Gurwinder

For eons, it was better to mistake mist for monsters than monsters for mist. False negatives were fatal, false positives merely embarrassing. Thus the paranoid inherited the earth, and we inherited their paranoia, so that the trait that once saved us from wolves now curses us to see them in the sky.

The more that people waste their lives with scrolling, video games, and porn, the crueler they become, for when they can’t take pride in their accomplishments, they’ll instead take pride in your failures.

Perfect.

Thread of excellent advice for cultivating critical thinking.

10 Ways to Avoid Being Fooled Mental models for discerning truth

Thanks for reading. If you wish to read more detailed explanations of how these concepts can help you avoid being fooled, you can do so in the full article here: gurwinder.substack.com/p/10-ways-to...

10. Journaling:
To practise clear thinking, practise clear writing. You only become fully aware of your beliefs when you express them, so periodically write them down. Laying your thoughts out on paper will reveal your reasoning and expose its errors, deepening your understanding.

9. Novelty Bias:
We're always chasing the latest info, but this tends to be junk whose main selling point is novelty and not quality. Instead of the new, seek info that's stood the test of time: classic literature, replicated studies, proven theorems.

8. Opinion Lock:
We find it hard to change our minds as we think it makes us look weak/stupid. So resist the urge to rush out an opinion, as once you’ve declared your stance, your ego won't easily let you switch, especially when there’s a public record of your opinion history...

7. Antiroutine:
Indoctrination requires the repetition of routine. So to avoid being brainwashed, periodically switch up your news sources so you alternate between outlets of clashing stances. The more mercurial your news consumption, the greater your resistance to manipulation.

6. Popper’s Falsifiability Principle:
We try to protect our most cherished delusions from reality. So, for each of your beliefs you should develop a clear idea of what would persuade you you're wrong. Otherwise your belief is immune to reason and it should arouse your suspicions.

5. Streetlight Effect:
The majority of the world’s info is produced for the average human, and the average human isn’t very smart. So avoid getting your info from popularity contests like top search results, “trending” algorithms, and NYT bestseller lists.

4. Wittgenstein's Ruler:
Always ask yourself, “what does the info suggest about the source of the info?” If someone says everyone he meets is an asshole, the asshole is likely him. Equally, if an article outrages you, consider that it was crafted specifically to outrage you.

3. Survivorship Bias:
The info in your feed has been selected because it’s surprising. It is a reflection not of the ordinary but the extraordinary, not of reality but of that which is uncharacteristic of reality. Remember this whenever your feed convinces you the world is crazy.

2. Munger's Iron Prescription:
To determine how well you understand a debate, try to state the opposing view as convincingly as you can. If you can't state the opposing view at least as well as the people supporting it, then you shouldn’t feel entitled to your own view.

1. Epistemic Humility:
Don't try to be right, try to be less wrong. Avoiding idiocy is easier to make a habit of than achieving genius, and by beginning from the position that you're somewhat wrong you'll become more aware of your blindspots and find it easier to change your mind.

10 WAYS TO AVOID BEING FOOLED

In 10 tweets I’ll explain 10 heuristics that will make you smarter.

Thread:

Far-leftists favor planned economies because they imagine themselves as the planners.

Far-rightists favor oligarchy because they imagine themselves as the oligarchs.

Both perspectives stem from main character syndrome.

Contentment is determined less by experience than by the degree to which experience matches expectations. Happiness, then, is not about acquiring the big things but learning to appreciate the small ones.

We ignore our biggest killers mostly because they don’t have faces.

Yuval Noah Harari:

If you follow someone then later unfollow them, they’ll resent you much more than if you refused to follow them at all. This is partly explained by the black sheep effect, a robust finding that people view "betrayal" by perceived allies as worse than that by everyone else.

“The confidence people have in their beliefs is not a measure of the quality of evidence but of the coherence of the story that the mind has managed to construct.”

—Daniel Kahneman

You keep checking your phone, refreshing your feed, chasing the news, because your brain thinks novelty signifies quality. But it doesn’t. Fresh shit is still shit.

We evolved to follow latest updates because latest updates once meant life or death, but now latest updates don’t mean life or death because most latest updates are created because we evolved to follow latest updates.

A hidden danger of lying to others is it trains you to lie to yourself.

As a prism contorts light into rainbows, so politics refracts truth into a spectrum of perspectives. And as we scour the spectrum for answers, arguing over the precise color of truth, we forget that a rainbow is merely distorted light, and all colors are but an illusion.

Whatever we get, we get used to.

This is our greatest curse. And our greatest blessing.

The best way to practise clear thinking is to practise clear writing.

Avoiding the task you know you should be doing creates more stress than just doing it. Postponing a problem extends it.

Chatbots would be much better if they generated multiple answers by default, forcing the user to compare the answers and choose the best one. This would improve the user’s agency, the model’s accuracy, and the learning rate for both.

A big reason the web is mostly slop is that people who don't think before they post are able to post at a faster rate than people who do.