What's Our Problem?

While I found the author’s extensive analysis of the left’s overbearing movements revealing and compelling, I was bit surprised he failed to thoroughly examine the impact of misinformation on uninformed people whose propensity to be manipulated by conspiracy and social media algorithms appears to be the greatest threat to society. When people are so deluded by misinformation it seems impossible to have rational debate to sort out reasonable conclusions and compromise. I enjoyed the book but felt it fell short of giving the reader an adequate answer to the question encapsulated in the title.

Tim Urban begins by making entertaining and creative descriptions in laying out the framework for his argument. However when he shifts to emphasize the radical nature of SJF (social justice fundamentalism) he does exactly what he’s preaching against. He lost all credibility for me when he defended Bret Weinstein and attacked Naima Lowe in less than neutral fashion. He neglects to say that both Naima Lowe and Bret Weinstein were forced to resign. And in fact, it appears that Bret Weinstein received a greater severance than Naima Lowe. (Easy enough research to google). And he also doesn’t mention the extremely harmful and dangerous misinformation that Bret Weinstein has spread about COVID vaccines and HIV/AIDS. I enjoyed Tim Urban’s popular YouTube video and was very sad to find out he is probably a stealth right winger or libertarian. He should have spent more time in his book focusing his otherwise interesting theories on the very real threat that Trump and his overtly dangerous and hateful followers present to our country and the world rather than the more subtle and nuanced “micro aggressions” he is criticizing.

This book is required reading for those who want to understand why our society is so polarized and weird lately.

Too political

Well written, entertaining but also largely depressing. Only at page 340 of 352 is Tim finally tuning around to give some advice how we can fix things. So the problem is huge and complex compared to how simple the solution is. It made me look critically at my own beliefs and pledge to be a better steward of our liberal society because I know now where things turn if we continue to be too complacent and simple minded about our own thinking - for this I recommend this book to everyone.

I learned a lot from this book, even though I’d already read some of the themes on Wait But Why. This is well worth your time to read right through to the end. The clear way of looking at where we are as a society is really helpful when dealing with our own biases.

Long, but worth the read!

A great analysis and a wake-up!

Very engaging and informative book. It made me really think about how I think about the world. It got a bit dense towards the end, but I’m glad I pushed through as it was well worth it. I love the Wait But Why blog, so I was really excited to finally read this book. Thanks for all your hard work Tim!

Tim’s book should be required reading for everyone under the age of 25. The battle for a sane world where freedom of speech is respected and not denigrated may be lost on the older generations.

Great book!

I can’t imagine what it took to write this. Not only because of how complex and chaotic the political and cultural climate has become but because of the seemingly impossible task of making the points it does in such an even handed and clear manner. I will be recommending this to everyone.

I wouldn’t expect anything less from the creative and thoughtful mind that graced us with the Wait But Why blog.

Whether you agree with Urban’s hypotheses here or not, this book will give you something to think about, to discuss with others, and to use to better appreciate and empathize with others’ viewpoints. His unique writing style seen in his blogs — blending deep research with accessible prose — is present here. And, of course, the illustrations and humor add much value to the reading experience.

3 things about this book and about Tim: 1) if you read the entire huge series - the story of us, you would still want to read this which is quite different. 2) In general I think Tim Urban is a great read and I liked a good deal of his waitbutwhy posts. Some are really eye-opening. 3) it feels quite 'short' compared with the wait but why pieces - it's clear there is editing, editing and more editing, it feels like 10 sentences in the blog are encapsulated into 1 in this book, which is fantastic as more ideas gets through in less time, but I would pay to read the pre-edited 5 million pages or so :) Who is this book for? - anyone using social media - anyone who interacts with others - anyone that takes interest in current events, news, politics, voters - politicians - everyone

Tim Urban provides a much-needed framework for talking about the world we inhabit. While some may take issue with how much he focuses on low-rung thinking in social justice movements, I found it to be a pretty natural balance—enough has been said by others about the same phenomenon on the right that we really didn’t need it all spelled out for us again. I plan to recommend this book to anyone who’s open-minded enough to appreciate it. Thanks Tim!

Urban starts this piece with a fascinating framework for understanding current political discourse, analyzing the national conversation from a refreshing vertical lens that situates high-minded, rational thinking in opposition to low-minded, reactionary impulsivity, rather than the tired horizontal lens of left- and right-wing politics. While Urban expertly highlights the benefits of collaborative high-minded conversation and the pitfalls of groupthink echo chambers, his early explanations of common cognitive biases is almost too effective, providing all the necessary tools to interpret his eventual descent into what he, himself, would call, “lower-rung thinking.” While he claims to be simply concerned with the “hypercharged tribalism” that has grown to dominate the discourse as both sides of the political spectrum duke it out in “Political Disney World,” he devotes a pointedly oversized portion of the latter half of the book to his grievances with only one of the “golems,” leaving the other “golem,” and the conflicts between them, relatively unaddressed. Having read the book in its entirety, I can empathize with his position, but I wish the piece had continued the trend of the original blog series (which I also read in its entirety) of analyzing the interplay of these two “golems” rather than belaboring the point of how a single side engages in problematic behavior. While Urban has the courtesy to name the “straw man” he battles throughout most of this latter half, it would have been nice to see him either “steel man” the ideology with which he has such grievances or focus more on resisting the allure of the “Political Disney World” into which these “golems” have plunged us than exposing the “Trojan Horse” of the one without applying a similarly meticulous analysis to the other. As it stands, the totality of the piece reads as rather lopsided, like it should have either been half the length or twice as long.