Tim Urban delivered a lecture “From Echo Chamber to the Idea Lab: An Intellectual Revolution” on April 3.
You may have heard of Tim Urban from his viral TEDx talk in April 2016 titled “Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator,” which has upwards of 18 million views on the TED website. He is also one of the Internet’s most popular writers and is the creator of the blog, Wait But Why? Additionally, Urban has produced numerous articles on subjects ranging from procrastination to artificial intelligence to why humans have not encountered alien life forms. Moreover, Wait But Why has quite the following, and fans include Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Twitter co-founder Evan Williams.
One of the first comparisons Urban brought up was “What you think vs. How you think” specifically when ideas are put on a spectrum, ranging from insane to mainstream. Of course, ideas are numerous and complex and only certain ones are fit to be spread. The sensitivity concerning certain topics, like gay marriage, has changed over the years. Gay marriage has gone from being deemed a “controversial” topic to now being more “mainstream,” which is the most common category for ideas, while the least common are the more radical ideas. Urban also discussed “Overton Window,” which is a designated area under a distribution curve representing a range of ideas ranging from insane to mainstream which is concerned mainly with what is in the mainstream category and rarely dapples in the controversial area. This is similar to how politicians appeal to their audiences—by talking about “safe” topics that are not taboo. Here, we see that our ways of thinking are akin to a science experiment. Urban referred to this idea as a “Marketplace of ideas,” which involves “idea labs.” Idea Labs represent a culture where people are like experimenters and ideas are experiments all with the goal of moving toward truth. It is through these idea experiments that advancements and truth can be discovered.
Thinking is not always a straight-forward process. Even for scientists, there is always a chance for cognitive bias or confirmation bias. Urban drew a comparison to a sports fan who wants their team to win; you want them to win fairly, but you are still rooting for the team regardless of the method the team takes to win. This is analogous to a scientist going for truth but being biased because they want to be right. There is also a term Urban coined, “Non-falsifiable land,” which refers to an individual being so steadfast in their belief/idea that nothing you can show them can change their mind and admit that they were wrong. Urban related it to someone that was an attorney. Attorneys, for one, sometimes think backwards from B to A, working from a conclusion and then finding the evidence to back it up and build a case. There is also thinking from A to B.
Urban also discussed a term called “Echo Chambers,” which refer to a culture of agreement and confirmation and what you think is sacred. This notion is connected to “Ancient tribal psychology,” which deals with moral purity, moral dualism, and sacredness. This can be seen in the “Us vs. Them” mentality. By having certain ideas and ways of thinking that align with a certain group, those people become your tribe and hence you become a part of that Echo Chamber.
In reality, Echo Chambers are difficult, in that to classify them, there is no “good” or “bad” Echo Chamber. Urban compared this idea with Disney. In Disney movies, there are clear good and bad characters. There are no nuanced gray areas—instead, there are binary good and bad characters. The takeaway is that thinking is on a spectrum and this spectrum evolves with how people and their thoughts change. For example, people’s political leanings are a spectrum. People are not just liberal, progressive, or conservative. It is generally a mix: more progressive vs less progressive, more liberal vs less liberal.
Hence, thinking changes, and politicians need to be able to catch up.
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