“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

That’s the Golden Rule for navigating how you treat others, and you could do far worse than living your life by this code—at least in theory.

The reality is that people have always gotten out of pocket and tried to bully, intimidate, discriminate, or dominate others for various selfish reasons, regardless of how you treat them.

That’s how it is, how it always was, and how—as long as humans exist in a world of finite resources—it always will be.

Like Avon Barksdale says to Stringer Bell about their rival Marlo Stanfield in The Wire, “There’s always gonna be a Marlo, man. No Marlo, no game.”

Or, if you’re not a fan of the best show that HBO ever produced, I’ll give it to you in more clichéd terms—as long as there’s light, there’s gonna be darkness.

But just because the darkness is inevitable doesn’t mean you have to live your life passively accepting the sociological equivalent of getting your power shut off.

• ​Read the rest on my website​
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• ​Read the rest on X​

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Hard Lesson Of The Week

You can convince yourself of anything if you ignore evidence that doesn’t support your idea of the truth.

The three-headed dragon of confirmation bias, cherry-picking, and echo chambers wages a vicious assault on your reasoning abilities.

Cherry-picking falls under the umbrella of a cognitive distortion known as confirmation bias - our innate tendency to seek, favor, interpret, and recall information in a way that substantiates our prior beliefs or hypotheses.

Confirmation bias makes us feel validated when our perspectives are reinforced, so we unconsciously privilege confirming data over disconfirming data.

An echo chamber is a closed ecosystem of ideas and information in which people encounter only perspectives and opinions that align with their preexisting beliefs.

When evaluating online communities or social circles, ask yourself:

• Do they tend to promote only a single dominant perspective?
• Does rumor or incomplete data rather than evidence-based facts prop up that viewpoint?
• Do they frequently ignore or discredit dissenting facts if they challenge accepted narratives?

If you answer yes to any of these questions, you may be in an echo chamber. The lack of healthy disagreement, omission of opposing details, and refusal to acknowledge inconvenient truths are key warning signs.

There is one other danger of confirmation bias, cherry-picking, and residing in an echo chamber.

It can make you agree with ideas you know are absurd but can’t disagree with because you’ll look like an outsider who sides with the opposition.

When you commit to growth and the truth, you must be strong because you'll face hate from both sides. When your conclusions agree with one side, you’ll gain temporary praise from them and disdain from the other.

But soon enough, you’ll be seen as a traitor by those who embraced you and not accepted by the other side. You’ll have to learn to walk alone, without the safety of the crowd or groups, and be willing to look like a turncoat as you update your thinking.

We must make concrete efforts to expose ourselves to alternate paradigms and truths outside our filter bubbles.