Embrace Contradictory Ideas To Reach New Intellectual Heights – Eric Weinstein

Updated on

We know that “humans only use 10% of their brains” is a myth, but there might be a function of your mind that you’re neglecting to use: its sandboxes. Eric Weinstein borrows this term from computer science to explain the potential of experimental thinking. A sandbox in computing is a secured place where untrusted software can run without controlling the computer or accessing its vital resources. Security specialists, for example, use sandboxes to analyze how malware behaves. Once they see and understand how it works, they can then devise a strategy to defeat it, and strengthen their own system to prevent it from getting in again.

Your mind has sandboxes for the same purpose: a safe space to metaphorically play with dangerous or seemingly irrational ideas that are inconsistent with your worldview. Without the ability to fully understand these problems, we cannot hope to solve them or react appropriately. Eric Weinstein uses the example of a jihadi sandbox: how can we effectively fight Islamic terror if we don’t understand the forces behind it? If an idea appalls you, do not shut it out. Build a sandbox and investigate it thoroughly by running an emulation of a jihadi’s mind (or an atheist, or a devout Christian, or a racist, or a dictator, or a righteous liberal): “Can we run that mind well enough to understand it, to empathize with it and to argue and spar with it to achieve some kind of better outcome where we are actually able to turn foes into dancing partners?” asks Weinstein.

A rational, one-track mind cannot solve humanity’s biggest issues, but the ability to process seemingly irrational ideas might allow us, as individuals and as a species, to reach new intellectual and behavioral heights.

Embrace Contradictory Ideas To Reach New Intellectual Heights – Eric Weinstein

Transcript:

We have to embrace the inconsistency of our own minds, not as a bug but as a feature, that we are in essence brought here by the forces of selection. We are the products of systems of selective pressures, and what they seem to do is to create the ability to run many, many different programs and often contradictory programs within the same mind. And the question is why have we put such an extraordinary emphasis on intellectual consistency so that we are constantly alerted to the hypocrisy of others but we are seemingly blind to it in ourselves?

Leave a Comment