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Don't Get One-Shotted — LessWrong

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But the world runs on interacting factors (economic, biological, cultural, psychological, physical, …). Collapsing that complexity produces zealotry, not understanding. People get one-shotted all the time: by ideology, by drugs, by heartbreak, by a persuasive AI chat, by a tool that seems too powerful not to use. One overwhelming perception feels like final truth, and the rest of the worldview folds around it. The antidote isn’t “it’s complicated” or “just trust the experts”. It’s a combination of structural defenses and collaborative tools that let you hold more of the world in view at once. There’s a meme about ayahuasca that resurfaces every few months: This is what it is to be one-shotted: a single overwhelming perception rearranging a mind around itself. But while the meme paints a picture of folly, the most insidious one-shots don’t look like this. They look like rigor. Like strict adherence to the paradigm that sees the truth. The trigger can be an event (a trip, a trauma, a spi

x Don't Get One-Shotted — LessWrong Practical Frontpage -1 Don't Get One-Shotted by Jordan Rubin 11th Nov 2025 Linkpost for jordanmrubin.substack.com 7 min read 2 -1 TL;DR Humans love single causes. We want one villain, one cure, one elegant model to explain everything. But the world runs on interacting factors (economic, biological, cultural, psychological, physical, …). Collapsing that complexity produces zealotry, not understanding. People get one-shotted all the time: by ideology, by drugs, by heartbreak, by a persuasive AI chat, by a tool that seems too powerful not to use. One overwhelmi

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