Our greatest challenge today is effective communications. The world has become incredibly connected and internet access is both ubiquitous and instantaneous. The sum of human knowledge is literally at our fingertips, and yet we find ourselves talking past one another. The polarization driven by the media, online advertising and social networks has created a hostile environment in which each person takes the least charitable interpretation of every other person’s view, while ascribing the most negative intent. Does the half of the United States that you disagree with really want to destroy the country? Of course not. Do you think I can predict 90% of your worldview based on less than 5 questions? Almost certainly, yes. How much agency do you even have in forming your core beliefs? Do we have conscious, cognitive agency at all? Probably not.
These are the questions I’m wrestling with at the moment. I find the work of the following people helpful in this quest: Sam Harris, Jonathan Haidt, Jordan Peterson, Eric Weinstein, Daniel Kahneman and Steven Pinker.