Derek Thompson

And so we don't see it clearly because our reality is filtered based on our beliefs.

And we see this study after study after study shows how people can observe the same exact reality and yet see something completely different.

There's an illusion called the coffer illusion.

I can show you this image and based on where you were born, you will either see squares or circles.

I can, if you're on a diet, you see food as larger.

If you are afraid of heights, you see distances as further.

We've all experienced watching a football game and the ref makes a call and people on one side who back one team see the call as absolutely correct.

People on the other team see the call as ridiculous, that the ref must be blind, right?

Think about in geopolitics, how no matter what happens, people who are committed, who have a belief that one side is right and one side is wrong, they see every event through that lens.

We do not see reality clearly.

We do not see people clearly.

We see people as we are.

We see others as we believe they are.

This is exactly the intellectual habit that changed my life.

It turns out that so much of our suffering is self-perpetuated, that we build these intellectual cages of suffering of our own device.

And so whether it's personal problems, interpersonal problems, national geopolitical problems, they all have the same source, that we are creating our suffering.

It doesn't necessarily mean that we need to accept things as they are.

It doesn't mean we have to agree with everyone.

It's that we want to reduce our suffering.

I think that's the idea here.