#360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics | Lex Fridman Podcast

The 20th century was the best century yet across every metric that matters  It also had the biggest wars in history, the biggest genocide in history, the biggest existential threat yet with nuclear weapons, the biggest economic crash in history, etc.

If you approach a complex issue with nuance, you will likely be attacked by both sides of the low-rung thinking political spectrum 

Media companies in the past had to actually balance neutrality and accuracy or they would lose their viewership to their competitors 

The media is not penalized for lying; corporate media journalists are incentivized to lie because they are rewarded with clicks and not held accountable by their team for lying

If human history were a 1,000-page book, then the hunter-gatherer period would be the first 950 pages 

Criticism culture attacks the idea while cancel culture attacks the person

Leadership is the ability to move something in a direction that the cultural forces are not already taking things 

Ideologies quickly become religions to their followers, at which point the solutions proposed by such ideologies can no longer be challenged 

How you arrived at what you think is more important than what you think

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• Different parts of the brain light up when political beliefs are challenged versus when non-political beliefs are challenged 


• The default-mode network of the brain lights up when political beliefs are challenged


• Our primitive mind comes pre-programmed to care a lot about politics


• Right now, tribalism has coalesced around politics more than anyt