Cognitive Tool: The Pre/Trans Fallacy

And why the midwit meme is so appropriate for our time.

From time to time I’ll share a cognitive tool with you. Elegant compressions. Concepts or mental models that help me make sense of reality.

Today’s is the “Pre/Trans Fallacy.”

And no. It has nothing to do with gender reassignment surgery.

The Pre/Trans Fallacy

The pre/trans fallacy is when an earlier stage of development is confused with a later one, or vice versa.

This concept comes from Ken Wilber.

In his model, human development progresses from Pre-personal to Personal to Transpersonal. The first and the last phases (pre and trans) resemble one another. So people confuse them:

“One tends either to elevate prepersonal events to transpersonal status or to reduce transpersonal events to prepersonal status” - Ken Wilber

Another great example is maturity in intimate relationships.

There’s Dependence, Independence and Interdependence. To the uninitiated, the first and the last stage look similar. I’ve noticed that people who over-value Independence tend to mistake Interdependence for Dependence.

A much simpler way to visualize this is with the bell curve meme:

Bottomwits and Topwits agree on a simple intuitive truth. Midwits agonize over a complex, counterintuitive conclusion that they were probably educated into.

While the pre/trans fallacy states that the 3rd stage of development is distinct from the 1st one, the bell curve meme is sometimes a little different.

Some versions suggest that the Topwit is using the same words to say something deeper than the Bottomwit (i.e. is further in his development). But other versions suggest that they are both saying the exact same thing.

This implies that meme-makers are rediscovering an instinctual, intuitive mode of being that is basically correct. The internet is noticing that we abstract and theorize too much.

• The Bottomwit can’t abstract. He trusts his gut.

• The Midwit is overeducated and abstracts unskilfully. Just far enough to do damage.

• The Topwit has abstracted through the middle and returned to his gut.

Move through midwittery only to retvrn to the wisdom your body always had.

Here’s another example:

And here’s one of my favourites:

If this one doesn’t make sense to you, stay tuned for my next entry.

— Daniel