# How Important Are Beliefs?

When we ponder reality, one basic assessment would be that everything 
happens automatically. When we drop something for example, it just falls 
to the ground and follows specific patterns. When we then try to 
understand these patterns, we can come up with mathematical formulations 
to predict them, which can then be used to our advantage. When we think 
about people, it is different. Even though we are governed by the same 
physical laws.

You might wonder what this has to do with the topic 'beliefs', but they 
are very intertwined. Our beliefs are the programs that help us understand 
the patterns that take place around us and using them to our advantage is 
what has increased our chances of survival. Since we are going about it in 
a more advanced and analytical way than other animals, we have gotten a 
huge advantage over them and that is why we have become the dominant 
species. We have mastered the ability of moulding the environment to our 
advantage because of our beliefs.

The problem is that our intellectual and rational capabilities are only a 
recent development in evolution. Fundamentally we are still emotional 
beings because evolution itself has been quite a random process spread out 
over billions of years where instincts and emotions emerged to help us 
become more adaptive to our environment. It is only after we developed our 
more advanced neocortical brain regions that we began to develop more 
rational and structured ways of thinking. This advanced our overall 
evolution tremendously while our biology lagged behind. We carry remnants 
of our past and that is why emotions can still have us act impulsively, 
even if we know that doing the right thing can be much more beneficial to 
us. The gap between our emotions and our reason is mainly defined by how 
much we stimulate these individual parts of the brain. If it wasn't for 
our education and culture, we would still be cavemen. The very reason why 
we aren't is because of our beliefs. They give us a huge advantage and 
define the extent to which we have been perceiving ourselves as humane. 
Fully understanding this can have drastic implications for our current 
paradigm. In Chapter IX it is explained how we all have the tendency to be 
in denial, but our ability to understand this allows us to override it and 
gain control through the neocortical circuits of our brain. Through 
self-awareness, our reason has the ability to override our emotions. This 
is a process that takes time, but neuroplasticity shows us that the brain 
is like a muscle and we can train the parts that speak to our reason to 
overcome our denial. Having the right mindset comes down to just doing 
that, up until the point where you don't even experience conflict any more 
as your right action becomes automatic and choiceless.

We are living in a time where we have more knowledge than any of our 
ancestors and as this knowledge has brought about all the technology and 
advancement we see around us, mastering our ability to improve our beliefs 
on the fly without being emotionally invested in them is one of the most 
important insights in this book. I sometimes wonder what advanced 
artificial intelligence would look like if it would acquire the ability to 
improve its own hardware and software. But with our knowledge of the brain 
and our insights into the world, we are already in a similar spot. Our 
growth potential is enormous. The only obstacle is ignorance or rather, 
the lack of applying a simple belief.