There are no facts, only feelings

The stickiest idea from How Minds Change by David McRaney (and I hope I’m understanding this correctly) is that idea that we don’t actually know anything. We only have feelings.

There are fifty states in America. Cook chicken to an internal temperature of 165 degrees. Increase your weekly running mileage by 10%, or risk injury.

These are all things I used to consider facts. Now, I don’t know.

According to McRaney, there’s a subconscious level. On this level are our feelings. We don’t know about states, cooking temperatures, or running programs – we only feel what is right. We evolved (using memes) to survive. A crucial piece of survival is group membership. Status games are a feature, not a bug.

So what we think about facts, rooted in our subconscious, is the need for group membership. We believe in the number of states, in the temperature of chicken, and the weekly mileage rule of thumb because they let us belong.

Don’t bring an educational solution to a design fight fits this theory. To change people’s minds you have to change their feelings. And to change their feelings you have to understand their group survival dynamics – which operate on the subconscious level. Design works because it defaults to group survival. Things are this way because people like us to things like this.

“We are a tribeless nation hungry for tribes,” opens Wright Thompson in his book, Pappyland. Much of McRaney’s book, How Minds Change has this thread too. We want to feel connected. And that wanting is subconscious.