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

An Idea Lab is an environment of collaborative high-rung thinking. People in an Idea Lab see one another as experimenters and their ideas as experiments. Idea Labs value independent thinking and viewpoint diversity. This combination leads to the richest and most interesting conversations and maximizes the scope of group discussions.

That’s why perhaps the most important skill of a skilled thinker is knowing when to trust.

People in an Idea Lab don’t usually take arguments personally because Idea Lab culture is built around the core notion that people and ideas are separate things. People are meant to be respected, ideas are meant to be batted around and picked apart. Perhaps most importantly, an Idea Lab helps its members stay high up on the Ladder. No one thinks li

This concept—a bunch of smaller things joining together to form a giant that can function as more than the sum of its parts—is called emergence.

Technology is a multiplier of both good and bad. More technology means better good times, but it also means badder bad times.

People in an Idea Lab don’t usually take arguments personally because Idea Lab culture is built around the core notion that people and ideas are separate things. People are meant to be respected, ideas are meant to be batted around and picked apart.

An Echo Chamber can be the product of a bunch of people who all hold certain ideas to be sacred. Other times, it can be the product of one or a few “intellectual bullies” who everyone else is scared to defy. Even in the smallest group—a married couple, say—if one person knows that it’s never worth the fight to challenge their spouse’s strongly held

the “motte-and-bailey” fallacy6—which can be used as a defensive tactic. The name comes from a type of two-part medieval fortification common in Northern Europe between the 10th and 13th centuries. It looked something like this: The bailey was an area of land that was desirable and economically productive to live on but vulnerable to attack and har

The four thinking rungs are all distinct, but they fall into two broad categories: high-rung thinking (Scientist and Sports Fan) and low-rung thinking (Attorney and Zealot). High-rung thinking is independent thinking, leaving you free to revise your ideas or even discard them altogether. But when there’s no amount of evidence that will change your

People in an Idea Lab don’t usually take arguments personally because Idea Lab culture is built around the core notion that people and ideas are separate things. People are meant to be respected, ideas are meant to be batted around and picked apart.