Harnessing the Power of Ideas
- Hector Sierra
- Mar 29, 2023
- 9 min read
Updated: Apr 20, 2023
There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world,
and that is an idea whose time has come.
Victor Hugo
Why we all need to renew our way of seeing and understanding the world, society and ourselves. How you can harness the power of ides to make sense of the modern world. How you can make the best use of this blog.
A powerful idea, as Victor Hugo well knew, can have a deep impact on the way we think and act in the world. I also believe, however, in the cumulative power of ideas: a set of inter-connected, mutually reinforcing ideas can change the way we see the world, society and ourselves. That is, they can change our view of the world or worldview.
But why should you change your worldview? To be sure, we all have a worldview. For most people, however, it remains hidden, beyond their conscious awareness. Still, it guides their lives, even though it is vague or incoherent. Even if you have a well-defined, coherent worldview, this blog offers an opportunity to reflect on the way you see the world, society, and yourself. The ideas I will be discussing here may make you rethink some beliefs and reinforce others but, I hope, they will also help you develop the cognitive tools and way of thinking that can better prepare you for the challenges of the new millennium.
As the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, environmental collapse, warmongering autocrats, and rampant disinformation exemplify, humanity faces many existential threats. Overcoming them, and hence our survival as a species, hinge on our collective ability to develop new environmentally friendly, sustainable technologies and, more critically, to cooperate and work together across nationalities, religions, and races. We are all impacted by deadly viruses, climate change, and global wars, so we can no longer ignore what happens outside our borders.
Our highly polarized and dysfunctional society exemplifies the challenges of reaching this level of cooperation. Many people in society, wherever you live, favor individualism and nationalism over international cooperation and participation; they trust their own kind, their “in-group,” and distrust people different from them, the “out-group.” We have the technological prowess to conquer Mars but not the ability to get along with our fellow citizens. Worse, many Americans and citizens from other democratic countries feel that their safety and individual rights are no longer protected, and hence democracy is broken.
Is better education the answer? While improving the quality of our educational system is necessary to overcome the most critical global and national problems, it is not sufficient. The actions of many Ivy League-trained public officials, lawyers, and industrialists, for example, directly or indirectly contributed to the events culminating in the January 6, 2021, insurrection, undermining trust in our democratic institutions. Also, higher education does not seem to make people more ethical, as exemplified by the recent cases of fraud by high-tech billionaires, or wiser, as exemplified by another billionaire with messianic tendencies but bad judgment.
Beyond what a traditional education can offer, we need to transform the way we see the world and our place in it. This entails discarding mistaken beliefs and outdated values and developing a new way of thinking. In other words, we need to reassess our own view of the world, and adopt one better suited for the complexities and challenges of the modern era.
This is, of course, easier said than done. We all suffer from confirmation bias: we tend to process information by looking for, or interpreting, information that is consistent with our existing beliefs. That is, with the views we already have about the world. Even if these views are leading us to make bad decisions in life, we will be reluctant to abandon them unless we are enticed by the opportunity of developing better ones. This is precisely what I hope to accomplish here.
An enhanced toolbox of mental models
Our image of the world, or worldview, is comprised of “mental models”. In essence, they are how we understand the world. They are personal, internal representations of external reality that we use to interact with the world around us; they shape what we think as well as the connections and opportunities that we see. We construct mental models based on our unique life experiences, perceptions, and understandings of the world, although we are not fully conscious of them. They also provide the mechanism through which new information is filtered and stored.[1] In some sense, we can think of mental models as the “pixels” of our image or view of the world.
When making decisions we all draw from our toolbox of mental models. In fact, the quality of our thinking is proportional to the models in our head and their usefulness in the situation at hand. The more models you have – the more “pixels” in your toolbox – the better the resolution and quality of your image of the real world. In practice, though, most of us use a few models from our toolbox based on our personal preferences, training, and experience.
Take, for instance, the policies implemented early in the coronavirus pandemic to control the spread of infections such as lockdowns and facemask mandates. A lawyer may focus on the legal implications; an epidemiologist sees the effect of these measures on the rate of infections; an economist is concerned with its economic impact; a politician on the political impact, and so on. None are wrong, but neither are any of them able to describe the full scope of the pandemic. Sharing knowledge, or learning the basics of other disciplines, would lead to a more well-rounded understanding that would allow for better decisions about managing viral infections. And the same concept applies to any given situation we face in life.
What about those who think that the pandemic is a hoax, that there is no need for these measures? This still works as a mental model, though leading to bad or even deadly outcomes. Some mental models and beliefs can give you a distorted view of reality. It is equally important to understand why these maladaptive mental models are so pervasive in our society. This is a critical issue that I will address in several of the ideas in the blog.
The ideas discussed here are meant to challenge the core mental models of our society and I invite you to question them for yourself. For example, we will look at the idea: “The purpose of the human brain is to argue not to reason.” While this may be controversial for some, it is supported by extensive research. Still, accepting this idea in its full meaning and consequences requires that we develop new mental models to understand how the mind works. Just a few decades ago, scientists believed that the human brain was special, somehow escaping the forces of natural selection. Yet we now have a better understanding of its complexity, such as the fact that most of our actions are driven by instinct and emotion, not reasoning or logic (although we routinely use reasoning ex-post to justify our beliefs and actions).
Arguably, we have seen this in our Supreme Court justices, some of which love to proclaim impartiality and objectivity when making legal decisions. Yet the evidence shows that when it comes to controversial issues such as abortion, gun ownership, and separation of church and state, the decisions of some of the judges are not based on legal precedent, new information or change in attitudes, but solely on ideology. The fact that many people are not so good at reasoning also helps to explain why millions of people, including some highly educated and seemingly intelligent, believe in conspiracies such as QAnon.
It is critical that we understand how our mind works if we want to overcome or mitigate its shortcomings and limitations. The shortcuts that allow us to make complex real-life decisions also introduce biases that distort our thinking. We distrust “strangers” and favor our own kind. We have limited willpower, which means we must make the best use of it. These features of the mind can be traced to our evolutionary history, which is why we need to understand the mechanisms of natural selection that have shaped our way of thinking. All these should be part of our mental model toolbox if we want to improve our decision-making, especially in key areas such as political and moral choices, work, and relationships.
The ideas discussed in this blog
You will not find here self-help recipes for life or ready-made answers – I want to compel you to reflect on your own beliefs and to see the world through a different lens. As I discuss in the Roadmap section, people’s worldviews have, or should have, a hierarchical structure. In this section (which you can reach by clicking here), I describe six hierarchical levels, which provide a roadmap that will guide the discussion in the blog. The levels are Origins, Human Nature, Morality, Cognition, Behavior and Relations (you can click on each level to read about it.)
Each week I will discuss three ideas for each one of these levels (18 in total). I have selected the ideas with the aim of “deconstructing” people’s worldviews. By the same token, the same ideas can be used to “reconstruct” your worldview, hopefully on a more solid foundation.
At the end of each idea, I provide what I believe are the main lessons and how the idea itself has impacted my own thinking. Of course, you may derive different opinions and I’d love to learn what they are. The ideas are self-contained in that they hold the information you need to make sense of the topics covered. However, I provide cross-references between ideas to show how they “build each other up”.
Ideas on Origins (click on a selected idea):
Ideas on Human Nature (click on a selected idea):
Ideas on Morality (click on a selected idea):
Ideas on Cognition (click on a selected idea):
Ideas on Behavior (click on a selected idea):
Ideas on Relations (click on a selected idea):
Putting all the ideas together (click on this)
While I try to be as objective as possible – each idea discussed is supported by extensive evidence and research – some ideas may be controversial to some people. Avoiding contentious topics such as race and IQ, and what should be the role of religion in morality, which I discuss here, results in more harm than good. The first step to overcome the serious challenges we collectively face is to have an open mind and try to understand them. Ideally, this blog could serve as a “brave space” in which ideas could be discussed freely and critically.[2]
If you manage to read through all the ideas, and even if you do not, spend time reflecting on how, or if, the discussion has in some way influenced, changed, or reaffirmed your image and understanding of the world. Take this as an opportunity to develop something precious: your own philosophy of life. That is, a personal philosophy that you have thought through in-depth, have tested, and use regularly and explicitly for guiding your actions. It would include things like:
· how you decide what is good and what is evil
· what success means
· what your purpose in life is
· how you should treat others
· what is your role in society, etc.
I have tried to simplify things as much as possible, but life is complex, so a certain level of effort is required to understand some of the concepts discussed in the book. Yet this is not a blog for specialists, as the average college-level reader should be able to follow it. When necessary, I introduce background material or related topics in the form of sidebars that will help the reader understand the concepts in the main text (the color of the font is different in the sidebars).
I encourage the reader to consult the sources provided in the footnotes. My hope is that you undertake further learning on your own. This would be the best indicator that I have succeeded in my efforts.
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