Modern Wisdom #721 – Why Can No One Think Rationally Anymore?

Guest: George Mack
Host: Chris Williamson
Date: December 18, 2023

Episode Overview

In this intellectually charged episode, Chris Williamson welcomes back long-time guest George Mack—writer, marketer, and mental model enthusiast—for their annual deep-dive into human behavior, social trends, and why truly independent, rational thought seems harder than ever. The conversation traverses everything from the mechanics of memes and the contagiousness of ideas, to why leverage is such a powerful concept (but a terrible meme), to the paradoxes and pitfalls of digital content consumption.

George unpacks some of his favorite mental models—like the Keynesian Beauty Contest, the Abilene Paradox, and reflexivity—shedding light on how memes shape the world, why "ignorance is bliss" is used as a put-down, and why calmness is perhaps the ultimate emotional hack.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Keynesian Beauty Contest, Reflexivity & Social Perceptions

• Key Concept: The Keynesian Beauty Contest (02:16):

  • Instead of simply picking what you find most attractive (level 1), you try to guess what others will think (level 2), and even take into account what others think that others will think (level 3). This creates layers of strategic, meta-thinking in group dynamics and markets.
  • Quote: “What Chris will rank is very different to what he will think everybody else will think.” — George (02:16)

• Application: Lib Dems polling high but losing votes because people don't think others will actually vote for them; connections to meme stocks and market bubbles—everyone tries to outguess the crowd.

• The Abilene Paradox (03:40):

  • Groups often make decisions nobody individually wants, because each assumes everyone else wants it.
  • Quote: “It explains how a number of accurate individuals can become idiots when they get together.” — Chris (03:40)

• Reflexivity (Soros, Taleb) (05:41):

  • When perception shapes reality (“This is a revolutionary moment!”), feedback loops arise: markets, media narratives, and memes all reflect this complexity.
  • “So when you're dealing with human beings, the systems are so much more complex, which is why you see these meme stocks pump and down…” — George (05:41)

Human Connection: Online vs. Real Life

• Dunbar's Number & Social Complexity (07:10):

  • Human brains evolved to manage complex webs of social relationships.
  • “The human brain largely is a Facebook friend tracker with knobs and dials.” — Chris (07:10)

• Depth vs. Selection (Internet + IRL) (12:01):

  • “Use the internet to explore, and in-person to exploit is the best paradigm. That's how we met.” — Chris (12:36)

• Practical Tip:

  • “Always say yes to dinner.” — Chris (13:30)
    • Even a single in-person meeting builds a foundation that thousands of online chats can't replicate.
    • Invest an hour in a coffee or dinner to turn digital acquaintances into deep, real-life friendships.

The Power of Memes and Contagious Ideas

• Memes as Algorithms for Spreading Ideas (14:58):

  • Memes are not just dog photos—anything spreadable counts: “OK Boomer,” “Karen,” even political slogans.
  • Success depends on high emotion, low friction, and comprehensibility—“the K factor.”
  • “If you get the meme right, everything downstream from that works.” — Chris (18:08)
  • “The best memes compress mass emotion into a simple contagious concept.” — George (28:35)

• Memes & Elections/Future:

  • Memes—more than policies—will decide future elections as language and virality go global (19:03).
  • “Great ideas don’t stick around because they’re insufficiently sticky.” — (Paraphrasing Eric Weinstein, 18:08)

• Counter-Memes:

  • Every popular meme spawns its inverse (32:55). Trends like “Hot Girl Summer” → “Feral Girl Summer”; movement and countermovement.

• Media’s Loss of Narrative Control (29:47):

  • From top-down narrative control (legacy media) to decentralized meme meritocracy (social media).

Why Some Concepts—Like 'Leverage'—Don't Spread

• Leverage: Bad Meme, Good Idea (21:08–27:48):
  • People “use leverage all the time” but rarely grasp its real-world implications.
  • George’s “Hungover Jeff Bezos vs. Hardest Working Man” metaphor:
    • Bezos achieves infinitely more output chilling on his yacht thanks to labor, robot, media, and capital leverage—bad meme because it requires deeper engineering intuition.
  • “The key thing is to remove the conversation around hours worked… and just be inputs, outputs.” — George (27:11)
  • Human brains “don’t deal well with exponentials”—making leverage hard to intuit.

Trojan Horses & Content Consumption

• Trojan Content / Pyrrhic Porn / Hidden Drains (52:46):

  • Things that seem beneficial (business podcasts, pay rises, long commutes) may harm in the long run by distracting from true priorities or eroding learning.
  • “That’s not as bad as thinking something’s healthy… a Trojan horse getting in, and it’s actually really bad for you.” — George (53:49)
  • Strategy: Ruthless information diet (Angola Twitter hack, YouTube regret audit; 72% of watched content = regret).

• Quote:

  • “Post content clarity—the pillow talk you have with yourself after YouTube binges—would remind you it’s not worth it.” — Chris (59:55)

The Forgetting Paradox & Mental Loops

• Forgetting Paradox (65:46–68:23):

  • “We forget how many things we forget because by definition, we’ve forgotten them.”
  • Only remember a handful of thoughts per day out of tens of thousands.
  • “The mind’s thoughts completely disappear… Kind of like Twitter or TikTok.” — George (66:57)

• Implication: Capture your life! Photos, writing, speaking—don’t let moments be lost because you confuse taking memories with being vain.

• Writing as Thought-Concreteizer:

  • “When you have a thought, it’s like trying to hold smoke… It’s only when you force it into words that you realize what you really think.” — Chris (69:58–71:41)

• CBT Loop (72:10):

  • How you think, feel, and act: write negative thoughts down, list evidence for and against, and make new, useful judgments.

• True vs. Useful (74:23):

  • “Not true but useful.”
  • Some (false) beliefs are functionally valuable; determinism may be literally true but functionally harmful.

Modern Meme Mechanisms: Chief Meme Officer & Meme Industrial Complex

• Chief Meme Officer as Corporate Role (39:27):

  • Fast-growing companies will need in-house or affiliated chief meme officers to surf viral culture.
  • “The fastest growing companies… will have a chief meme officer.” — Chris (39:27)

• Manufactured Memes (41:23):

  • Gymshark staged a viral video with Francis Ngannou to jumpstart a meme for their brand.
  • “The manipulated meme complex—the MMC—is something that everyone’s skeptical about.” — Chris (42:31)

• Meme Highways: Platform Variation (42:31–43:56):

  • Different platforms generate and transmit memes differently:
    • Most memes originate on Reddit, 4chan, sometimes Twitter, then spread to TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, ultimately “Boomer Facebook” and WhatsApp.

Media, Scarcity & Prestige

• Mainstream Media Still has Scarce Prestige (44:29):

  • Though dying, it still confers status: “There’s only 200 Dr. Phil guests per year.”
  • Effects linger generationally—“ideas die one generation at a time” (47:49).
  • Conceptual Inertia: Population-level beliefs lag science; the prestige echo of legacy media/celebrity will outlast actual influence.

• Can Human Belief Adapt Faster? (49:13):

  • Chris: “You can’t overclock humans in the same way as tech.”
  • “Firehosing” (overloading people with info) just increases generalized distrust.

Mental Models, Paradoxes & Useful Beliefs

• Everything is Wrong (But Some Ideas Are Better) (50:44):

  • Hold opinions loosely, always look to upgrade ideas, avoid cynicism and nihilism.
  • Lindy effect: ideas or habits that have survived longest may be best.

• “Not true, but useful” (74:23); “Figuratively true but literally false”—useful beliefs may trump factual accuracy in some domains.

Hidden & Observable Metrics

• Trojan Horses in Life Choices:
  • Salary is easily observable, but gains can be offset by hidden costs (e.g., long commutes, lost learning, stress).
  • Optimize for hidden metrics (e.g., “the texture of your own mind”) as much as visible ones.

Gap vs. Gain, Hedonic Adaptation & Emotional States

• Gap & Gain:

  • Win by focusing on your progress (“gain”) instead of the ever-receding ideal (“gap”); “Constantly comparing to the horizon pushes happiness away” (83:08).
  • Winning big (e.g., lottery) might ruin future happiness: “How are you ever going to have a better day than winning a billion dollars?” (84:48)
  • “You can only exist in one of the two states at once—gap or gain.” — George (88:23)

• Most Useful Emotional State: Calmness / Peace (88:33–92:05):

  • “Calmness just is top for pretty much all of them… Nothing slows down time quite like calmness.” — George (91:21)
  • “If the price is your sanity, you shouldn’t pay it for pretty much whatever it is.” — Chris (91:26)

Notable Quotes & Moments

• “[On memes:] If you get the meme right, everything downstream from that works.” — Chris (18:08)
• “Great ideas don’t stick around because they’re insufficiently sticky.” — Paraphrasing Eric Weinstein (18:08)
• “I realized that most people who claim to be introverts are just in the wrong social group.” — Chris (11:00)
• “Hungover Jeff Bezos on his yacht achieves 244 million hours of output.” — George (26:18)
• “Gap and the gain—you can only exist in one of the two states at once.” — George (88:23)
• “If the emotion caused by the meme is greater than the friction of spreading it, you’ve cracked the meme algorithm.” — Chris (39:06)
• “We forget how many things we forget because by definition, we’ve forgotten them.” — George (67:42)
• “If the price is your sanity, you shouldn’t pay it for pretty much whatever it is.” — Chris (91:26)

Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment / Topic | | --------- | --------------- | | 02:16 | The Keynesian Beauty Contest explained | | 03:40 | The Abilene Paradox & group irrationality | | 05:41 | Reflexivity: Soros, perception vs. reality | | 07:10 | Why brains evolved: Dunbar & social complexity | | 12:01 | Online tribes vs. deep in-person connections | | 14:58 | What makes memes contagious (K factor, emotional compression) | | 21:08 | Why ‘leverage’ is a bad meme but a vital concept | | 26:18 | “Hungover Jeff Bezos vs. Hardest Working Man” metaphor | | 32:55 | Predicting memes by looking for the untapped counter-meme | | 39:27 | “Chief Meme Officer”—memes and corporate growth | | 52:46 | Trojan horses: Content and opportunities that harm under the guise of help | | 65:46 | The Forgetting Paradox explained | | 69:58 | Why writing/recording concretizes thought | | 74:23 | “Not true but useful”—beliefs that are functionally valuable | | 83:08 | Gap vs. Gain: Framework for fulfillment | | 88:33 | Emotional Olympics: Why calmness wins | | 91:26 | The supreme value of peace/sanity |

Final Thoughts

This episode is a sprawling, playful, and practical journey through the battleground of memes, mindsets, and media. George Mack’s tool kit of paradoxes, analogies, and mental models offers a roadmap for cultivating better information diets, more rational thinking, and deeper relationships—offline and online. Chris and George’s rapport brings gravity and humor to lessons on everything from why leverage matters, to why obsessing over the 'gap' sabotages happiness, to the ultimate hack: chasing calmness over chaos.

For more from George Mack:

• Twitter/X: @georgemack
• Newsletter: george-mack.com

Recommended: Chris’s Reading List and Annual Review Template

• chriswillx.com/books
• chriswillx.com/review

Missed the episode? This summary gives you the core ideas, mental models, and playful asides you need to think (and meme) a little more rationally this year.