#360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics | Lex Fridman Podcast

It is optimal to create a culture where no idea is sacred so each idea can be properly scrutinized 

Media companies in the past had to actually balance neutrality and accuracy or they would lose their viewership to their competitors 

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• Different parts of the brain light up when political beliefs are challenged versus when non-political beliefs are challenged 


• The default-mode network of the brain lights up when political beliefs are challenged


• Our primitive mind comes pre-programmed to care a lot about politics


• Right now, tribalism has coalesced around politics more than anyt

Ideologies quickly become religions to their followers, at which point the solutions proposed by such ideologies can no longer be challenged 

How you arrived at what you think is more important than what you think

If you approach a complex issue with nuance, you will likely be attacked by both sides of the low-rung thinking political spectrum 

An echo chamber is a collaborative culture of low-rung thinking based on a sacred set of ideas that cannot be challenged by anyone in the echo chamber 

The 20th century was the best century yet across every metric that matters  It also had the biggest wars in history, the biggest genocide in history, the biggest existential threat yet with nuclear weapons, the biggest economic crash in history, etc.

If human history were a 1,000-page book, then the hunter-gatherer period would be the first 950 pages