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

Oppression has been a regular feature of human societies since the dawn of time, and in the Power Games, the primary tool to fight oppression has been violence. Free speech offers a better way. The rich are protected and empowered by their money, the elite by their connections, the majority by their vote, while minority views often end up left out.

Internet algorithms are profit-maximizing mechanisms that want to spoon-feed me whatever I’m most likely to click on. This is a win-win, symbiotic relationship—until it’s not. When an algorithm is jibing with your Higher Mind, it’s your friend. When it’s luring in your Primitive Mind against your Higher Mind’s will, the relationship is parasitic.

Confirmation bias is 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.

Presenting an inaccurate version of reality breeds misplaced anger and division and hurts our ability to move toward important goals—all in the name of editing the reality show to be more entertaining with crisper, juicier storylines. The

We think of censorship as control over what people can say. But the concept of emergence reminds us that human giants only “think” by way of conversation—which means that censorship is really control over what the giant can think. For a giant, censorship is mind control.

A healthy marketplace of ideas (or research institution) has two basic rules: 1) all ideas are free to be expressed, and 2) all ideas may be criticized. To make it to the biggest stages, ideas have to be persuasive enough win people over and sound enough to survive a gauntlet of criticism.

There’s no shortage of studies showing that politics tends to turn people into low-rung thinkers—and this is most pronounced in people with high levels of education.

High-rung politics relies on a shared sense of reality—a shared understanding of What Is. In Political Disney World, the beliefs and viewpoints of people in different tribes are premised on entirely different versions of reality.

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