Gurwinder Bhogal — Certainty is the Death of Thought (EP.155)

Gurwinder Bhogal is a writer and programmer who writes about the myriad ways in which technology and psychology conspire to fool us and how we can withstand the covert assault on our senses. Gurwinder is known for his epic Twitter ‘Megathreads’ which set out a series of powerful concepts for understanding the world. He joins the show to discuss our tendency to narrativize information, how to overcome the bandwidth tax, why Wikipedia is the world’s largest source of misinformation, and MUCH more! Important Links:

• Megathread: Feb 7, 2020 (53,000 likes)
• Megathread: Feb 11, 2022 (62,000 likes)
• Megathread: March 18, 2023 (most recent)
• Gurwinder's Substack
• Gurwinder's Twitter
• The Toxoplasma of Rage

Show Notes:

• Megathreads & the Woozle effect
• AI, the Encyclopedia Disinformatica, and cultivating a garden of Mithridates
• Capturing the nuance between dishonesty and lying
• The Toxoplasma of Rage
• Overcoming the bandwidth tax
• Brandishing the golden hammer; why we can’t comprehend large numbers
• Tribalism & intersubjectivity
• The purity spiral
• Are we facing a lost generation?
• We are programmed to like complex explanations
• Narrativizing information
• “Certainty is the death of thought”
• Climbing the thinking ladder
• MUCH more!

Books Mentioned:

• The Fifth Science; by Exurb1a
• Talking to Strangers; by Malcolm Gladwell
• Tao Te Ching; by Lao Tzu
• What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies; by Tim Urban