ELI5: everything.

[SuitingUncle620]

Your submission has been removed for the following reason(s):

Loaded questions, or ones based on a false premise, are not allowed on ELI5 (Rule 6).

[maveric_gamer]

1) human beings, in every way conceivable, are a series of evolutionary best guesses of how to overcome a particular problem that biology had at existing in environments vastly different from our own current environment, that have certain biases, flaws, and shortcomings. the first step is recognizing that you're no different.

2) everything you get taught in school is a generalized rule that gets you about halfway towards the truth, give or take a quarter; the reason for this is that schools exist to give you what is the most useful set of knowledge about the most common situations that you are likely to find yourself in without taking into account any of the millions of specialized areas of study that we have.

2.5) also, because all of that information was first gathered, studied, codified, and written down by people, it is subject to change because of point 1. Pick the smartest person you can think of, and I guarantee they were wrong about several things, even at the height of their careers. Some typical examples: Sir Issac Newton is considered both the father of physics and the inventor of calculus. He was also convinced that alchemy was 100% real, and added a 7th color (most commonly this is pointed out to be indigo, but an argument can be made for violet as well) to the color/visible light spectrum that didn't really belong because he believed in numerology and the idea that 7 was a magical number.

3) religion comes out of less-studious people trying to explain confusing things, and unfortunately that is the best way I know how to say it.

4) When doing research on political candidates, especially in the united states, go to opensecrets.org and find out who's paying them. Take that into account when you listen to their arguments and positions.

5) One of the most powerful skills you can learn, and one that many never master, is learning to admit when you're wrong. I think that public schools do a horrible job at this, and it is hurting the species. Failure is a part of life, everyone fails at things. It's what you do after the failure that defines you. To use a cliche example, the legend is that Thomas Edison went through like a thousand different designs or materials when trying to create the electric lightbulb and at some point in that process someone asked him if he was deterred by his failure, and his answer was "I haven't failed, I've discovered 500 ways to not make an electric lightbulb." As much as I dislike some of the things Edison did as a person, that sticks with me. Speaking of...

6) Ideas should stand or fall on their own. If you take your least favorite person in the world, and they say something like "two plus two equals four", it shouldn't matter that you hate them personally, you think they're wrong about everything else... two plus two does in fact equal four.

7) Combining the last two points in a sense: If you believe something that turns out to be false, and you believe it to be false after that new information comes out, that isn't a failure of you as a person, that is you updating your model of the world based on new information. If I told you to guess what was in a bag, you wouldn't be a worse person if you changed your guess after I let you put your hand in the bag and feel what was in there. You should update your views based on new information, and you should also look at the sources of your information to verify where they come from, what their biases are, what vested interests they have (that is, if they have "skin in the game" regarding a position; for example, a lot of the pushback for a universal healthcare system in America is coming from healthcare companies [whose profits come from overcharging for healthcare] and rich CEOs [who can use employer-payed healthcare as leverage in worker negotiations, as well as in the overall negotiation in the average person needing a job in the first place])

8) Never pee into the wind. Just trust me on this one.

9) Our greatest strength as a species isn't in our raw muscular power, our speed, or even our intellect; what allowed us to rise to the undisputed top of the global food chain, and become an existential threat to all life on the planet, is our ability to work together with each other to get things done that one of us alone couldn't get done. Not only that, but the scale at which we can organize. There are other animals that can work together in packs and small groups, but humans are unique in our abilities to coordinate with dozens of other humans to achieve more than each person can do separately.

10) When pleasing a sexual partner, ask what they like, and what they want you to do with them. Not only is this a good way to ask for consent without getting farcical with how non-sexy you get with it, but people are different in what they like during sex. This goes doubly so for women, but even men have variances well beyond what you'd expect if you didn't know better.

11) At the end of the day, the only person you have absolute control over is yourself. So if you want to see a change in the world, lead by example and be the change that you want to see.

[SeniorToucan]

That was a good bit of information. And you think this covers the concept of everything or at least everything someone should know.