The End of History Illusion & Head Fake Learning

Note: The video is a sort of intro to let you know whether or not you want to continue reading. It’s not actually an entire summary of the post.

Minds don’t often change

A friend and I were swapping stories about an incredibly nice professor we knew. We were trying to one-up each other. But it ended with my friend mentioning that, after a long argument at a party, he got a text days later from the professor saying that he wanted to let him know what my friend had said changed his (the professor’s) mind and he now believed differently as a result of the conversation.

Most of us cannot remember when we last changed our minds. So much of the stakes of modern life feel predicated on being right: no longer are conspiracy theories fringe beliefs, but the immediate response of both sides after a major news event.

We’ve become fundamentalists to our own causes, unwilling to understand why someone may believe or live differently than we do.

And know that I use the term fundamentalist very intentionally.

Fundamentalism to me isn’t dangerous because the beliefs are false, it’s dangerous because of how it wields those beliefs. Unit 731 in WWII (scientific discovery through torture) wouldn’t be less evil if it was found that they correctly applied the scientific method: it was the actions that resulted from their beliefs, not necessarily the truthfulness of their beliefs, that made their actions evil.

Fundamentalism is a posture, not a set of beliefs.

Every belief system can have fundamentalists. I think you can be a fundamentalist if you hold any belief in a posture characterized by the actions below:

• Rigidity and Certainty: Strong, unwavering adherence to a set of beliefs or doctrines.

• Intolerance and Exclusivity: Limited tolerance for differing viewpoints, often accompanied by a sense of superiority and a clear "us vs. them" mentality.

• Resistance to Change and Authoritarianism: Reluctance to adapt beliefs or practices, preference for clear hierarchical authority structures, and strong group identity.

Writing this, I could be speaking of any political party, religion, or worldview—they all have fundamentalists.

And the more entrenched this becomes, the harder it is for us to change our minds (so much feels like it’s at stake!), and harder still for us to change the minds of others.

But I think changing our minds, and recognizing when we do, will make us better able to do so when it comes to others.

End of History Illusion—how to recognize your mind changing

The first step of changing others isn’t changing others, or even changing yourself; it’s recognizing you have changed. There’s a cognitive bias called “The End of History Illusion.” Basically, when we look at our past, we see ourselves as different—we’ve changed. But when we imagine ourselves in the future we imagine ourselves as basically the same. We instinctively feel like all our major changes are behind us.

The "end of history illusion" is a cognitive bias where people believe they won't change much in the future, underestimating their potential for personal growth and development.

Think of it like this: you can likely think of something cringe you used to believe, but doubt that, in this moment, you will have a similar regret 20 years from now.

A Libertarian turned Socialist may see the error of their past self, but is similarly foolish to they think their current self is without error. Most people, if asked if they’re infallible will quickly answer no. But if you ask them to tell you their false beliefs, they can’t tell you.

The tricky thing about beliefs is: we think they’re true.

I think we all need to understand that, in the same way we feel the truth of our unknown false beliefs, those with which we disagree have a similar feeling of certainty. And the defensiveness we feel when challenged is something they feel.

In an urbanism context, if you care deeply about the built world around you, where before you didn’t, that’s good! It means you changed.

And if you changed before, you can change some more.

And if you are changing, why assume others cannot, and are not?

It’s a crucial first step to recognize you are a being capable of change. Start by recognizing it.

Other people can be a different story. How do we get people to accept change when they don’t believe it’s in their best interest? Presenting facts to someone who is incentivized to stay the same feels futile.

Head Fake Learning—how to change their minds

In his profound last lecture before he died, Randy Pausch talks about ‘head fake’ learning. These are moments when people have no idea what they’re actually learning. In his example, he uses sports: kids think they’re learning to play a game but they’re learning teamwork, dedication, sacrifice, losing, sportsmanship, etc.

One reason facts don’t work is because emotional walls and biases cannot interpret them as such. We need to get past these walls.

This is the very reason I started making the content I make. I recognized that all the content I loved was made for someone like me who was already obsessed with this topic. This is what some people call being orange pilled; being radicalized to the point where you use esoteric language most people don’t understand.

I wanted to be a gateway for people to understand—even if they never pedal another bike in their life—why a bike lane may be a good idea.

And here’s what I’ve learned: there’s a way to bypass people’s defenses. And it’s by engaging stronger emotion (Make them laugh! Make them cry!), or talk about different things than the actual lesson, then worry about correlating it back later.

And if you think about it, this is what teachers do with parables and stories. Jesus didn’t go to the lawyer and say: “Look, God says love your neighbor? I’m telling you this, that refugee/foreigner is your neighbor!” Instead, he tells a story. In the end the lawyer, wanting an out from loving his neighbor, is calling a foreigner his neighbor.

The best teaching moments are when we either don’t know we’re being taught, or we don’t know what it is we are being taught. It keeps us from being defensive.

And I sort of have a hot take when it comes to this: people don’t dislike when movies are ‘woke’ so much as when movies don’t do a good job into tricking you into agreeing with them. When people are upset at new movies being ‘woke,’ I don’t think it’s because they are woke so much as they are bad at head fake learning. Fight Club was subversive. So is The Matrix, The Truman Show, and other movies I could list that show that I’m a millennial. But their entertainment value is so strong, even if people recognize what they’re being fed, they’re liking learning other things unaware.

One of my best videos was one where I talk about and marvel over guardrail technology for three and a half minutes before I start to talk about how it shows the values of our society.

One way to get people to accept ideas less defensively is to do so with a head fake.

• Make it funny: make them laugh.

• Make it emotional: make them cry.

• Tell a story.

So what?

Being unchanging in a universe constantly in flux is to become wrong even if you aren’t at a given moment. We need to be able to accept, acknowledge, and expedite change, first in ourselves.

Secondly, we should understand it’s about more than being right; it’s about being winsome. More than just not being a jerk, we need to work towards making people want something as much as we need them to be believe something. As Pascal once said, “Make good [people] wish it were true, then show that it is.”

Lastly, it’s not us versus them.

It’s all of us versus entropy.

It’s all of us vs. hate and exclusion.

When we make the world a better place, we make it better even for people to identify as our enemies.

They’re on our side, they just don’t know it yet 🤝