From: jimruttshow8596
Sensemaking is critically important because it forms the basis for collective choice-making and action-taking in civilization design [00:01:06]. Daniel Schmachtenberger emphasizes that addressing object-level problems like environmental issues, war, or infrastructure challenges are fundamentally “coordination issues” among humans [00:01:35]. To solve global issues such as climate change or wealth inequality, humanity must coordinate quite differently, which requires high-quality collective sensemaking [00:01:57].
Why Sensemaking is Crucial
Partial sensemaking leads to solutions that often harm other aspects of society, causing active resistance [00:02:34]. For instance, a climate change solution implemented by some nations but not others could have problematic geopolitical ramifications [00:02:27]. Without high-quality sensemaking, large-scale initiatives face high friction due to widespread disagreement [00:02:50].
Currently, society is experiencing “peak bad sensemaking” [00:03:09]. On almost every consequential issue, people either have no idea what is true or hold fervent, totally opposing views, leading to significant civil tensions, as seen during the COVID-19 pandemic regarding mask-wearing, treatments, and lockdowns [00:03:13]. This lack of shared, coherent understanding prevents problem-solving and becomes a source of civil breakdown [00:04:08].
Challenges to Effective Sensemaking
Several factors complicate sensemaking:
- Global Scale and Complexity [00:04:37]: The world is now globally coupled at high density, making coordination at this scale extremely difficult [00:04:45]. Problems like climate change or pandemics are high-dimensional and complex, not easily resolvable by formal analytical methods [00:05:32].
- Hyperobjects [00:49:53]: Many influential global issues, such as climate change, world hunger, or AI risk, are “hyperobjects” – concepts that are not directly apprehendable by human senses but must be understood conceptually [00:50:00]. This detachment from visceral experience makes understanding them more difficult [00:50:40].
- Mistake Theory vs. Conflict Theory [00:52:10]: Problems arise from both intentional harm (conflict theory) and unintended externalities (mistake theory) [00:52:12]. Anticipating and internalizing these externalities into design processes is crucial for future solutions [00:52:36]. The safety analysis of a solution can be harder than the solution analysis itself [00:53:51].
The Modern Information Ecosystem
The current communication ecosystem is an “evolved and radically new platform” [00:08:21]. Unlike the past where three TV networks dominated news, there is now a “cacophony of voices,” none with high status across the population [00:07:02].
The Shift to Advertising-Based Platforms
Initially, many online information sources were paid, aligning service providers with users to provide value quickly [00:17:56]. Around 2004-2005, platforms and bandwidth became cheap enough to fund services solely through advertising [00:18:14]. This shift created a new dynamic: platforms prioritize maximizing user engagement (time on site) to sell more advertising [00:18:41].
Dopamine Hijacking and Hypernormal Stimuli
Platforms use sophisticated machine learning algorithms to curate content, developing “psychographic models” of individual users better than a psychologist could [00:12:52]. This curation maximizes engagement by appealing to emotional triggers and cognitive biases [00:14:27]. Things that elicit fear or anger, for evolutionary protective reasons, are prioritized, leading to more biased and emotionally hijacked users [00:14:39].
This phenomenon is akin to “hypernormal stimuli” [00:21:58]. Just as fast food exploits the brain’s dopamine response to salt, fat, and sugar (which were evolutionarily useful but now lead to obesity in modern environments) [00:23:17], social media extracts the dopamine hit from communication devoid of genuine human connection [00:24:19]. Addiction, driven by optimized hypernormal stimuli, is a straightforwardly profitable business model [00:24:49]. The more addiction a society has, the less healthy it is [00:26:35].
Fragmentation and Tribalism
The result is fractured narrative camps with less shared reality, leading to increased certainty and outrage while simultaneously being more wrong [00:15:12]. This creates epistemic nihilism, where people believe things based on tribal affiliation rather than objective truth [00:15:34]. When overwhelmed by information, people fall back on tribalism, believing whatever their “team” believes, driven by confirmation bias [01:12:45].
The Problem of Authority and Complexity
The current environment has led to the “destruction of all authority or at least any consensus about authority” [00:27:14]. While a single monolithic authority is undesirable due to the corrupting nature of power [00:29:36], the current lack of shared information is problematic. In a world where false and dangerous speech can scale to millions or billions virally [00:30:35], free speech becomes tricky. The challenge is that any legitimate authority on truth, once established, faces maximum incentive for corruption and influence [00:31:39].
The combination of unprecedented scale and complexity means that an individual, no matter how smart, cannot adequately make sense of the world [00:45:10]. The enlightenment view that everyone can be educated to make good sense may be unrealistic given the “hierarchical complexity” of modern issues [00:45:44].
Solutions and Ways Forward
Individual Practices
- Doubt Excessive Certainty: Cultivate a “mature relationship to the topic of certainty” [00:57:51]. Excessive certainty, driven by a desire for security or appearing smart, makes one a bad sensemaker [00:58:00]. Acknowledge that most beliefs might be wrong, and embrace productive uncertainty [01:09:40].
- Embrace “I Don’t Know”: The phrase “I don’t know” is one of the most important in human collaboration [00:57:27]. Admitting ignorance can slow the rate of societal breakdown [00:57:17].
- Calibrate Certainty for Action: Recognize that both action and inaction have consequences [00:59:03]. The “cost of inaction” must be factored into decision-making [00:59:38]. The level of confidence needed to act should be proportional to the consequentiality and reversibility of the action [01:01:36].
- Cultivate a Direct Relationship with Reality: Hold models of reality as useful tools, not as identity or sacred truth [01:20:50]. Always be open to better models [01:21:08].
- Develop a “Bias Checker”: Be dubious of feelings of outrage, certainty, or strong group identity [01:21:55]. Intentionally question whether one is being emotionally or cognitively hijacked [01:22:00].
- Learn Narrative Warfare Tactics: Understand how rhetorical techniques (like Russell conjugation or Lakoff framing), cherry-picking data, and funding biases influence information [01:22:31]. This builds a “memetic immune system” [01:06:42].
- Seek Dissenting, Earnest Views: Actively seek out informed people who disagree but are willing to engage in good faith [01:23:01]. The dialectic between opposing views can lead to deeper understanding [01:23:17].
- Mind Social Media Habits: Remove social media apps from phones to avoid continuous micro-targeting [01:24:01]. Curate feeds by unfollowing unhelpful content and intentionally following diverse viewpoints [01:24:10]. Before sharing, ask if it’s genuinely good for the world [01:25:07].
Institutional and Collective Approaches
- Foster Collective Intelligence: Since individual sensemaking is inadequate for complex issues, new institutional structures are needed [00:45:57]. This involves a disposition to respect reality objectively and engage in respectful intersubjective conversations [00:56:00].
- Dialectical Facilitation: Host dialectical conversations, not debates, between earnest, disagreeing experts [01:27:50]. A skilled facilitator helps identify areas of agreement, knowns, unknowns, and differing weightings of evidence [01:28:27]. The process should be transparent to enable others to understand and learn [01:29:42].
- Meta-News and Narrative Assessment: For highly polarized and consequential topics, conduct assessments of the prevailing narratives [01:30:21]. “Steel-man” each narrative to help people understand why others are compelled by it [01:30:45].
- Propositional Analysis and Epistemic Calibration: Break down narratives into individual propositions, examining evidence for support or refutation [01:31:17]. Identify identifiable signal, falsifiable elements, and pure conjecture, allowing for better calibration of confidence margins [01:31:30]. This teaches propositional logic and nuanced evaluation [01:31:53].
- Transparent Processes and Education: Show the process of how sensemaking conclusions are reached, including data and epistemic models used [01:33:43]. This acts as an “optimized public education” in how to make sense of the world, empowering civic engagement [01:34:28].
- Beyond Viral Sharing: The ultimate goal is to move beyond unthinking viral replication [01:36:52]. Instead, foster individuals who can facilitate high-quality dialogue, dialectical thinking, and empiricism within their own social circles [01:37:01].
Ultimately, either society drives a new cultural enlightenment to revivify participatory governance, or it will likely devolve back to autocracy [01:10:44]. This enlightenment must encompass not just cognitive aspects, but also emotional immunity to hypernormal stimuli and a value system of respectful engagement and seeking diverse viewpoints [01:11:00].