There is too much cognitive dissonance, our little brains can’t take it. We need a new paradigm that reconciles all these disparate and seemingly contradictory ideas. How is the monotheistic Catholic God legitimate at the same time as the Hindu gods? If white people are smarter than black people, why do black people get into better colleges than white people? If America is the strongest nation on the planet, why are so many of its citizens struggling to make ends meet? etc.

Some of these ideas need to be dropped. They are from dated worldviews that no longer hold water and are deeply problematic. But some of these questions, we don’t have a good answer for. We need to shed the fat on old bloated perspectives, come up with creative solutions for new questions, and try to figure out how to tie it all together in a cohesive, explainable way. Easy, right?

Obviously this is a big task, one has never been taken on by an individual or by a group of individuals before. The prevailing world views evolved organically, generations passing down knowledge and each making it a bit cleaner and simpler until broader themes started to emerge. But now we can name the task, we don’t have to fumble around in the dark to do it again.

A lot has changed in a short period of time for us as a species. Reality has experienced the amount of change that used to take centuries or millennia in decades. Most of this change has been driven by technology. I’m proud of the progress we have made as a species. But like a kid going through a growth spurt, we need to shed the clothes that don’t fit anymore and try something new on.

As an engineer, I love a good problem statement. They are the first step in the design process, and the first step to building a new solution. We need to continue to define the problem so we can figure out where we go from here.

Like any good problem, there will never be one final answer. The two truths I think about is that reality is constructed and the universe tends towards entropy. Life is only going to get more chaotic; entropy can never decrease. What we perceive as reality is us trying to create order from the randomness. We are always going to be constructing more complex and elaborate ways to make sense of the world around us. Whatever we make now will break later, it’s all part of the human condition.

There is too much cognitive dissonance, our little brains can’t take it. We need a new paradigm that reconciles all these disparate and seemingly contradictory ideas. How is the monotheistic Catholic God legitimate at the same time as the Hindu gods? If white people are smarter than black people, why do black people get into better colleges than white people? If America is the strongest nation on the planet, why are so many of its citizens struggling to make ends meet? etc.

Some of these ideas need to be dropped. They are from dated worldviews that no longer hold water and are deeply problematic. But some of these questions, we don’t have a good answer for. We need to shed the fat on old bloated perspectives, come up with creative solutions for new questions, and try to figure out how to tie it all together in a cohesive, explainable way. Easy, right?

Obviously this is a big task, one has never been taken on by an individual or by a group of individuals before. The prevailing world views evolved organically, generations passing down knowledge and each making it a bit cleaner and simpler until broader themes started to emerge. But now we can name the task, we don’t have to fumble around in the dark to do it again.

A lot has changed in a short period of time for us as a species. Reality has experienced the amount of change that used to take centuries or millennia in decades. Most of this change has been driven by technology. I’m proud of the progress we have made as a species. But like a kid going through a growth spurt, we need to shed the clothes that don’t fit anymore and try something new on.

As an engineer, I love a good problem statement. They are the first step in the design process, and the first step to building a new solution. We need to continue to define the problem so we can figure out where we go from here.

Like any good problem, there will never be one final answer. The two truths I think about is that reality is constructed and the universe tends towards entropy. Life is only going to get more chaotic; entropy can never decrease. What we perceive as reality is us trying to create order from the randomness. We are always going to be constructing more complex and elaborate ways to make sense of the world around us. Whatever we make now will break later, it’s all part of the human condition.