How to Escape the Mirror House

Two techniques to refresh the mind

Are you open-minded?

Most people would say “yes.”

I know I would.

Of course, there have to be limits.

Where do you draw the boundaries of what’s acceptable to say?

Are those the same as the boundaries of what’s acceptable to think?

These aren’t easy questions to answer.

Especially because most of us no longer share a common cognitive terrain.

Benjamin Carlson @bfcarlson

If you wanted to understand where somebody truly lived, you’d need to make a map of their digital world. The topology of our reality is defined less by physical features than by the hubs and nodes to which we are connected.

The digital landscape where you spend my days has been tailored to your tastes, behaviors, and inferred preferences.

So how do you know whether you are open-minded?

Think to the last time you borrowed a friend or family member’s device.

One second in their digital environment feels like stepping into another country.

The flora and fauna are entirely different.

It feels disorienting, even wrong.

So many misunderstandings in our common life arise from this phenomenon.

When online, we inhabit separate, mirrored rooms where our own image is magnified and reflected back to us in various permutations.

We think we are exposed to so much of the world, when what is being fed and filtered to us is an extrapolation of ourselves.

There is a way (I hope) to escape this. 

Two things I’m putting into practice:

First, a media diet. I’ll be scheduling all my Twitter posts for the next week and refraining from reading anything but books in an app. Whatever the effects, it’s good mental hygiene.

Benjamin Carlson @bfcarlson

I love this thought experiment Marshall McLuhan proposes to novelist Tom Wolfe in 1970. What would happen if all the media—even and especially this platform—shut off for one week? Stick around for his provocative explanation of why all news is fiction.

Second, embrace the randomness of old books.

If you’re like me, you have a lot on your shelves that you haven’t finished reading.

Over the years, I’ve stocked my shelves with a simple algorithm.

Every time you go into a used book store, allow yourself one book.

The first book that holds your attention for more than a minute, which you’d never heard of and wouldn’t have found through any recommendation algorithm, is the one you take home. 

This process has given me a study on the psychology of gambling, a memoir on practice of espionage, a glossary of esoteric symbolism, a folio of Tibetan paintings, a remarkable book on Zen koans from a Catholic perspective. 

In my experience, intellectual diversity exists nowhere in more abundance than in a single used book shop. 

This week, I’ll be picking one of those serendipitous books per night to revisit.

What I’m Working On

Last week, I appeared on Stephan Livera’s podcast to talk about media and an idea I’ve been toying with called the time value of truth. In short: The importance of the truth diminishes with time. This is why stalling and delaying is a successful tactic for dealing with many crises.

I also gave a lesson on gaining the attention of highly influential people to Daniel Vassallo’s Small Bets community. Great interaction and feedback. I’ll be releasing a fuller version of that course soon.

Until the next time,

Ben