Gurwinder Bhogal — Certainty is the Death of Thought (EP.155)

Infinite Loops

Podcast Notes Key Takeaways  Words that used to carry a certain weight are now levied all the time, and this debases their meaning The Woozle Effect: An article makes a claim without evidence, is then cited by another, which is cited by another (and so on), until the range of citations creates the impression that the claim has evidence when really all articles are citing the same uncorroborated source The Toxoplasma of Rage: Narratives that do the best in the digital age are narratives that not everybody thinks are true, but those that divide people the mostGolden Hammer: When someone, usually an intellectual who has gained a cultish following for popularizing a concept, becomes so drunk with power he thinks he can apply that concept to everything The Streisand Effect: A narrative that people are trying to suppress will eventually leak out, and it becomes even more appealing to everyone else because of the very fact that it was suppressedOur minds are configured not to argue for what is true, but for what we want to believe and what we need to believe in order to be part of the tribe Purity Spiral: Members of political tribes inevitably begin competing with their fellows to be the most ideologically pure. The constant one-upmanship toward moral superiority causes the whole group to become more extreme gradually. You cannot censor an avalanche “Certainty is the death of thought.” – Gurwinder Bhogal

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Gurwinder Bhogal is a writer and programmer who writes about the myriad ways in which technology and psychology conspire to fool us and how we can withstand the covert assault on our senses. Gurwinder is known for his epic Twitter ‘Megathreads’ which set out a series of powerful concepts for understanding the world. He joins the show to discuss our tendency to narrativize information, how to overcome the bandwidth tax, why Wikipedia is the world’s largest source of misinformation, and MUCH more! Important Links: Megathread: Feb 7, 2020 (53,000 likes) Megathread: Feb 11, 2022 (62,000 likes) Megathread: March 18, 2023 (most recent) Gurwinder's Substack Gurwinder's Twitter The Toxoplasma of Rage Show Notes: Megathreads & the Woozle effect AI, the Encyclopedia Disinformatica, and cultivating a garden of Mithridates Capturing the nuance between dishonesty and lying The Toxoplasma of Rage Overcoming the bandwidth tax Brandishing the golden hammer; why we can’t comprehend large numbers Tribalism & intersubjectivity The purity spiral Are we facing a lost generation? We are programmed to like complex explanations Narrativizing information “Certainty is the death of thought” Climbing the thinking ladder MUCH more! Books Mentioned: The Fifth Science; by Exurb1a Talking to Strangers; by Malcolm Gladwell Tao Te Ching; by Lao Tzu What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies; by Tim Urban