Mental Frameworks and First Class Features

There’s a phenomena I sometimes encounter of running into someone who has completely embraced an ideology to the point that they view the world (or some particular ring of it) with that ideology, perhaps even defining the reality they see. ¹

For most of us, our reality is the American idealogy, an ever changing background context over the decades.

A common example of the ideology as reality is one particular scene in the movie, The Matrix, when Neo has to decide whether to accept the red or blue pill and see reality for the first time. The red and bluepill from the Matrix had an actual physical effect (in the matrix world), but the outcome was that Neo’s perception of reality had been forever altered.

In the online world of today and yesterday, I often come across these interesting sociological theories that will alter a person’s reality and the language they use to describe it.

Some examples:

• the ladder theory of relationships
• reddit’s red pill (now banned from reddit)
• theories pertaining to race, like critical race theory
• marxism & communism
• utilitarianism & libertarianism
• type 1 / type 2 thinking systems
• the peter, dilbert & gervais principles
• type A & type B personalities

I think that theories and models that explain how the world work are quite interesting, so its always great to come across new models and frameworks.

When a philosopher wins, their definition of the world takes power and everyone looks back and says: “that was obvious”, without realizing that the philosopher has won at all.

But something I’ve noticed about many of these models is that they have first and second class features. For example, the red pill is all about sexual dynamics between genders - for people who value sexual relations or relationships in general, this will be a tempting framework through which to view the world.² However, this framework is likely not appropriate for platonic friendships, work relationships or any other relationship that is not predicated on sexual relations.

It can even be hard to distinguish the framework from reality: if you’ve met someone who always talks about race, to them, race is part of their every day life and identity. Similarly, to a socialist, everything is about class, etc etc.

When confronted with the many models to choose from, I’m reluctant to choose one - I’d like to use the few that are most effective for modeling and analyzing each situation as they arrive.

For some people, they’ve probably only experienced one language, one religion and one culture. So it is likely obvious to them that there is only one way to view the world.

Notes