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 your beliefs.
Your personal simulation is different from mine and from humanity’s eight 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 spectrum that runs from social media to genocide.
Not doing this is hard. Your simulation seems extremely very real. It takes 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 big advantage over most people.
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.
In which Kilo Kish takes one minute and 44 seconds to cross a room and sit in a chair, is unable to sit still for a further one minute and 23 seconds, then eventually accepts a pile of paperwork:
Grow slowly
Jeff
Extremely well written!!