Sincere thinking
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Essentialist thinking is not innocent
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We do not see first and then define; we define first and then see.
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We think we see reality objectively; our opinions simply reflect apparent facts. In reality, an opinion is mainly a codified version of the facts. Our code largely determines which facts we will see and in what light. One of the most compelling examples is the difficulty of distinguishing people's faces from those of a different-coloured community. Our stereotypical images prevent us from making distinctions and seeing personalities. On a societal level, decades of political policies create social structures that produce tendencies that are difficult to break, even if we want to.
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Future events are deeply rooted in past circumstances.
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In times of moral panic and anxiety, it is human to want to control time, to explain the end or the beginning of something. When our present feels incoherent, we try to break out of history, even though we are always in the middle of it. When anxiety takes hold, our cognitive capacities shrink. As a result, the ‘not knowing’ becomes more significant, and the possible ways out become obscured. The need to surrender to someone who proclaims that he ‘does know’ becomes enormous.
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Idealism
Plato’s teaching that abstract ideas are more real than physical objects influenced later idealist thinkers. In the 17th century, George Berkely wrote “Esse est percipi,” “Perception is truth.” Idealism and liberalism often embody an optimistic view of human nature and its potential for progress. Idealists believe in the power of ideas and mental constructs to shape reality. At the same time, liberals tend to believe in the ability of individuals and societies to improve through reason and reform.
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Idealism is the precursor to essentialism.
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Essentialism
Essentialism holds that people and things have natural and essential characteristics that are inherent and unchangeable.
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In this view, people have a set of characteristics that are necessary for their identity and functioning and distinguish them from others. These characteristics are permanent, unchangeable, eternal, and metaphysical in nature. They do not need relationships to develop.
The next step is the four core criteria of essentialist thinking:
- there is a unique causal mechanism that runs from essence to fulfilment
- everyone will fulfil their predetermined path of development
- one’s essence cannot be removed despite changing superficial outward features. Observable changes in the features of one’s entity are not significant enough to change the essence
- people may share common features but can also be fundamentally different. No matter how similar two people may be, they differ primarily in their essence
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This line of thought is in stark contrast to Darwinian thinking that humans are one and the same species and need each other to develop.
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The ‘survival of the fittest’ has no value if that ‘fitness’ is not passed on to the next generation. When the ‘fittest’ dies without strengthening the species, there is no fittest in retrospect.
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The concept of economy/trade is closely related to ‘negotiating’. The question arises whether we approach trade as equals or unequal. My experience shows that we still have difficulty understanding and acting in the value chain. Yet since “I, Pencil—My Family Tree as told to Leonard E. Read,” we have known how our prosperity is created by wandering around the world. It was precisely influential liberal economists, particularly Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, who developed into globalists. They saw the supranational as a space where international institutions could be built and authorized to protect markets, economic freedom and prosperity from nation-states.
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Alone you are nothing.
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The call for ‘simplification’ is loud. Hasn’t this concept been eroded too much by the echo chambers in which it has been resounding for some time? ‘The Great Simplification’ by Nate Hagens is sometimes mentioned in this context. In the introduction to his website, he writes: This is a podcast that explores the systems science that underlies the human condition. Topics of discussion will include human behaviour, monetary/economic systems, energy, ecology, geopolitics and the environment. Guests will consist of a wide range of scientists, leaders, activists, thinkers and doers. This thinking stays far from simplification, oversimplification, idealism, and essentialism.
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Complexity
A century ago, Walter Lippmann asked a simple question: The environment seems complex, and man's political capacity is limited. Can we bridge both?
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Our human minds often revert to linear thinking of simple cause-and-effect reasoning. Instead, living in a complex system requires us to embrace uncertainty, which is opposed to essentialist thinking. In her book Patterns of Culture, anthropologist Ruth Benedict argues that each part of a social system is dependent on the other parts. These systems are nonlinear, but most importantly, the behaviour of the parts simply depends on the behaviour of the whole. Our human societies are collective and coupled. Collective means that our combined behaviour produces effects throughout society. Coupled means that our perceptions and behaviour are dependent on the perceptions and behaviour of others and on the social and economic structures that we collectively build. Our inability to predict our future does not preclude the possibility of safety and quality of life. After all, nature is full of collective, coupled systems with the same nonlinear properties. But we make things difficult for ourselves with a superficial essentialist understanding of cause and effect and the assumption that the past contains the best information about the future. This kind of 'backwards-looking' prediction, with a narrow focus on the last 'bad' event, makes us vulnerable.
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The challenge is and remains to improve the quality of your information. We are not perfect information processors. We make mistakes and have a partial, incomplete view of the world.
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We sometimes get too overwhelmed by the whole, which causes us to see too little of the system in what seems complex. But if you embrace this uncertainty as a fact of life, you can draw inspiration from ‘complex systems’. You can start designing robustly, focusing on mechanisms that maintain functionality in changing or uncertain environments. You can also look for what makes your organisation intelligent. This happens in two phases: the accumulation phase, in which individuals gather information about how the world works, and the aggregation phase, in which that information is combined. This allows you to adapt strategically. Otherwise, the context automatically does your adaptation for you.
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Constructivism, the road to innovation and renewal
As humans, we are very good at perceiving patterns in our environment. Because of this, we quickly tend to think that these patterns shape our reality. However, it is principles that generate these patterns and thereby shape our physical and cultural world.
Constructivism is the theory that says you construct knowledge rather than just passively take in information.
Constructivism best describes how we as humans deal with reality. It makes consciousness personal, but relative.
- At the most fundamental level, Carlo Rovelli shows that our encounter with reality is relational
- Karl Friston shows us how our brains predict this encounter and adapt according to the feedback
- Lisa Feldman Barrett explains to us how we construct our worldview but experience it as innate
As you experience the world and reflect upon those experiences, you build your own representations and incorporate new information into pre-existing knowledge. (Bayes Theorem).
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Below I share with you the principles that I believe shape the world we live in. I hope they can inspire you.
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Physical world
- Relationship
- Relationships are present in every aspect of the physical world. We usually describe this in equilibrium equations like A = B, where A and B can look quite different in form and exchange parts as long as A' = B'.
- Entropy
- In the never-ending process of increasing entropy from low to high, energy that can do work is created as part of the process; the rest becomes unusable as high entropy. In an eternally expanding universe, the clustering of matter - a necessary condition for the origin of life - is only possible if it also increases entropy.
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Systems
- Context
- The continuous process of small changes, the creation of systems, the accumulation of these systems and the cooperation of systems, and so on, created the context in which we now live.
- Path dependency
- Path dependence refers to the influence of past situations (in culture - decisions) on future (in culture - societal) processes and outcomes, shaping (in culture - strategies) adaptation processes and hindering the implementation of alternative solutions.
- Downward hierarchy
- All processes at the lower level of a hierarchy are restrained by and act in conformity to the laws of the higher level.
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Biological world
- Complex Adaptive Systems
- The environment constantly changes through entropy, and biological systems, among other systems, must continuously adapt by establishing exchanges with their environment.
- Fitness
- Biological systems fight entropy by gradually adapting to their environment until they fit perfectly. In reality this is a never ending process.
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Humanity
- Biology first
- Path dependence and downward hierarchy determine biology's supremacy in humanity. This implies the acceptance of the theory of evolution, which states that the species precedes the individual.
- Utility
- The human system goes for utility, not truth (about reality). Many think the opposite is true, but that is a logical error. It is not because it is well-intentioned that it is also good.
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Consciousness
- Cultural context
- Cultural context is the primary limiter of conscious life because it makes biology first and utility real.
- Interests
- Context makes the human peer group - and the culture that flows from it - of the utmost importance. Anything significant for survival is essential. On a personal level, fear/loss aversion is the prime motivator because it protects us from premature (before we can reproduce) death.
- Values
- Values are - only - the criteria we scan our context and test against our interests. As a result, interests and values are deeply intertwined and inseparable in our brain systems.
- Goals
- Evolution took care of the two unity interests and values to make the passing on of genes possible. Yet this was not enough just because the environment can destroy the species as a whole (think of the dinosaurs). The solution to this is to grant - through evolution - individuals of the species agency, allowing them to act independently in a goal-oriented manner. Diversity of action greatly reduces the possibility of total extinction.
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Culture
- Resources
- Human culture is based on the resources it can employ.
- Cultural entropy
- Culture continually tries to extract additional energy from sources of low entropy, ignoring the released high entropy.
- Society
- Human culture builds societies to manage the complex distribution of energy.
- Money
- Money is the 'frozen form' of the surplus energy that a culture generates.
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Innovation
The Wright brothers invented the aeroplane together, but that does not mean they always thought the same. It was precisely through argument and even argument that they achieved results. Their father, Milton Wright, taught them how to argue productively. After dinner, Milton would introduce a topic and instruct the boys to debate it as vigorously as possible without disrespecting the other. No truth is flawless, and no error can be said without an element of truth. The honest argument is merely a process of mutually plucking the beams and splinters from each other's eyes so that both can see clearly. Today, we are in danger of losing touch with this principle. I continue to fight for the idea that our current view of our world as complex is (only) a construct of our society. The more we discover what the world looks like, the harder it becomes for humans to understand and fathom this. We find it increasingly difficult to accept that our world is built on probability principles. However, the path to essentialist thinking is not the solution to this. Innovative thinking is. I want to refer back to the beginning of this article. Science tells us that all human thinking begins with action. If that action is directed backwards, little will change. The irony here is that, as humans, we can only see what has already happened. Looking ahead 'is done via completely different 'senses', inspiration, imagination and, above all, cooperation.
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The Possibility of Being Wrong
Humans have an instinctive aversion to the possibility of being wrong. We are strongly inclined to look for evidence that confirms our beliefs rather than for ways to refute them. This error has been given a catchy name – confirmation bias – and has become one of the most proven findings in psychology. Armed with a hypothesis, we bend reality around that hypothesis and cling to our opinions even when there is evidence to the contrary. If I believe the world is going to hell, I will only notice the bad news and filter out the good. It can be tempting to avoid open debate altogether, but this robs us of a powerful tool for inquiry. It is better to debate rigorously, politely, emotionally detached, and rationally.
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How to Argue
It is an elegant paradox: to arrive at rational conclusions, some group members must engage in some irrational reasoning. There is no point in having a group of smart people around a table if all they do is nod. Even if it is wrong, a firmly held belief can still be productive at the group level. When everyone feels compelled to generate arguments, the weakest arguments are rejected while the strongest survive, supported by more evidence and better reasons. The result is a more profound and more rigorous process of reasoning than any one person could ever have done alone.
- The first condition for this, of course, is to disagree openly. Group members must bring their opinions and insights to the table rather than simply adopting those they like best. The more diverse the pool of reasons and information, the more likely persuasive arguments will emerge.
- A second condition is allowing the debate to become passionate without becoming a shouting match. Good listening can be a function of close and respectful personal relationships.
- Third, the group members must share a common goal. If each member defends only their position or tries to outsmart everyone else, weaker arguments will not be eliminated, and the group will not move forward.
We must show our whole, passionate, biased selves and remember that our ultimate responsibility lies with the group.
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Ultimately, it is not important that I am right but that WE are right.
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