That said, humans can be rational in limited situations in which the playing field is small and well-defined. For example, humans might shop for the best bargain or choose the shortest route to a destination. That’s rational. But most topics in life are not clear and not simple. In those cases, we retreat to our biases and never leave. I try hard to escape that trap with mixed results. Roughly speaking, I now experience the world through this reframe.
Usual Frame: People are rational 90 percent of the time.
Reframe: People are rational 10 percent of the time if that.
Two Movies, One Screen
For most of my life, I believed that if I disagreed with someone on a social or political issue, one of us had to be wrong. Perhaps we could both be wrong, but since our opinions differed, only one of us could be right, at least under normal conditions.
That filter on life was maddening. I would try to “win” every disagreement by using my so-called rational mind to find out where we differed in facts, logic, or bias. I reasoned that if I could identify the root cause of the disagreement, I could easily find common ground.
That almost never worked.
It took me decades to figure out why something as straightforward as checking each other’s logic and facts would consistently fail to create agreement. It was as if the other person became temporarily insane when presented with a superior argument. Even weirder, they thought the problem was on my side. And I wasn’t entirely sure they were wrong.
Eventually, I came to see the human relationship with reality as so subjective it is nonsense to discuss who is “right” in situations that can’t be reliably measured. And most things can’t be measured in ways we would agree are sufficient. I mean, we can try to measure anything we want, but the next observer will say it was measured wrong. You can rely on that. So what do you do to stay sane in such a world?
I developed this reframe to help. I started using the reframe in 2016, when the political news in America became absurdly partisan. I often hear from my followers on social media that it helped them get past the frustration of dealing with people who seem trapped in their own bubble reality.
Usual Frame: One of us is right, and one is wrong.
Reframe: We are watching two different movies on one screen.
The only two facts humans know for sure are that we exist and that some things appear to be predictable. For example, you know that every time you hit your so-called funny bone just right, it hurts. But perhaps everything about that except the predictability of it is manufactured by our minds. You might think you are petting a stray cat on the sidewalk, and I might see you picking up something from the ground. So long as your story and mine never need to be consistent—which is generally the case—we can experience different subjective realities. In your reality, you were petting a cat, and in mine you were picking up something from the ground. Yet we both witnessed the “same” event. I call that two movies playing on one screen.
The power of this reframe is that it releases you from any obligation to make others bend to your way of thinking. Others are often aware of the same events and facts as you, but while they’re looking at the same screen at the same time, they see a different movie based on their biases and expectations. Once you understand this as the dominant model of all our disagreements, you won’t feel any pressure to “fix” people who disagree with you. Simply accept that you’re watching the same screen but a different movie. It is oddly freeing.
Having Kids and Passing on your Genes
If you are grappling with the question of having children and don’t feel the calling to do so, you might feel bad about your decision. Society encourages parenthood, and you’ll probably have to answer a lot of well-intentioned but annoying questions about why you are choosing not to reproduce.
Some good reasons to have kids include religion (if that’s your thing), personal satisfaction, a sense of purpose, and a stronger society. The weakest reason—but often the one that has the strongest pull on us—is the innate desire to spread our genes and not be “forgotten” in time. You might have no conscious thoughts along those lines, but the instinct lives in most of us. If it did not, we’d easily talk ourselves out of having kids because of the inconvenience and expense.
This reframe is limited to helping you suppress your natural impulse to spread your genes. Civilization needs more babies, not fewer, so don’t use this reframe unless you are sure about your decision.
Usual Frame: You should spread your genes.
Reframe: No matter what you do, your genes will be diluted with each generation until your contribution nears zero.
A secondary use for this reframe is if you experience the tragedy of losing a child. You’ll have many negative thoughts about the experience, but if one of those thoughts involves carrying your genes forward for eternity, you can reframe that thought out of your mind: It wasn’t going to happen anyway. After a few generations of dilution, your contribution could be limited to how waxy those future children’s ears are. That isn’t the sort of legacy you need to build a life around.
Predicting Versus Understanding Reality
If every time you said the word “sunshine” a stranger appeared from a nearby hiding place and punched you in the face, would you keep saying the word? Don’t answer too quickly. In this imaginary example, there is no science or logic to tell us why it happens. You’re a rational person, and you make decisions based on evidence and reason. And in my example, there is no evidence to suggest there could possibly be a correlation much less causation between an ordinary word and the unknown assailant.
So . . . do you say “sunshine” again?
Much of life is like my weird example in the sense we don’t know how to explain anything we experience. But we think we do. We think we know why one thing happens versus another, but usually we don’t. We don’t know why loved ones act the way they do. We don’t think the news is necessarily true. And even science is looking a lot like guesswork because of its notable misfires in recent years.
Oh, I’m not done yet. Don’t take this personally, but you usually don’t know why you do things either. The part of your brain that explains why you do stuff doesn’t even engage until after you decide. Humans are rationalizers, not deciders.
Given all that we puny humans do NOT know, is there anything we do know? Yes, as I said in the last section, we know at least two things:
We know we exist.
We know some worldviews predict better than others.
Most of the rest of our so-called reality is our subjective interpretation of who-knows-what. And that leads us to this reframe.
Usual Frame: The best worldview is the true one.
Reframe: The best worldview is one that predicts the best.
In my “sunshine” example, any human in that situation who kept saying the trigger word would likely start imagining they know why the punch-in-the-face kept happening. Some would say God is angry. Some would come to believe they must be crazy, they’re imagining it, or they’re dreaming. Some would assume a nemesis of some sort is behind it. Others might say poltergeist, a curse, or magic of some kind.
None of those explanations would matter so long as the pattern was predictive. All you need to do is avoid saying that one word—sunshine—and your problem is solved. Most of your life is like that. I don’t know why electricity works—at least not in any detail—but I know the lights come on when I hit the switch. It is predictable. And predictable is the nearest our little brains can get to truth.