AI Summary #
Here is a summary of the podcast transcription:
The host reflects on the importance of learning from history and respecting others’ perspectives, especially when they are “deluded” in their own unique way. The host quotes Will and Ariel Durant’s phrase: “Learn enough from history to bear reality patiently and respect one another’s delusions.” This means acknowledging that everyone has incomplete or incorrect views on the world, and it’s essential to approach others with empathy rather than judgment.
The host highlights three major causes of delusions:
- Personal experience: Our initial experiences shape our perceptions of reality, making us more prone to accepting information that confirms what we already believe.
- Emotional need: When we desperately want something to be true, we’re more likely to believe it. This can lead to “delusional” thinking, especially in situations where emotions are high, such as when dealing with poverty or desperation.
- Absence of perfect information: In the face of uncertainty, passion and emotion can fill the void, leading people to rely on simplistic narratives rather than nuanced understanding.
The host emphasizes that these delusions affect everyone, regardless of their intelligence or critical thinking skills. It’s essential to recognize our own biases and limitations, as well as those of others, in order to approach reality with patience, empathy, and a willingness to learn from history.
AI Transcription #
Welcome back.
As we wrap the year, just a quick short podcast today, because I want to go spend time with my family.
And I’m sure you do too.
I’ve always loved this saying, and I’ve not been able to track down who exactly said this first, but I love this saying that people don’t remember books.
They remember sentences.
I haven’t got true for a lot of content.
Movies, articles, podcasts, maybe.
People don’t remember the full body of work.
They remember a couple of sentences that were memorable, stuck with them, and maybe even changed their life.
One of those sentences that has always stuck with me and knocked me off my feet when I first read it, comes from this book written by Will and Ariel Durant called The Lessons of History.
And here’s the quote I want to share with you.
They say, quote, learn enough from history to bear reality patiently and respect one another’s delusions.
I just, I’m just going to repeat this because it’s so, it’s so powerful.
Learn enough from history to bear reality patiently and respect one another’s delusions.
I love that sentence so much, and the key here is accepting that everybody is deluded in their own unique way.
You are, I am all of us are.
And when you realize that you, the good, noble, well-meaning, even-tempered, fact-driven person that you are, you have views about how the world is going to be.
The world works that are guaranteed to be incomplete, if not completely wrong.
The takeaway here is that you should have empathy for other people, whose deluded beliefs are obvious to you, but maybe not to them.
I am such a fan of Daniel Connamens’ observation that people are much better at spotting other people’s flaws than their own.
And of course, there is a limit to respecting other people’s delusions.
Like if their delusions are directly harming or impeding other people, then you should not tolerate them.
But let me just share with you three major causes of delusions.
And when you go through this, I want you to constantly ask yourself whether you think you are exempt from these forces.
Alright, number one.
Everything in the world is as persuasive as what you have happened to experience first-hand.
The author David McGranny has a great line here, he says quote, When the truth is uncertain, our brains resolve that uncertainty without our knowledge by creating the most likely reality that they can imagine based on our prior experiences.
And look, since all of us have had massively different life experiences, what seems obvious to me might be completely bonkers to you and vice versa.
That’s true for everybody.
Most debates, particularly for social topics, are not actually debates.
They’re not people disagreeing with each other.
Most of the time they are two people with different life experiences who are just talking over each other.
And I think this can even occur within the same person.
Of course, there are some things that I fiercely believed at age 20 that I now know are completely wrong.
And I’m sure that will occur at age 60 when I look back at things that I believe today and shake my head.
Everybody goes through that.
Everybody is just trying to make sense of the world through the lens of their own experience.
And as those experiences grow, as you go through life, everybody’s lens tends to focus on a slightly different version of the truth of how the world works.
But that is especially true for social topics like politics and religion and investing.
Everyone is just trying to use their own experiences to come up with a model of how the world works.
And since our experiences are so different, what seems shockingly true to me might seem like a delusion to you.
Number two, your willingness to believe something is influenced by how much you want and need it to be true.
If you tell me that you found an easy way to double my money in a week, I’m not going to believe you.
I’m just going to assume you’re trying to trick me.
But if I desperately owed somebody money next month that I don’t have today, I might listen to you.
And if my children were starving and my only hope for their survival was doubling my money next week, I would hang on your every word.
How much you need something to be true influences your willingness to believe that it is true.
The majority of lottery tickets in the United States are purchased by the lowest income Americans.
And I have a theory about why this is the lowest income Americans might overestimate their odds of winning because when you feel trapped in some sense of poverty, stricken stagnation, you desperately need to believe that you can buy a ticket out of your situation in order to maintain a certain level of functioning optimism to get you through the day.
And that is a stark example.
But those same forces influences the beliefs of everybody.
Me, you, all of us.
There’s a thing in psychology called depressive realism, which is the idea that depressed people make more accurate predictions of the world because they are more realistic about how fragile and competitive and ruthless life can be.
But those depressed people are a minority.
Most of us cling to the opposite, which is carrying around comforting delusions, appealing fictions that guide our beliefs because they feel so good to hold.
There are a lot of decisions in life that are statistically wrong, but they support the incentives of the person who is making them.
Which is always a good thing to remember when you are analyzing the predictions that you use to justify your own actions.
Here’s another quote from David McGranny that fits so well here.
He says quote, until we know we are wrong, being wrong feels exactly like being right.
All right, number three.
When there is an absence of perfect information, emotion and passion and tribal identity will fill the void.
Astrophysicist Gregory Benford coined this phrase, this law called Benford’s Law of Controversy.
And it says that passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information that is available.
The less actual facts and information that you have, the more that passion and emotion will take its place.
I think this occurs because uncertainty is so painful to accept.
It is far more comfortable to form a complete narrative about how things work.
And in the quest to leave no question unanswered, emotions will gladly fill the holes left by a lack of information and facts.
But of course the problem with emotion and passion is that they tend to be black or white, with no room for the nuance it is required to understand most topics in the world.
So when you are relying on emotion and passion, you get a false sense of confidence.
And it’s a false sense of confidence that is disguised as absolute truth.
Now look, some people are more susceptible than others.
But no one is exempt from these three things.
And what is exempt from their own little delusions in life?
So as we finish up this year, of course another year filled with controversy and confusion and disagreement and passion as all years are, let’s focus more on the Durant’s timeless wisdom.
Learn to bear reality patiently and respect one another’s delusions.
I hope you enjoyed the holidays.
We’ll see you again in a couple weeks next year.
Thanks again.