A Useful Idea from Philosophy to Identify Self-Limiting Beliefs

[Vamsi Interviews]

I was inspired by some recent responses by BizyDad to another forum member about their self-limiting beliefs, and it reminded me of an old philosophy idea I came across from David Deutsch called "anti-rational memes". Note that memes are being used in the evolutionary Richard Dawkins' sense of "an idea, behaviour or style that spreads from person to person within a culture"

The crucial distinction is between 3 types of ideas:
Rational - These are ideas grounded in reality, which makes them useful for certain results.
Irrational - These are ideas not grounded in reality, but they aren't necessary harmful either. They just might not be useful. These can be relatively easy to identify and root out.
Anti-rational - These are ideas that are not grounded in reality, but they also harm progress because their way of surviving is by suppressing criticism. An example is an idea from religion such as, "My religion is the only true religion." This idea may lead to guilt or shame if you question the religion or consider learning about other religions.

Another distinction worth making is between static and dynamic memes. Static memes try to remain the same and propagate themselves through emotions such as shame, guilt, fear, worry etc. They ossify society, and for a very long time, human beings had the physical capabilities to create new ideas just like we do today, but our culture kept us static. Innovation was suppressed. The scientific enlightenment around the 1700s changed this because for the first time we questioned the church's authority and we decided that the source of an idea had no bearing on whether it was true or not. This led to experiments and progress via evidence. Before that, the church held a vice grip over ideas and progress.

A dynamic meme changes over time, and propagates primarily by being useful. It doesn't make you feel bad for questioning it.

Self-limiting beliefs tend to be anti-rational and static. They resist change and they make it harder for you to learn other, useful ideas. Other examples include, but are not limited to:

• "No matter how much I work/learn, I'll never be as good/rich/famous as X (insert role model)." - See Carol Dweck's research on fixed mindset vs. growth mindset. The fixed mindset is an example of a limiting belief. It's not true, but it resists change and makes it hard to learn any new idea that conflicts with it.
• "Getting rich is about being lucky." - This is a great excuse to resist action and resist change.
• "For me to win in business, somebody else has to lose."

So when you come across an idea in yourself or someone else and you suspect it might be self-limiting, ask yourself: Is this idea grounded in reality? Does it spread because it's useful, or does it spread because it resists criticism and change of itself? If it's the latter, it's likely an anti-rational meme.

A simple saying I love from David Deutsch is something like: Having untrue ideas is perfectly fine. They can be fixed by the truth. That's just being ignorant. But being stupid is having bad ideas that actively make learning more difficult until they are examined and dismantled.

What are some self-limiting beliefs you used to have that you've since left behind?

 

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[Jerma]

This happened around the first time I read TMF years ago. I had the rich = bad belief.

I was taking a walk in this lake-shore neighbourhood. I was just thinking about stuff, and then I saw this massive mansion. It stood up among the rest. I remember thinking things like: "I bet they are miserable in their gigantic empty house." And then I saw their perfect lawn, and I thought: "I bet they use toxic pesticides and they don’t care about the environment." It just kept going, and I kept judging them. At that moment, I felt like a perfectly objective and rational third-party observer.

Then it hit me. Why was I thinking those things? Why was I focused on this house? When I looked inward at the moment, I realized that I was full of this poisonous envy. I was envious of the people living there, but I wasn’t even consciously aware of that, and all those judgments were popping up to protect my ego. It sucked and I was disgusted with myself (envy is the only sin with no pleasure!). Really shifted my perspective.

But.. I'm going to challenge you a little here. Let's say that the ground reality was actually exactly like I thought it was, would that have made me rational?

• "No matter how much I work/learn, I'll never be as good/rich/famous as X (insert role model)." - See Carol Dweck's research on fixed mindset vs. growth mindset. The fixed mindset is an example of a limiting belief. It's not true, but it resists change and makes it hard to learn any new idea that conflicts with it.
• "Getting rich is about being lucky." - This is a great excuse to resist action and resist change.
• "For me to win in business, somebody else has to lose."

To use your examples, I would probably be trivial to find examples of each of theses. Which means, they are grounded in reality at least somewhat, which means they can't be irrational according to your definitions.

I think it's tempting to try to ground the definition or rationality into some kind of "ground reality".. but that's very unhelpful thing to do imo. It kinda makes being rational more difficult. Everybody believes that they are rational. Calling people out on their irrationality doesn't really change people minds, it mostly create conflicts.

A better definition of rationality imo would be to go back to root of the word : ratio. The world isn't black or white, to be rational is to have the proper ratio between things.

In a way, it was rational for my slow-lane self to think that rich = bad. It was rational because it helped me cope with the negative emotions that came from suppressing my desires. It made being in the slow-lane more bearable. It was rational that I was taught those things by the media (the script), because they wanted to exploit my labour. When we talk about the "truth", it's actually not untrue that some rich people are bad people.

But.. it wasn't serving the person I wanted to be (fast-lane / free). It was out of ratio there. It's irrational to try be rich and dislike rich people. If you actually want to get shit done, it's irrational to compare yourself endlessly to other people. It's not serving you to think about the advantages other people have over you (even if they are real). At the same time, if you want to stay stuck in life, those things are actually rational things to do! The reality or truth of those things is not irrelevant.. but it's just not the important aspect. It's a trap actually. Reality is infinite, you could spend your entire life listing true statements about a single thing. Anyway.

 

[Gypsy Soul]