The Thinker & the Prover

Everyone’s universe is built the same way

Wilson opens with a story William James liked to tell. An elderly woman explained to him that the Earth sits on the back of a giant turtle. When James asked what held up the turtle, she said another turtle. When he asked what held up that one, she cut him off: it was turtles all the way down.

Wilson’s point is that we shouldn’t laugh too quickly. Her picture of the world was stranger than most, but she built it with the same mental machinery everyone uses. The machinery is the subject of this sheet.

Two parts of the mind

And the more strongly the Thinker believes something, the more airtight the Prover’s case becomes. At that point, argument rarely changes anyone’s mind.

It’s easy to see in others

Most of us can spot this in other people. It is much harder to notice that our own mind runs the same way. Wilson argues that nobody is exempt, including people we think of as especially objective.

• Great scientists were not neutral. Many physicists rejected Einstein’s relativity at first. Einstein himself never accepted quantum theory, however much evidence piled up. Edison kept insisting alternating current was unsafe long after it had been shown to be safe.
• Research groups prove what they expect. In the 1960s, some labs “proved” that LSD damaged chromosomes while others “proved” it didn’t. Each found what it set out to find.
• Science still works, but slowly. It gets closer to the truth because the method is a group effort. Over decades, thousands of people checking each other’s work override any one person’s bias. In the short run, Orr’s law always holds.

A working model

Why this matters in therapy

Psychology has its own names for the Prover: confirmation bias, selective attention, and the self-fulfilling prophecy. Beliefs about ourselves work the same way. “I’m not likable,” “Something always goes wrong,” or “People can’t be trusted” each come with a Prover that has spent years gathering supporting evidence.

The goal is not to argue with the belief or to replace it with a nicer one by force. It is to notice that a belief is doing the selecting, and to hold it a little more loosely. Once you can see the Prover at work, you have some choice about what you let it prove.

Experiments to try

Wilson insists you can’t understand this chapter just by reading it. You have to test it in what he calls the laboratory of your own nervous system. These experiments are adapted from his.

1. The coin experiment

   Picture a coin clearly, and imagine finding one on the ground. Keep looking for it whenever you’re out walking, and note how long it takes to find one.

2. Test two explanations

   First, explain your find as selective attention: coins are everywhere, and you were bound to see one once you started looking. Go find a second coin while holding that belief. Then explain it as “my mind made it happen”, and look for a third while holding that belief. Compare how long each one took.

   You can invent your own versions of this with other everyday objects.

3. Hold off on conclusions

   Don’t settle on an answer yet. Re-read this sheet in a month and still leave the question open. Allow that you may not know everything yet.

4. Notice how you show up

   Next time you go into a social situation already expecting to be overlooked, notice how people respond to you. On another occasion, walk in deliberately carrying yourself as someone people enjoy being around, the way an actor plays a part, and notice the difference.

5. Watch other Provers, then your own

   Quietly observe two people you know well and two you barely know. Try to work out what each one’s Thinker believes and how their Prover keeps it proven. Then turn the same attention on yourself. This is the hardest of the experiments.

   Wilson suggests that if you think you’ve learned this in under six months, you haven’t really been working at it.

6. Raise the ceiling

   Allow yourself to believe that you can go further than any goal you’ve set before, in every area of your life. Notice what your Prover starts finding.