Here are the steps of how this happens, as I see it, though not every one of these steps occurs in every single case:

(1) Many people feel dissatisfied with the state of their society and its impact on their lives, and blame the groups that have long remained in power. (Sometimes these groups that have long been in power deserve blame for the bad state of affairs; other times, the bad state of affairs is due to circumstances largely outside of their control.) Blaming these groups that have long remained in power often also involves distrust in existing institutions.

(2) A new potential leader emerges who is perceived not to be a member of the groups that have historically been in power (or if they come from the original groups of power, then this potential leader typically claims outsider status, presenting themselves as a reformer who is different than the other insiders). Typically, this potential leader is viewed as being more “one of the people” than the prior groups in power.

(3) This leader is charismatic and, though potentially polarizing, many people find this person captivating and persuasive. Oftentimes, this leader is also high on traits commonly associated with grandiose narcissism (e.g., a belief in their own superiority and specialness, a need for admiration, arrogance, manipulative tendencies, a “with me or against me” mentality, and reduced empathy).

(4) This leader promotes a grand vision of what the country could become (or could be restored to again) under their leadership, which gets many people excited.

(5) The leader typically appears to be powerful and courageous, and willing to stand up against (and correct the errors and abuses of) the previous people in power who have held the country back.

(6) In addition to blaming society’s problems on the prior group in power, the leader also uses one or more other groups as scapegoats, and blames many of society’s problems on that group as well (typically a distrusted local minority group, immigrants, or some other country that the population sees as a potential threat). However, the scapegoat group(s) are either not actually a cause of any of the problems in that society, or are only a minor cause (with most of the problems being caused by other factors).

(7) The leader also exaggerates, lies to, and manipulates the people, claiming simple (but inaccurate) narratives about what’s gone wrong that make their solutions seem likely to be effective, and that paint themselves as the heroes and the prior groups in power (as well as the scapegoats) as villains.

(8) Through their charisma, exciting vision for the future, and promises to fix the problems in society by correcting the errors of the previous groups in power and by cracking down on the proposed scapegoats, the leader gets strong public support. The leader then gets into a position of executive power by one of a variety of means (e.g., being elected, being appointed, deal-making, coercion, or a coup).

(9) The leader then attempts to neutralize the power of formerly powerful groups that were in power (e.g., through violence, arrests, seizing their wealth, and/or disparaging them and damaging their reputations).

(10) The leader additionally harms the scapegoated group(s) (e.g., through arrests, preventing immigration, forced migration, tariffs, military action, and/or violence). Sometimes, though not always, the leader also cracks down on leading intellectuals and groups of intellectuals, attempting to weaken their influence or prevent them from being listened to.

(11) The leader amasses power and wealth for themselves while in charge, while also attempting to reduce the checks and balances on their power (e.g., by weakening or consolidating other parts of government, or by exerting control over media and journalism). Additionally, the leader typically engages in information control and propaganda in an attempt to get the population to view all of their actions as positive. The more effective their information control and propaganda are, the more they can get away with making terrible decisions on behalf of society and enriching themselves at the expense of the people.

(12) The leader’s actions sometimes produce no benefit at all for the bulk of the populace, and sometimes produce a short-term benefit to the populace, but ultimately, the leader’s actions come at a meaningful (and sometimes disastrous) long-term cost, leaving society worse off long-term than it was before that person rose to power.

And, with that, as has happened again and again in many societies throughout the world, populations end up trying to improve their country’s problems by electing an exciting new leader, but instead end up being lied to and manipulated, leaving the well-being of the people of their country worse off than it would have been. This is a worldwide phenomenon. It happened with Hitler in Germany, Kim Il-Sung in North Korea, Mao Zedong in China, Mugabe in Zimbabwe, and Putin in Russia. And it will likely keep happening. A first step towards helping stop this pattern is if voters become more aware of it.

To be clear, populism isn’t bad, per se. The unmet needs and desires of ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded are very important. And widespread dissatisfaction with the status quo usually does mean that something needs to change. The real issue is that grandiose manipulators leverage populist sentiment to install themselves in power, leaving their people worse off in the long term.

It’s also important to observe that this pattern isn’t one of the right or the left – it’s a pattern that arises on both sides of the political spectrum.

This piece was first written on August 31, 2025, and first appeared on my website on October 23, 2025.

Suppose that the vast majority of people identify themselves as being either part of group Apple, Banana, or Cherry and that these groups are typically viewed as being mutually exclusive (e.g., few people say they are “Apple-Bananas”). Furthermore, suppose that on the issues where Apples, Bananas, and Cherries all reach different conclusions, you agree with 65% of the positions of Apples, 15% of the positions of Bananas, 5% of the positions of Cherries, and the remaining 15% of issues you don’t agree with any of the three groups. So clearly, you agree with Apples far more often than Bananas or Cherries, yet on 35% of issues, you don’t agree with Apples (even though it’s the group you agree with most often on other issues).

In this case, how should you think about your group identity, and what should you call yourself?

Option 1: Call yourself and think of yourself as an Apple. This seems to be by far the most common solution.

Advantages:

• It’s simple.
• It conveys a lot of information about your beliefs very quickly.
• It describes the set of positions that you are closest to agreeing with (so if you were forced to pick one group, it would clearly be the right choice).
• It’s what most people would do in your position.
• It is what people expect you to do.
• It is less confusing to other people than other options are.
• It makes it clear what side you’re on.
• It builds trust with other Apples. Apples will be more likely to join your efforts to fight against Bananas and Cherries. People will have the sense that they understand you. Your alignment with Apple may help increase the power of the Apple group (which you may or may not want) and may cause you to bolster Apple’s causes more greatly.

Disadvantages:

• It provides incorrect information about 35% of your positions. Now that you identify as an Apple, if someone criticizes Apple, you are more likely to feel defensive or as if the criticism is being aimed at you. When Apples do something bad, you may be tempted to downplay it or deny it instead of criticizing it.
• Others will expect you to dislike Cherries (who are currently the standard enemy of Apples). Apples will diss on the Cherry or Banana groups in front of you and expect you to join in on the fun. When Cherries or Bananas do something good, you may feel tempted to downplay it or deny that it was good.
• You may feel increasing discomfort about the 15% of positions where you agree with Bananas and the 5% of positions where you agree with Cherries, and so you may start revising those positions so that you are more like an Apple or at least stop talking about them.
• You may altogether stop contradicting Apple’s views publicly because you feel it weakens your group or makes Apple uncomfortable. Bananas and Cherries will trust you less and feel more disconnected from you.
• You may be more likely to frame what’s happening in society as primarily a battle between Apples, Bananas, and Cherries.
• You may be less likely to discover correct perspectives that are not Apple’s perspectives, especially if they are Cherry’s perspectives.
• You may start believing false things that Apples say.
• You may be more likely to find Banana and Cherry news annoying, so increasingly read only Apple news.
• You may be more likely to find Bananas and Cherries annoying, and so increasingly spend time only with Apples.

Option 2: Say that you don’t identify strongly with any of the groups. If pressed for more information, say that while your positions tend to be closer to Apple positions than Banana or Cherry positions on average, your views aren’t accurately represented by any of the major groups and that you often disagree with Apple positions, so it isn’t very accurate to say you are an Apple.

Advantages:

• You may feel less pressure to say you agree with things that you don’t actually agree with.
• You may generally feel freer to express whatever non-Apple opinions you have.
• You won’t transmit as much inaccurate information about your beliefs (since you won’t be aligning yourself with a group that you disagree with on 35% of positions).
• Bananas and Cherries will trust you more because you don’t identify as an Apple. People may listen more to the details of what you believe rather than assuming that they already know.
• You may find it easier to pick out the best and truest positions coming from each group, especially the Banana and Cherry groups.
• You may find it easier to change your mind about standard Apple positions.
• You may find it easier to see the flaws in each group and to criticize any of the groups when you think they deserve it.
• You may feel freer to develop your own positions that are different than those held by any of the three groups.
• People will develop a more complex and nuanced model of your views once you’ve had a chance to describe them in detail rather than bucketing you.

Disadvantages:

• People might find it odd that you aren’t taking sides.
• People may be confused at first about what you believe.  It will take people longer to gain a basic (simple) understanding of your views (though they may end up with a deeper understanding of your views once you’ve had time to elaborate). The conversation about your identity may not end as quickly, and you may have to explain yourself.
• Apples may trust you less because they won’t know if you are in their group.
• Some Apples may feel annoyed that you aren’t supporting the Apple cause in its war against the Cherries.
• Some may say you are missing the bigger picture and that the important thing is defeating the Cherries (not highlighting differences you have with the group you already agree with on 65% of issues), so just take the Apple side, and let’s go to battle already.

If this conundrum is one that you face, I think it’s worth taking a minute or two to carefully consider which of these options is the better one.

This piece was first written on August 18, 2017, and first appeared on my website on March 12, 2025.

How big does P need to be before it’s irresponsible to say, “Well, the horrible event is unlikely to happen, so let’s not worry about it”?

50% (1 in 2)?
5% (1 in 20)?
1% (1 in 100)?
0.1% (1 in 1,000)?
0.01%? (1 in 10,000)?
0.001%? (1 in 100,000)?
0.0001%? (1 in 1,000,000)?

To me, it seems bizarre to dismiss a threat that has even a 1 in 1000 chance of causing the worst events in human history (over the next 50 years) with an argument like “I think it’s unlikely to happen; therefore, let’s stop worrying about it.” Most people (quite rationally) decide it’s worth wearing a seatbelt with each drive, despite far less than a 1 in 1000 chance of a car accident on each trip. Yet, as a society, we often collectively go without our metaphorical seatbelts when it comes to societal risks. And with societal risks, unlike with seatbelts, we often can’t even really say what the probability of these risks is – some people have an intuition that they are very small, but many others believe the risk is high.
 
Of course, preparing for risks doesn’t mean we should stop everything else in the meantime; it just means that we should take collective action to reduce these risks as long as the cost per unit of risk reduction is not too high. And yet, we often fail to do so.

There are a number of activities humanity is doing right now that one could reasonably argue have a P of at least 1 in 1000 and perhaps much higher than that. For instance:

Our lack of strong controls on pathogen research enables the potential creation of engineered viruses or bacteria that could lead to terrible pandemics.

Our lack of safeguards on AI development leaves open the possibility of super-intelligent AI that we are unable to control or super-intelligent AI that gives one group unreasonable levels of power.

Our failure to create global coordination around climate change leaves open the possibility of catastrophic climate impacts.

The most popular argument given for ignoring these potential risks is that they seem (to the person who advocates ignoring them) unlikely to happen. While many disagree that these are unlikely, even if they are unlikely, they’d have to be really unlikely with a high degree of confidence for that to be sufficient grounds for not taking significant precautions.

This piece was first written on August 1, 2017, and first appeared on my website on June 11, 2025.

If you were attempting to design a true utopia for ten million people on an obscure island deep out in the ocean, and you had total control over institutions and unlimited money, but you could NOT change human nature or human psychology then:
(a) what would you hope people would spend their time doing in this utopia?
(b) how would you incentivize people to actually spend their time in these ways? (or would you just hope they would do these behaviors without actually incentivizing them)
(c) how would you prevent or reduce undesirable behaviors or feelings (e.g., extreme social hierarchy, people destroying the social status of others for amusement, infidelity, feelings of purposelessness or worthlessness, manipulation), or would you not try to prevent things like this?
(d) how would you allocate resources or determine who gets what?
(e) how confident are you that people would actually end up happy and fulfilled in the utopia you described, and that it wouldn’t leave people unhappy or rapidly implode?

My extremely tentative, very partial and probably quite wrong current best guesses for answers to these questions (for a near-term technology utopia) are:

I would hope that people in this utopia would spend their time forming and developing meaningful relationships with each other, helping each other be even happier, shaping themselves into the people they want to be, engaging in creative pursuits they find meaningful, having tons of fun, experiencing a great deal of pleasure and very little suffering, discovering new things, and persistently pursuing numerous projects that are designed to make society at large even better.

Basic needs and goods that are considered nearly universally valuable would be all provided free to everyone (e.g., clean water, comfortable clothes, healthy basic food, effective health care, psychological counseling, pleasant, spacious housing, internet, free education, a computer, access to information, enough income to buy a reasonable but not large amount of stuff, and free training on what is known about how psychology works and what makes humans happy).

On top of that, one possibility is for there to be an (only lightly) regulated market economy for people who desire to buy more than the basics.

There could also be a prize system offering hundreds of thousands of different prizes to give fame, prestige, credentialing, and extra money (at many different levels of prestigiousness and money award sizes) to people who made important contributions to the betterment of all, and a selection committee (with very carefully designed incentives and very strict selection criteria and an evidence-based approach) who would choose the recipients of the prizes based on their contributions. Basically, offering rewards in proportion to how much value people added to society. Other than these numerous prizes to reward behaviors that benefit society, and laws against hurting others, people could largely do what they want.

I have very low confidence, however, that this proposal would actually lead to a stable society. I’d need to spend hundreds of more hours thinking about this and discussing it with others to flesh it out and gain more confidence that it’s on the right track.

It is common to hear advice that amounts to “going with your gut,” “trusting your instincts,” or “following your intuition.” But these suggestions seem to indicate that the answers we arrive at through careful thought are sometimes (or perhaps usually) inferior to our immediate reactions. 

Consider the following representative quotes:

Keep the faith, don’t lose your perseverance, and always trust your gut extinct. – Paula Abdul, Performer

I always trust my gut reaction; it’s always right. – Kiana Tom, Television Host

Intuition comes very close to clairvoyance; it appears to be the extrasensory perception of reality. – Alexis Carrel, Nobel Prize Winner (Medicine)

Before making a decision about whether to trust our gut, it seems like a worthwhile endeavor to first try to understand what exactly our “gut” is. 

There are a number of (non-mutually-exclusive) possibilities:

1. Sometimes, gut feelings can be explained by our evolved instincts that are encoded in our DNA, which exist because they helped our ancestors survive in the world as it was hundreds of thousands of years ago. For example, we are likely to feel anxious when confronted with something unfamiliar (a large unknown animal, for example) or feel fear when we hear a loud noise. These sorts of reactions are very useful at times but typically only work well in scenarios involving danger or conditions that are similar to those that our prehistoric ancestors encountered. At a birthday party where balloons are being popped, a fear of loud noises is not useful. On the other hand, when walking in a canyon, a loud noise might indicate a cascade of rocks, and a fear response might save your life.

2. In many cases, our intuition is associated with our immediate emotional responses to stimuli. For example, we might get a positive feeling towards someone who has a warm smile or feel negatively towards a person who is raggedly dressed. 

While our emotional responses clearly are important (e.g., it’s important to feel sympathy towards a friend when they look sad and to feel fear when encountering someone who has hurt you in the past), they can also be distorted and counter-productive. For example, many people feel slighted if a friend fails to return their phone call. However, one is likely to feel better about the situation (despite his initial emotional response) if he reminds himself that there are all sorts of reasons that a friend doesn’t return calls, including being temporarily busy or absent-minded. On the other hand, those who trust in their initial response of hurt and anger (which might stem, for example, from a lack of confidence or insecurity) are more likely to blow up at the friend or act coldly during the next encounter, which could damage a generally fulfilling relationship. 

Unfortunately, it can be tricky to differentiate between emotional responses that are useful and improve our lives and those that are based on misperceptions and are unhelpful. Both of these types of emotional responses feel equally real when you are experiencing them, and it is often only when we carefully scrutinize them from a neutral point of view that we can tell the difference.

3. Sometimes, our “intuition” is based on repeated experiences that we access automatically. For example, a surgeon might get an uneasy feeling during an operation, which could be triggered automatically when she notices similarities between the current patient and difficult surgical cases she has had in the past. Another example would be a painter who suddenly has an impulse to add more thinner to the paint he is using, which could be a subconscious reaction based on years of art-making experience. 

Generally, when we repeat similar tasks enough times, their execution becomes automatic and begins to feel like an instinct. We might then say that we have developed an intuition for effectively completing the tasks. These kinds of responses can occur much faster than those controlled by conscious thought and thus can be very efficient and useful. Of course, if the initial learning phase that leads to one’s intuitions is not of good quality (e.g., we complete the task poorly while learning), the intuition will be of poor quality as well. 

Sometimes intuitions of this form are experienced in emotional form as an uneasy feeling, in particular when our (possibly subconscious) expectations (based on experience, training, or practice) do not match what we see. A day trader, for example, might decide to sell a stock due to an uncomfortable feeling about it. In reality, what may have happened is that the stock chart had a pattern that did not conform to his expectations. This intuition can be quite useful since those cases that don’t match our predictions can be especially difficult, require special attention, and present unknown hazards.

4. Societal conditioning can create a kind of gut reaction that operates without conscious awareness. If we are told enough times when we are young not to trust strangers, then we may feel immediately distrustful when a stranger strikes up a conversation. The trouble with responses of this kind is that they are often formed without thought or careful reflection. For example, if we grow up in an area where a lot of racism is present, we might be told that certain races are inherently dishonest and so could have strong intuitive reactions to people of those races based on this idea. Or if we are taught to believe that black cats bring bad luck, we might start feeling uneasy in a house with a black cat. Since the ideas that society conditions us with may not be true, it can be very valuable to be aware of these automatic reactions and to carefully evaluate their logical and empirical validity.

5. Our brains are capable of forming very strong associations (for instance, between the smell of a perfume and a particular person), and this can lead to what might be interpreted as “gut feelings.” For example, if we were attacked by dogs when we were young, we may feel anxious around dogs later in life, even when we know on an intellectual level that we are safe around them. Such associations clearly have a valuable survival purpose, but on the other hand, they can push us into self-defeating behavior (like refusing to visit the house of a friend because she has a dog). Our brain’s natural tendency is to be “better safe than sorry,” as your ancestors were very unlikely to die from forming spurious associations (such as that dogs are generally dangerous) but were at real risk of dying if they failed to form certain real associations (such as that tigers are dangerous).

As we can see, what people call their “gut” is most likely a hodgepodge of various brain activities, which include survival instincts, emotional responses, automatic recall of learned information, societal conditioning, and associations. 

It is not at all obvious that these systems will lead to good decision-making in general. Each has its very important uses, as well as significant domains where it will fail. A businessman cannot rely on fight or flight instincts when giving an important presentation, a person with an anxiety disorder cannot expect his emotional responses to be accurate representations of reality, a doctor cannot rely on his old impulses when learning a totally new surgical technique, and no-one can expect that their society will condition them only with true information. Hence, to make truly good decisions, it is essential to evaluate your intuition to see whether it is likely to be accurate in the situation at hand. Each time our gut tells us something, we cannot know whether to trust it until we understand where that feeling originates from.

Note (January 13, 2022): For more about when to trust your gut, watch my TEDx talk here.

If you liked this essay, you may also enjoy a later essay I wrote, which fleshes out the specific circumstances under which it might be advisable to trust your intuition: The FIRE Framework: deciding when to trust your gut