Daniel Schmachtenberger - Improving Sensemaking | Modern Wisdom Podcast 348

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• 00:00 🧠 Building better sensemaking is crucial for shared decision-making and governance at both individual and societal levels, requiring understanding and valuing different perspectives to achieve participatory governance and effective sensemaking in open societies.
  • The speaker discusses the importance of sensemaking at an individual and societal level, and how it is crucial for shared choice making and governance.
  • Throughout history, small tribes were able to coordinate and make decisions easily because they shared the same experiences and values, but as societies grew larger, the need for shared sensemaking and decision-making became more complex and required different forms of governance.
  • Emergent order and shared sensemaking through objective measurement and values generation are the prerequisites for governance in an open society.
  • Values should be considered before creating propositions, and a good solution should meet everybody's values as best as possible.
  • The speaker emphasizes the importance of understanding and valuing different perspectives in order to achieve participatory governance and effective sensemaking in open societies.
  • How can we improve sensemaking at the societal level and as individuals, in order to make better decisions and have meaningful dialogue.
• 13:20 🧠 Developing better sensemaking is crucial for making well-considered decisions, understanding conflicting views, and avoiding unwarranted certainty, especially in uncertain and complex situations.
  • We should be skeptical of our own certainty because statistically we are likely wrong about most things, and the fear of being out-grouped leads to unwarranted certainty and sanctimony.
  • Developing sensemaking is crucial for making well-considered decisions at both individual and governance levels, even when faced with uncertainty and the pressure to act quickly.
  • Paying for academics and politicians to advance ideas that half the world disagrees with is not effective, and moving civilization forward requires consensus or force.
  • Understanding what matters for sensemaking based on the choices one actually has to make in their life is important, rather than feeling compelled to be deeply informed about all existential risks and complex topics.
  • Good sensemaking informs creativity and agency, and there are different types of sensemaking for different creative capacities.
  • Understanding conflicting views is crucial for better sensemaking, especially in situations like nursing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• 25:42 🧠 People tend to fall into pre-existing narrative camps, but it's important to balance personal freedoms with public health, embrace the unknown with curiosity, and understand biases in sensemaking to seek out and correct them.
  • There are multiple narratives surrounding the effectiveness and safety of ivermectin, and people tend to fall into pre-existing narrative camps due to underlying forces that drive polarization.
  • The speaker discusses the balance between personal freedoms and public health, emphasizing the importance of considering the impact of one's actions on others and questioning the legitimacy of authority to impose limits on personal freedoms.
  • The balance between personal sovereignty and civic duty is important, and maximizing individual liberty while also considering the well-being of the whole can be achieved through conscientious and well-educated citizens who self-police and communicate respectfully.
  • People tend to engage in biased sensemaking, driven by a desire for certainty and safety, projecting their fears onto the unknown, and it's important to embrace the unknown with curiosity and open-mindedness.
  • Understanding the biases that affect sensemaking is crucial for seeking out and correcting them in order to grow and understand the truth more fully.
  • Navigating with a flawed map makes it impossible to see our own blind spots and biases.
• 36:29 🧠 Seek diverse perspectives, curate social media feeds, and embrace discomfort to build better sensemaking and avoid falling into the filter bubble of social media.
  • Seek out friends who have different perspectives and biases, and actively engage in conversations with them to challenge your own sense-making and avoid falling into the filter bubble of social media.
  • Curate your social media feed to include diverse perspectives and be mindful of algorithm biases to improve sensemaking.
  • Understanding different perspectives and synthesizing conflicting narratives is essential for building better sensemaking.
  • Hold both the partial stories, seek higher order synthesis, curate info environments and friend circles, get comfortable with the unknown, and understand that good sense making and high certainty require effort and discomfort.
  • Belief in conspiracy theories and superstitions arises from the need to reintroduce order in the face of uncertainty, and narrative warfare distorts the true, the good, and the beautiful to align with a particular position.
  • The speaker discusses the rapid formation of intense and forceful narratives, the lack of good sense-making, and the reversal of positions without apology by powerful individuals or actors.
• 52:50 🧠 Individuals should avoid excessive certainty and nihilism, commit to seeking understanding, engage with the world, and heal unresolved trauma to become better sense-making agents and make informed choices.
  • People in positions of authority often manipulate narratives to serve their own interests, and individuals should avoid the pitfalls of excessive certainty and nihilism when trying to become better sense-making agents.
  • Understanding the world and making informed choices is important, even though it can be uncomfortable and requires humility and commitment to seeking understanding.
  • Understanding the problem and developing effective solutions through cognitive mapping and field testing is crucial before trying to help the world.
  • Emotional healing and development can affect how we show up in the world, and unresolved trauma can lead to projecting our own pain onto the world.
  • Engaging with the world and being passionate about important issues can motivate personal growth and help overcome fears and limitations.
  • Healing often involves facing the hardest parts of ourselves that we avoid and don't notice, which is why many people only heal patterns when they have kids.
• 01:11:32 🧠 People are willing to work hard for something bigger than themselves, showing up to the world and growing as a person is essential for transcending self-limiting programming, and societal structures and economic systems can change what we would call human nature.
  • People are willing to work hard and double down on what it takes to shift patterns for something bigger than themselves, whether it's their kids or another calling.
  • Showing up to the world and growing as a person is essential for transcending self-limiting programming and achieving a virtuous cycle of personal growth and societal coordination.
  • The speaker discusses the limitations of social science in understanding human behavior and the importance of factoring in developmental stages and higher cognitive capacities when assessing behavioral dispositions.
  • Cultural dispositions and conditioning can lead to higher qualities of education, rationality, and non-violence, and by creating societal structures and economic systems that support these values, we can change what we would call human nature.
  • The idea of the dumb masses being a self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuated by ruling classes through cultural conditioning and lack of educational resources is a major factor in societal inequality.
  • The speaker discusses the balance between technological development and wisdom, emphasizing the need to embrace technology while also recognizing its potential for both positive and negative impact.
• 01:34:03 🧠 Technology and social media shape our worldview, so we need to align exponential technologies with human development and values to avoid catastrophic destruction, while curating diverse media content to bridge cultural divides and promote holistic thinking.
  • The use of technology and social media platforms codes patterns of behavior and values into individuals, shaping their worldview and level of development.
  • We need to design and utilize exponential technologies in a way that aligns with human development, social values, and the integrity of the planet to avoid catastrophic destruction and dystopias.
  • Different types of media and content can bias our perception of reality, leading to a narrow and skewed understanding of complex issues.
  • Curating media content to expose people to diverse perspectives can help bridge cultural divides and promote holistic thinking.
  • There are more ways to improve sensemaking than to worsen it, and businesses profit from addictive behaviors.
  • The speaker discusses the need to deeply work on the underlying incentive system to prevent individuals from taking advantage of others, and the challenges of regulating market incentives and the state to ensure they serve the will of the people.
• 01:50:29 🧠 Facebook and other companies should not exploit people's weaknesses, we need better collective sensemaking and governance, and creating a prestigious, genetically selected, siloed civilization could serve as a thought experiment for designing civilization from scratch.
  • Facebook and other companies should not exploit people's weaknesses and provide predatory goods and services, and we need better collective sensemaking and governance to address this issue.
  • Why hasn't the world created a self-sufficient, defended, and air-gapped community as a contingency for existential risks, and why not focus on making the current civilization better?
  • Creating a prestigious, genetically selected, siloed civilization with a continuity of government military capacity, similar to the concept of a Mars colony, could serve as a thought experiment for designing civilization from scratch.
  • Creating a civilization on Mars requires rethinking social systems, law, education, and values to address constraints and inefficiencies, which could also inform improvements on Earth.
  • Daniel Schmachtenberger is working on the Consilience Project, which aims to help people understand the problem space of the world better and design better social technologies to address the meta crisis.
  • Check out the podcast civilizationemerging.com and subscribe for the best clips.

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