How what you think you know influences how you look at something

This is not a creationist versus evolutionary debate. I don’t care what somebody believes.

But you have to be careful: if your worldview is narrowed towards one theory, you’re going to attribute things to it that don’t belong there.

Many people think the brain works like this: you have a “reptile brain” and a newer part of the brain. Or: all fear comes from evolutionary processes, from survival.

It doesn’t work like that. The reason you look at it this way is because you’re influenced by the lens through which you observe.

You think it works like that now, because it seems like a logical consequence of evolution. But even if the theory of evolution still holds thousands of years from now, you’re still making a thinking error.

You assume a certain logic, a certain rhythm, and you project it onto everything.

What Darwin said was a brilliant local observation. But you cannot simply say: how humans will change in the future is because of evolution. That’s because the relationship backwards in time is different from the relationship forward in time.

If we no longer live according to evolutionary principles, then evolution simply disappears going forward in time. And backwards in time, it did work that way.

Have you ever counted calories? And that you immediately sensed it’s a bad idea, but you couldn’t figure out why?

There is no arguing against counting calories. The other side is always right: it really works. If you eat in a deficit, you will lose weight.

The problem is this: there is no bigger problem than setting up an unhealthy, one-dimensional relationship with something.

If my relationship with food is solely based on whether I lose weight or not, I have created a bunch of huge problems.

All other important relationships get squeezed out of the equation:

If the relationship is food → calories, then this gets lost:

  • What food do I need today? Do I need vegetables or meat today?

  • How much food do I need today? If you had a lot of food yesterday, maybe it’s smart to eat a bit less today, or vice versa.

  • The enjoyment you can have baking a cake. You lose all the fun: objectively you should never bake a cake, but in real life you should.

Counting calories is the same as regular dieting. Everybody who has tried it knows it doesn’t work if you only focus on eating less. If you focus on building a healthy life, it does work.
This is a surprisingly hard concept to grasp, since you think you are failing if all you do is cut cookies out of your diet and you still can’t control yourself.
The reason why a lot of people don’t have this problem is because they eat normally and healthily, and therefore don’t crave sugar or candy. Unless you’ve experienced this, you won’t understand it. It has very little to do with willpower.

 

*Counting calories is like math or physics. Objectively, you can’t go against it — but we all know there is more to life, whatever you want to call it.

Sometimes I hear scientists talk about neuropsychology or psychoses. I have been in a psychosis. It has nothing to do with what you think or how you think it works. You are completely missing the point.

And that worries me: because if that is what science is—talking about things you haven’t experienced yourself—then what are you people doing?

A psychosis, for instance, has nothing to do with just your brain. Your whole body is in a bad state.