🦚 TREE 137: The world is a simulation (× 7,000,000,000)
The world you experience is not reality. It is your brain’s interpretation of incomplete data from your senses run through the filters of your past experiences, your biases, your emotional state and what you believe to be true.
Your personal simulation is different from mine and from humanity’s seven billion other personal simulations.
This is mostly fine when discussing what to eat for breakfast. When it comes to politics, religion and money, people get twitchy. We form groups with people who interpret reality mostly like us. We declare ourselves the arbiters of Actual Reality. We demonise difference. We go to war on social media (and sometimes for real).
Not doing this is hard. Your simulation seems extremely very real. It takes actual effort to treat your simulation like a simulation. But if you do it some of the time, you will be better prepared to face realities that don’t conform to your simulation. That’s a competitive advantage.
Remind yourself regularly that your reality is a simulation
Hold your beliefs lightly.
Do science with your understanding of what’s real. How well does it fit with the best data about reality? Update what turns out to be false.
Augment your knowledge of reality by actively seeking out the perspectives of people who don’t see the world like you do
This week is all about the importance and power of the differences between people.
Grow real-ly
Jeff
There’s a lot more to Wolf Alice than ‘Don’t Delete the Kisses’.
The Memory of TREE playlist – every song from every email:
