Cognitive Biases Afflict Everyone - The more you know about cognitive biases, the less certain you will be about almost everything else. Confirmation bias, overconfidence, and a host of other biases reveal the brain not as a truth-seeking organ but rather as a self-serving organ. Given natural selection, how could it be otherwise? Nevertheless, the implications of this for your own confidence in the truth of your views is profound. If you aren't humbled by the knowledge that cognitive biases afflict you, you don't yet know enough about them.

We Are Captives Of Media Ecosystems - Nearly everything we think we know about the larger world out there beyond our day-to-day experience is mediated. That is, somebody else stands between us and reality, and they tell us what's going on. We have directly confirmable knowledge of very little about the larger world. At the same time, our media have become polarized and our communities have self-sorted into opposing camps. The key point to understand about ourselves is that many on both sides of the divide live inside enclosed, all enveloping, all encompassing information environments that serve up diametrically opposing worldviews. Since we have virtually no direct knowledge of anything, these worldviews are "reality" to the people living inside them. Within each environment, the evidence supporting that worldview seems absolutely overwhelming. Regardless of which side we are on, we are absolutely sure we are right.

 Our Defense Against Manipulation Is Weak - Whether it is Lucy fooling Charlie Brown or Donald Trump fooling millions, the troubling reality that con artists all understand is that they can fool the same people over and over again. We are just shockingly credulous. The purveyors of no-holds-barred political strategies know how to harness resentment, tribalism, and fear to manipulate voters. While demagogues may not be able to fool all of the people all of the time, they may be able to fool enough of the people enough of the time to seize and hold power and use it to do grave and even irreparable harm.

Language Misleads Us - As we talk with others, we are seduced by the (generally necessary and valid) assumption that what another person means by a word is the same thing that we mean. A table is a table. A chair is a chair. Sure we may visualize objects that are a little different, but these differences really don't matter. They don't create problems. But when we move into the realm of politics and values, this assumption of similar meaning betrays us. Arguments in which words like loyalty, good, bad, moral, immoral, conservative, liberal, progressive, populist (and many others) are used are often plagued by semantic confusion. As a result, it may not be clear whether the disputants actually disagree or are just using words differently. It gets even more complex when some real disagreement and some semantic confusion merge into a single back and forth argument. It can be very difficult to even understand what is really happening in the rapid-fire flow of words streaming back and forth. Understanding that language misleads us helps us resist jumping to conclusions when listening to others.

Our Voice Lies To Us - We generally think in words, or think we do anyway. If we aren't schizophrenic, we identify this voice as our self. That's me that is speaking in my head, we think. Of course, hominids thought, planned, and kept track of things before they invented words. So we should understand language as an added capability rather than confusing it with the capacity to think as such. The problem is, that voice that speaks to us in words lies to us all the time, systematically and routinely, in fact. All of our mental capacities, including the voice that speaks in words inside our heads, evolved in service to natural selection. Our words are deployed to advance what natural selection inclines us to want (things like power, respect, success in mating, etc.). The narratives that pop unbidden into our minds are often directly self-serving. That criticism of me is wrong, we think. I'm better than so-and-so, we say to ourselves. I'm being treated unfairly, we feel. Pride, ambition, defensiveness, insecurity and more are often on display if we listen closely to those unbidden narratives. It is difficult to really listen to ourselves without realizing that we often lie to ourselves. But of course, in each particular case, we aren't aware we are lying at the time. We believe that voice in our head far more than we should.

Intelligence Is Overrated - Most of the time, people who display arrogance believe they are smart, smarter in fact than most other people. Surveys have shown that 65 percent of people believe they are smarter than average. Under the first layer of obvious error in such views lies a deeper layer of misunderstanding, and that is thinking of intelligence as just one or only a few abilities. There are in fact a great many capabilities relative to which some people are more capable than others. Probably hundreds. So lots of people are exceptionally good at something, and conversely, people who are extraordinarily able at many things are often strikingly unable in some particular way. Adding to the complexity of all this is the reality that intelligence must be used. A person of modest ability who is highly motivated can greatly outperform by most practical measures the unmotivated genius. Who is the more intelligent? Finally, if we think about it, we realize that intelligence, whatever it actually is in its many forms and incarnations, is for sure an unearned gift. The "intelligent" are, no thanks to themselves, winners in the genetic lottery. Far from arrogance, this realization should prompt the thought "to whom much is given, much is expected." This idea that gifts create obligations has been around for a long time. "For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required." (Luke 12:48). So, if you think you're so damned smart, saddle up and do your duty.

World Too Complex For Our Limited Abilities - Part of understanding ourselves is grasping how we function in the environment we occupy. People who are paying attention are pretty much regularly running into new areas of reality. These are aspects of the world about which our previous knowledge had been very limited at best. After repeatedly encountering previously unknown realities, it will occur to some that the modern world is far too complex for any individual mind, no matter how brilliant, to understand in any comprehensive way. Understanding pieces, perhaps. Understanding the whole, no way. A corollary of this is that predicting the future is quite beyond us.

Our Feelings Will Show - We humans are truly remarkable in our ability to detect even minor changes in the facial expressions and body language of others and correctly read the underlying emotions that drive those changes. Political passions don't produce minor changes. Strong anger on a person's face screams loudly without a word being spoken. Chances are pretty good that if you are feeling anger, frustration, disdain, contempt - even if only at half-strength - your feelings will be detected and will turn the emotional tone of the interaction south fast. If you don't want your feelings to screw things up, you'll need to actually find it within yourself to be "a bigger person." But really. No pretending.

The Preening Self Undermines Group Success - It is often said that money is the root of all evil, but among groups of volunteers working in politics, the most significant sin is likely to be a greedy ego, a pridefulness being asserted by someone seeking confirmation of their superiority. Pridefulness, however, is a zero-sum game that works to undermine cooperation. A special talent is required to tame a needy ego, and it requires leadership ability to refocus a group's attention on shared positive goals. To overcome the distraction and irritation of a preening strutting personality, such positive goals must be important enough to satisfy the ego needs of group members and reward them for seeking success through cooperation. The ability to accomplish such miracles requires keen observation and nimble footwork, but it can be essential to prevent the preening egos of people involved in the process from undermining the process.

Loyalty Produces Tribalism - Sometimes our innate tendencies cut in both directions, producing helpful and harmful results from the same underlying inclination. Such is the case with loyalty. We are deeply evolved to be loyal to our tribe. This glue has enabled profound cooperation over thousands of years, and this cooperation has in turn enabled the rise of civilization. At the same time, this prehistorically-evolved mechanism has been hijacked by "civilized" leaders to raise armies to fight wars. The stars have now aligned (not in our favor), and this mechanism is powering America's growing tribal hostility. The moral claim of loyalty, powerful inside most of us, impels us to rally to "our" side. We underestimate this force at our peril.