Sensemaking
We used to be told what to think about the world. But most people barely relate to religion any longer and now, the world being the way it is, even science is failing to keep up.
The anchor is missing. What to hold on?
Expanding on our core theses
1. We live in the era of collapsing intellectual hierarchies and corrupted data, and accessing true knowledge requires intellectual integrity. We all know the problems. We all seek for truth. Without intellectual integrity it is impossible to find. So, what is intellectual integrity? It seems to be easier to explain by explaining what usually prevents it:
2. The four horsemen of apocalyptic stupidity are emotional immaturity, semantic collapse, inability to extrapolate and dull-mindedness.
- Emotional immaturity refers to lack of self-awareness and cognitive empathy, and mixing up “what I want” and “what is true” without realising it.
- Semantic collapse refers to conversations that are fruitless and go in circles because the terms and concepts used mean vastly different things to different people.
- Inability to extrapolate refers to reduced use of simple, logical pattern recognition to reach obvious conclusions or useful estimates based on known facts.
- Dull-mindedness refers to avoiding personal agency by staying stagnant, and lack of intellectual curiosity due to a hidden fear of cognitive dissonances
If you want to read more about the four horsemen, check out our blog post.
3. True knowledge is only ever internal. However, since our incarnated selves share a sufficiently similar experiences of reality, other people and external sources can offer guidance and mentorship. This involves comprehending that different people may conceptualise the same knowledge differently and learning to recognise the truth of its core pattern.
4. Knowing how to balance holding internal authority and accepting external insight with neuroplasticity is an absolute requirement in today’s world – and can be learned. This changes the entire approach to what knowledge even is, in essence. Information is fuzzy data, everything needs to be assessed and validated. The obstacle to learning how to navigate this isn’t cognitive, it’s emotional.
5. Insight from science should always be incorporated diligently, yet contextualized through its own lens. It provides the most reliable information society can produce, and should never be abandoned.
Conclusion: how to think
There is no simple answer beyond “with integrity.” The human being is a system, and when we get upset, our prefrontal cortex gets hijacked very easily by our limbic system. That reduces intelligence. Laser-sharp logic is certainly necessary for anyone seeking true knowledge, but without integrity it is worthless.
