Summary of What's Our Problem By Tim Urban: A Self-Help Book for Societies

By Willie M. Joseph

DISCLAIMER

This book does not in any capacity mean to replace the original book but to serve as a vast summary of the original book.

Summary of What's Our Problem By Tim Urban: A Self-Help Book for Societies

 

IN THIS SUMMARIZED BOOK, YOU WILL GET:

• Chapter astute outline of the main contents.
• Fast & simple understanding of the content analysis.
• Exceptionally summarized content that you may skip in the original book

Tim Urban's book What's Our Problem? is a deep and expansive analysis of our modern times, packed with original concepts, sticky metaphors, and 300 drawings. It provides an entirely new framework and language for thinking and talking about today's complex world, instead of focusing on the usual left-center-right horizontal political axis. Readers will find themselves on a delightful and fascinating journey that will ultimately change the way they see the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Willie M. Joseph
• Release date: Mar 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215113349

Willie M. Joseph

Willie M. Joseph summaries get straight to the point and provide essential tools to help you be an informed reader in a busy world, whether you’re browsing for new discoveries, managing your to-read list for work or school, or simply deepening your knowledge. Available for nonfiction titles, these are the book summaries that are worth your time.  

Book preview

Fact 1: Technology is exponential

The closer you get to page 1,000, the more mind-blowing it is to jump forward to the next page. This is because technology is exponential and more advanced societies make progress at a faster rate than less advanced societies. People in the 19th century knew more and had better technology than people in the 16th century, so it's no surprise that there were more advances on 1,000 than on page 999. Human technology has been advancing on an exponential fast track since the Middle Ages, leading to a world that would seem like a totally different planet to humans on any previous page.

Fact 2: More technology means higher stakes

Technology is a multiplier of both good and bad, leading to both better and bad times. On page 999 of human history, the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution generated vast improvements in human prosperity, but also saw an explosion of slavery and brutal imperialism. On page 1,000, the two most catastrophic wars in history followed by existential threats with the invention of nuclear and biological weapons and the onset of climate change. In the 21st century, the pace of change has been dizzying, with the advent of widespread internet, social media, smart phones, self-driving cars, and crypto, not to mention the dramatic leaps in AI powering many of these advances. However, the same technology that has made our world magical has also opened a large number of Pandora's boxes: rapidly advancing AI, cyber warfare, autonomous weapons, and bioweapons. With the stakes this high, we should be our wisest selves.

Fact 3: My society is currently acting like a poopy-pantsed four-year-old who dropped its ice cream

The most important details in this text are that society is becoming more childish each year, tribalism and political division are rising, major institutions are floundering, and trust is disintegrating. Philosopher George Santayana warned that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, and Edmund Burke warned that people will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors. These trends seem to be happening in lots of societies, not just my own, and I worry that we are on our way to making some terrible and preventable mistakes. We are the authors of The Story of Us, writing the story as we go along. If we get page 1,001 right, Future Us and trillions of our descendants could live high up on a mountain in a magical utopia, but if we get it wrong, it could be the last page of the story.

We have no mentors, no editors, no one to make sure it all turns out okay, so it's all in our hands. If we can all get just a little wiser, together, it may be enough to nudge the story onto a trajectory that points toward an unimaginably good future.

Hey

Tim is a man who writes a blog called Wait But Why, where he explores topics such as artificial intelligence, procrastination, relationships, aliens, and more. A few years ago, he noticed that society was devolving and decided to dive into the rabbit hole of what's our problem. It took him six years to emerge from the rabbit hole, but when he did, he had a new perspective on the world, on politics, on group dynamics, and on how we think and why we believe the things we believe. The book's primary tool is the Ladder, a thinking lens that helps us better understand the world and ourselves. In Chapter 1, we will look at the familiar subject of politics through our unfamiliar new glasses.

In Chapter 2, we will examine the story of our regression and look at our current trajectory up close by examining two American stories. In Chapters 5-7, we will dive into the controversial world of American social justice. The lessons within the case studies are universal and evergreen, and apply to everyone, everywhere.

The Ladder

The Tug-of-War in Our Heads

The Primitive Mind is a set of coded instructions for how to be a successful animal in the animal's natural habitat. Natural selection develops the software using a simple process: software that's good at making its animal pass on its genes stays around, and the less successful software is discontinued. Genetic mutation is like a bug appearing in the software from time to time, and every once in a while, a certain bug makes the software better. This system works fine for most animals, but humans are strange animals and have crafted a novel environment for themselves called civilization. This has allowed humans to take their environment into their own hands in a way no other animal can.

Moths have used moonlight as a beacon for nocturnal navigation for millions of years, but when people start turning lights on at night, the moth's brain software hasn't had time to update itself. Modern humans are like moths, running on a well-intentioned Primitive Mind that misinterprets the weird world we've built for ourselves. The good news is that our Primitive Mind has a roommate, the Higher Mind, which can think outside itself and self-reflect and get wiser with experience. The Primitive Mind and Higher Mind are a funny pair, with the Primitive Mind wanting to survive and reproduce and help its offspring reproduce, while the Higher Mind tries to override the software and keep you within the makes sense circle on