to great and nasty lengths to get what they want. High-rungness seems to be losing its grip on our society’s thinking, its norms, its behavior … The high-rung immune system is the product of a culture of open discourse, debate, and moral consistency—and the willingness of its members to stand up for that culture in the face of inevitable attempts, from inside and out, to shut it down.”