Imagined reality

Animals, probably just optimize their short-term interest, they probably take actions based on food, safety, and reproduction, things that are concrete, physical, and objective.

It is interesting for humans because we make decisions on something/concepts that may not exist in an objective world. I have read “A brief history of humankind” by Yuval Noah Harari, one of the interesting perspectives is that human is the only creature that lives in both physical and subjective worlds.

Money is the greatest example, money is no more than just a paper or a digit in the app, yet it drives the whole society. Most of us allocate our weekdays to work to earn some money and expect the digits can exchange for something we want, but it is just the imagined reality in our minds!

Decision making

People growing up from different cultures and environments form their own imagined reality, together with the internet, it creates some interesting disagreements, ideologies, or perspectives that are formulated on top of imagined reality.

Some examples I have seen recently: PS: no right or wrong, just whether I think it is a reasonable argument

COVID vaccines

Some people don’t take vaccines because:

  • They dislike the authority “forcing” people to take it, it violates human freedom and free will
  • They have the freedom to access the risk to decide on their own

My view: While it is your right to decide to take or not, I don’t really agree with the vague & potentially subjective concepts such as freedom should be used as an argument, because it implies the good and bad side implicitly. Whether to do something in the physical world should depend on objective evidence.

In this case, how effective are the vaccines against COVID? what are the side effects? what are the consequences to society if we don’t take vaccines? If the argument is we don’t know the side effects, it makes sense to me. But if we are using conspiracy theories or extreme examples or other stories to manipulate human emotion is not.

Herd immunity or clear zero policy in China

Herd immunity: clear zero policy isn’t sustainable Clear zero: we should clear zero at whatever cost because potential casualty is huge

My view: When both sides have reasonable arguments, then let’s just consider the objective evidence

  • clear zero policy is not sustainable => True
  • potential casualty is huge => maybe True.

From here we can consider what something we should/we can do, for example, whether the vaccination rate of certain groups isn’t high enough, whether we don’t have enough equipment to support the cases, and whether it is possible to release stage by stage, etc

Driving the discussion to actionable items, something that is concrete is one of the most effective ways to end the concept game, especially when the imagined reality of both sides is not aligned.

Mind templates

Some of my favorite templates in the workplace/daily life:

  • Don’t deal with abstract concepts, say: give me an example
  • Don’t use the subjective expression, say: I see xyz, therefore, I interpret it as abc
  • Challenge the ground, say: you say abc, what makes you have such impressions/thoughts
  • Or simply ask: why?