Tim Urban’s Book and the Feeling of Home
A reflection on Tim Urban’s Book “what’s our problem?”
Psychological analysis meets the thrash of current American politics. ‘What’s our problem’ is one of my favourite books to date!
As a university student in the States, I feel a lot of friction in the way that politics, opinions and close-mindedness presents itself. Sometimes it’s scary to challenge a subjective opinion or consider the counter argument because, as Tim puts it, “Medieval-style public shaming is suddenly back in fashion.”
I like logic. I like moral consistency. I like complex systems and understanding incentives. I think this is how we can create sustainable change.
However, it feels like young people spend their energy discrediting systems and oversimplifying the vision/solution. Embedded in this is so much hypocrisy. Like, “slandering capitalism” from your iPhone?
“A country founded on free speech was suddenly cracking down on people for having the wrong ideas.”
Psychological Hierarchy
The book applies psychological consepts like the higher mind and the primitive mind and adds another axis to the popular left vs right political spectrum.
Basically, there are “higher rung” liberals and conservatives and “lower rung” ones.
On the lowest rung of our psychology, we use our ancient brain and end up in “unconcievable land.” Where confirmation biases and cognitive dissonance take the lead.
“Unconvinceable Land is a world of green grass, blue sky, and a bunch of people whose beliefs can’t be swayed by any amount of evidence. When you end up here, it means you’ve become a disciple of some line of thinking — a religion, a political ideology, the dogma of a subculture. Either way, your intellectual integrity has taken a backseat to intellectual loyalty.”
We can get here because the brain is excellent at fabricating reality:
“If someone really wants to believe something — that the Earth is flat, that 9/11 was orchestrated by Americans, that the CIA is after them — the human brain will find a way to make that belief seem perfectly clear and irrefutable.”
This book made me feel at home. Like, if I taked with Tim, I could say exactly what my frameworks were, and they’d be taken in with understanding. Not with certainty. But with the potential for iteration.
This is something I thought I’d find in university. People and their unstoppable love for learning. Instead, many people result to their love of being right at all costs.
Part of the reason I wanted to collect some favourite or thought-provoking quotes from the book is to practice appreciating logical, thoughtful and nuanced quotes.
“Political Disney Land”
As a non-American, I was startled by the political atmosphere… perfectly encapsulated by this quote:
“In the U.S., many of us are addicted to a trashy reality show I call The Real Politicians of Washington D.C… Politicians who act like children are great TV, which incentivizes the media to give them more airtime, which helps those politicians win elections, which encourages more of the same behavior.”
In general, I’ve never liked cartoons or disney. I’ve never been nor do I plan on going to Disneyland. My 6-year-old self liked Property Brothers, Love it or List it and CP24 because these showed the complicated elements of real estate, economics and countries. Yes I was a lame 6-year-old.
Nuance
Like any first-generation immigrant, I am no stranger to nuance, contradictions and cultural clash. In fact, I’ve grown to appreciate it and to enjoy the process of combing through ambiguity.
I simultaneously believe in gay marriage, bodily autonomy, women’s empowerment AND the powers of business, economic incentives and high-risk innovation. But in the world of what Tim called Social Justice Fundamentalism (SJF), these beliefs are on opposite ends of a moral spectrum and cancel out. I.e., they are invalid.
Here’s how he put it:
“High-rung thinking values nuance, seeing complex topics in shades of gray. But SJF tends to simplify a messy gray world into binary 1s and 0s: white/POC, privileged/oppressed, colonizer/colonized, racist/antiracist. It’s the kind of digital thinking characteristic of Political Disney World narratives.
High-rung thinking is data-driven, working off the idea that strong beliefs must be capable of being supported or falsified by evidence. But SJF’s vague, all-encompassing claims (e.g., “All members of society are socialized to participate in the system of racism”) are neither provable nor falsifiable — yet the SJF narrative is utterly certain in its worldview. This makes SJF a matter of faith more than science.”
It’s confusing to want to support necessary reforms (e.g., racial, gender and sexual equality), in a productive, sustainable, and integrated way, but to be able to have such little discourse with people who also want the same outcomes (but only their way). It’s the equivalent of a stubborn 3 year old wanting candy.
An example:
Tech mogul Peter Thiel made a speech at Donald Trump’s 2016 convention, saying: “I am proud to be gay. I am proud to be a Republican. But most of all I am proud to be an American.” In response to Thiel’s open conservatism, Advocate, a gay magazine, published an article called “Peter Thiel Shows Us There’s a Difference between Gay Sex and Gay” that argued, “By the logic of gay liberation, Thiel is an example of a man who has sex with other men, but not a gay man. Because he does not embrace the struggle of people to embrace their distinctive identity.”
Whether or not Peter Thiel and I align on the same politics, I can atleast entirely respect his identity and beliefs without calling them illegitimate. To collaborate and build a better future, I believe we have to respect people and work to find a middle ground (rather than just cancelling them out).
Idea Supremacy
^ the concept that some unproven ideas are superior, with no willingness for eleboration or alteration.
“It’s only the idea supremacist on campus who says, “No one on campus is allowed to express ideas I find reprehensible, whether I’m in the room or not.” Which is another way of saying, “No one on campus is allowed to hear ideas that I find reprehensible.” “
“In 2021, a planned lecture at MIT by geophysicist Dorian Abbot was canceled by the school following outrage on social media over the fact that Abbot had published a Newsweek op-ed critical of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.”
“The science and business worlds can advance quickly because bad ideas fail quickly. Political Echo Chambers (aka political golems) allow bad ideas to live on for longer than they would in a more typical marketplace.”
While my mind is not completely opinionated here, my hunch is that I value domain-specific meritocracy. For example, I don’t really care about my doctor’s poltical beliefs or social decisions, as long as he has good domain-specific knowledge. If he has political beliefs I disagree with but can teach me a whole lot about antibiotic resistance, I will still listen.
The book was filled with examples, and with all of them, I felt similarily: I can always learn something from someone’s story.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Black woman born in one of the most oppressive patriarchal societies in the world, was a child victim of female genital mutilation in Somalia. After fleeing a forced marriage to her cousin, she was granted asylum in the Netherlands, later becoming a member of the Dutch parliament and a prominent feminist. Her invitation to speak at Brandeis was canceled because the particular patriarchy she criticized was Islamism.
Primitive Mind Playground
This example of politics undermining the processes of science had me feeling absolutely gutted. As much as I want to serve people, I am a science lover at heart. And this example, frankly, made me scared.
They wrote a handful of bogus academic papers — papers that intentionally used shoddy methodology, cited ridiculous evidence, and drew inane conclusions (but conclusions that aligned perfectly with SJF) — and they submitted them (using pseudonyms) to prominent social-justice-focused journals. Seven were accepted for publication.
Essential to an environment of good science is an environment of learning or forgiveness:
“Liberal society would treat an incident like that as a teaching moment and move on. But in SJF, bad behavior in the past renders someone a villain today, deserving of severe punishment.”
“From every angle, SJF is a complete and utter departure from open-minded progressivism. It is highly authoritarian, laying down rules about how to speak, how to think, how to teach, how to hire.”
