Hi,

I’ve been thinking a lot about humanity's three most significant problems. And I believe they are inflation, sugar, and negativity bias.

This might seem like a strange list to a lot of people. But if you think none of these three things matter, keep reading, and the explanation itself will be of importance.

These three items are representative of a deeper underlying concept.

Humans are truth-seekers and decision-makers.

And to the degree they can see the truth, they can make better decisions.

No ruling class, king, political party, or government can decide for everyone. It’s too complicated. So, the only way to increase the well-being of a society is to increase the amount of good decisions the average individual in that society can make.

And anything that destroys that ability to find truth destroys decision-making capacity.

Imagine if you needed to refer to a series of guidelines or laws every time you made a purchase, ate a meal, spoke to a friend, or read a news article. It would be impossible. We must make good decisions independently.

We are constantly making decisions as we live out our day. And the better each tiny decision is, the better life is. And the better millions of people make billions of tiny decisions, the better a society gets.

Think of society as a computer. A computer is a thinking device full of tiny switches that switch between one and zero. A couple of them alone doesn't do much, but billions of ones and zeros operating per second result in the incredible digital intelligence becoming available today.

To the degree those individual ones and zeros are programmed correctly (decisions), we get positive results.

Imagine society is a collection of individuals who all have the responsibility to decide not just between one and zero but a trillion other things as well. That's the collective consciousness of humanity—massive numbers of individual self-programming decision makers.

To the degree those individual people make good decisions, society improves, and to the degree those decisions get worse, society gets worse.

Inflation, sugar, and negativity bias are three significant metrics that, when increased, destroy truth-finding ability and cause people to make bad decisions.

All of them are subtle but muddy the waters of life just enough to hamper judgment when making a decision.

Inflation steals money from a population and changes the value of a currency in ways that make it hard for anyone to know what anything is worth. This makes everyone make worse financial decisions.

Imagine building houses for a living and needing to buy hundreds of individual items of construction material every time you build a house, calculate wages to the workers who help you build the house, and calculate the sale price of the home.

This is complex. Even under the best circumstances, it's difficult to do those calculations, provide fair estimates to everyone, and make a healthy profit for yourself.

Now, imagine the dollar you're spending reduces in value every year you're in business, and all of the prices of the material and wages expected change every year.

It just makes life worse and increases the odds that you're going to make a mistake.

The same goes for an employee calculating a basic grocery budget and a retirement fund.

Life is harder when the point system changes every year.

Sugar, when put in all food, messes with the body’s decision-making about what to eat because the body stops having urges for different foods and starts only craving foods with more or less sugar. It makes it impossible for a person to make good decisions about what to eat.

In some ways, the same thing happens in your body with sugar as inflation in the economy. When you eat a large amount of sugar, at first it tastes sweet, then you get numb to it and want more. The amount of sugar you consume reduces in value (taste) to the body, so it demands more.

Food that used to be enjoyable starts to feel tasteless without added sugar.

And you lose track of any intuitive sense of what food tastes or feels good outside of whether or not it's sweet enough.

And negativity bias is something that is naturally ingrained. We are evolutionarily wired to focus more on problems than solutions because, in a survival situation, not paying attention to a problem could kill you. But in the modern world, as the amount of information increases through news and social media, it becomes more and more challenging to understand the true nature of a situation because the more information there is available, the more likely we are to spot negative information and focus on that.

There are many things that can damage society. But I believe these three alone are enough to cause more harm than one can imagine and combined possibly destroy entire civilizations.

But ultimately, this article isn't about inflation, sugar, or negativity bias.

It's about decisions and truth.

To the degree you can see the truth, you can make a better decision.

So maybe you don't care about inflation, sugar, or negativity bias. Perhaps you feel like none of those things affect you.

That's fine.

But you must care about truth and decisions. And you must become aware of when your environment or mind is making it difficult to see the truth.

And while economic games being played out on a global scale might not be something you can immediately do something about, you can orient your mind towards truth.

The more you do this, the more you can make good decisions for yourself.

And the more valuable you'll be to society around you.

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If you're interested, I'm looking for a small number of passionate individuals who wish to pursue a path of better decision-making. I've been helping people get clarity on what they want to do with their lives and pursue a path of purpose (a fancy way of saying live a life worth living). So many of us are struggling to figure out what we want to do, how we will do it, and how to move towards better.

In my work, I've found the best way to do that is to find your path. When you're honestly pursuing something meaningful and living life on your terms, you become powerful.

So I’ll help you learn how to start walking your path and make decisions that align with the person you wish to be.

Making life better is a skill set. And you can learn it.

So if you're passionate about these ideas and want to move towards better, then just click here and DM me the word "Path" on Instagram, and I'll send you the details.​

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Best,

Josh Terry