I nearly swerved off the road when I heard these 7 words on a podcast 4 years ago.
“You can’t lose weight by exercise alone.”
Not exactly a revelation — but to me it was.
“Nah, she doesn’t have a clue,” I thought.
I had grown up with the belief that exercising is the best way to lose weight. I carried this belief into my 30s. I ate and drank whatever I wanted, exercised moderately and remained lean. To me, the best way to stay trim was exercise.
I was so stuck in my belief that I dismissed this podcast guest as unintelligent and misinformed.
Turns out she was right.
I was wrong — you probably are, too.
Tim Urban recently appeared on Infinite Loops with Jim O’Shaughnessy and discussed something that I’ve been mulling over for a while:
Most of your beliefs are probably wrong, be open to changing them. Seek the truth instead of seeking to be right all the time.
We all have internal, unconscious biases and ideas ingrained in us from an early age.
Problem is: what’s “true” for you isn’t always true for others. There’s a reason n=1 experiments are anecdotal and not scientific.
Our life experiences either validate these ideas and biases or destroy them. And it takes so very little for our beliefs to be validated — while it takes monumental efforts for them to be changed.
One of society’s biggest struggles is the overwhelming tendency to default to rationalization when our biases are challenged.
In the Infinite Loops episode, Tim & Jim explain how Flat Earthers in the Netflix documentary ‘Behind The Curve’ rationalize their way out of every reasonable shred of proof that the earth is round.
The earth is flat and nothing will convince them otherwise.
If you are determined to believe something, there is absolutely no one who is going to stop you from believing it.
Of course the earth is round.
Of course we can — and have — proven it.
Of course Flat Earthers are dealing with biases, detached from reality, and obsessed with conspiracy.
But Tim’s point is not about Flat Earthers — it’s about us pointing the finger at them while we carry on with our own misbeliefs and faulty biases.
We are all Flat Earthers. Some of us just hide it better.
What it comes down to is: accepting you’re probably wrong is the right thing to do.
