I just listened to a talk by Scott Galloway (this one) and it was striking to me because half of the talk was clear and I found myself nodding in agreement. And then there’s the other half where I disagreed with quite strongly. This is unusual in our radically non-intersectional echo chambers: we typically either completely agree or completely disagree. In the all encompassing political sphere, someone said, “tell me your stance on gun control and I’ll tell you your stance on abortion.”
Politics aside, the point is that beliefs are generated based on models of the world. There are a small number of very in-fashion models of the world today and the fashionable thing to do is to generate beliefs from your (political) models. When there’s only a couple of very popular models out there it’s easy to figure out all of the derived views that people will hold.
Unfortunately, I don’t think most people actually hold a model of the world. I think most people proxy out this sort of hard and difficult work to more famous, more intelligent people which includes, to the average person - God forbid! - cable news pundits.
It’s peculiar and uncomfortable to encounter someone with a mix of similar and different beliefs, but it’s also the most interesting. These people hold a totally different model of the world and it leads them to similar conclusions in some cases and different ones in others. We tend to think someone who differs across the board is very different from us. But they have the same model and just sit on the other side. Someone who is similar in some aspects and different in others is even more interesting. It’s as if their perspective is orthogonal to yours and it helps you see where your model of the world is incomplete (or where their model is).
On the other hand, this is definitely true:
It's a fallacy that people change due to "ideas"—as if you just need to get the right book into someone's hands, the right "mental model", and viola! The change starts to happen.
— Luke Burgis (@lukeburgis) May 6, 2024
Change is the result of a process, and an idea is only one small part of that process.
In an…
I am in the small subset of people that is taken first by ideas. He’s exactly right - in our connected world processes rule. Emotions and empathy are one of the most powerful processes that capture change.
If you want to understand beliefs and how they relate to each other, it’s important to understand ideas. If you want to change beliefs and understand how they work together, understand emotion and status.
And pay close attention to those with orthogonal models.