Hey, what is up thinkers? This is the first time in a long time, I'm coming back with a vengeance with a podcast episode.
Now, what is this podcast episode about? A lot of different things. First things first, I really wanted to talk about this week's topic, which I've discussed in my substack. I've discussed it on Twitter, and I discussed it on my Instagram, which is changing minds.
As you guys know, I'm reading three different books right now. I'm reading How Minds Change by David Mcrainey, the second book I'm reading is like a Think Again by Adam Grant, and the third book I'm reading is the Enigma of Reasoning. I forgot who the author is not gonna look right now. But it's the enigma of reasoning. And, essentially, what my goal is, is to understand the process by which we reason how our minds work, and how can they change?
And how can we convince others to change? And I got some excellent insights into that. First things first, I really wanted to announce, that before that I release a membership site called Nutrition by Jae, everyone listening should check it out.
It's only 20 bucks a month, you have full access to a discord community, you get access to my ebook, you get access to a q&a session with me, every single month, every single week, there's going to be releasing new content related to nutrition.
So it's going to be the SparkNotes version of many of the many common questions that people have about nutrition, along with the studies to back it up.
Anyways, let's get back to the podcast. So how do we change minds? So far, I've gained good insights from each of these books. What I gained from especially from How Minds Change is this concept of perspective taking. So when we have opposition, the last thing we typically do is take on the perspective of those who oppose us or that we oppose. And what certain research is showing us is that we take on the perspective of other people.
We soften our views, we are more inclined to listen to others. And I think that's powerful. That's powerful stuff right there. By taking on the perspective of another person, we become more empathetic to what they're going through. And that's something that's lost in today's political discourse. Another aspect that I really wanted to cover. And obviously, like this, the research that I talked about I covered in my Instagram, substack posts, you know, I'm linking to those. So if you want to read into that you can.
The second perspective I really wanted to get into when I prospective topic, is metacognition. So thinking about your own thinking, when we talk about thinking about our own thinking, we're talking about reflecting upon the thought process that we use to get to the conclusion that we got to, or how did we think about something in the first place? And this is powerful stuff because it gets us to not only see the bias and others, the bias in ourselves but are we thinking accordingly? Are we thinking accurately? Are we being charitable? Are we trying to understand the other side, and what they're trying to say, what they're going through? I think that's really impactful.
Because once we start taking on other people's perspectives, and thinking about our own thought process, we could begin to bridge the gap between the other quote-unquote, side and ourselves and our quote-unquote, side. And the reason why I use quotes is because humans are really tribal. And we put ourselves into arbitrary categories based on the bare minimum, but besides that point, we need to break the mold and come to understand we need a shared reality again.
And that's very imperative, especially in today's day and age, where there is a huge assault on our understanding of truth, our sense of shared truth, and society. Anyways, I'm gonna leave that where it may be, and I wanted to give an insight from
Adam Grant’s book Think Again, I'm still reading that book. But the gist of what I'm getting so far after reading the first chapter is to think like a scientist. Oftentimes, when we have us, we preach our views, we try to preach it to others get, convince others of our views. We try to persuade people sort of like a politician. But we don't critically examine our views, we don't test our views, we don't put them to the desk to test and then see if they fold, or if they stand up to scrutiny. And if they do fold, we don't change our belief systems, we don't change our perspectives.
And that's what Adam Grant means by thinking like a scientist when it comes to beliefs. See, a scientist shouldn't hold on to a cherished belief if it doesn't hold up to scrutiny with the data or the evidence. And we should treat our own beliefs, our own perspectives, our own viewpoints, sort of in a similar way. Now, obviously, this is easier said than done. But I just totally agree with where he's coming from. It's really good stuff.
Now, lastly, the lesson I got from the Enigma reasoning, is the fact that humans the reason why I'm sorry, the reason why we have reasoning, itself is not an individual endeavor. It is to communicate to argue and to convince other people of our points of our beliefs or attitudes and to come to a collective consensus as to what's sort of going on in our environment, what's sort of going on in our world. Reasoning itself is inherently social. And I think that's important. I think that's imperative when talking about human psychology and reasoning.
So I'm gonna leave you off that those four different lessons, one, take on the perspective of others in order to change their minds and change your own mind. To think about your own thinking, metacognition is very important. Three, take on the mindset of scientists when it comes to your own beliefs. You know, put your beliefs up to scrutiny. See if you know what your predictions are, what your beliefs are, are actually accurate or not, for reasoning is social. It's not an individual endeavor. And I'm gonna leave you guys off with that.
Hopefully, I'm able to make more podcast episodes, I really want to make this more of a regular occurrence, a regular thing, so bear with me. I know for my sub stack, you guys are going to receive my premium sub stack you guys are going to receive premium episodes on questions that you send in topics really want to talk about. If you're part of nutrition by Jay, you get automatic, a free one-year access to my premium substack so keep that in mind. Anyways, people thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed this podcast episode. Have a great week. See you next week. Peace out
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