Welcome to Z-Pack:.your antidote to the 24/7 news cycle. Cut through the noise, understand what matters, and get on with your week - in less than 10 minutes.

If this is your first Z-Pack, welcome - I'm Zach.

_{The vibe-killer disclaimer: The opinions in this post and all other posts only represent myself and do not represent the opinions of my employer or any groups I am a member of.
This is not financial advice or recommendation for any investment. The Content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.}

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Brain Bugs: 3 Surprising Errors in How You Process the World

"There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen."

Vladimir Lenin said that. You know, the guy who led a violent revolution, installed communism in Russia, and butchered millions of people. In most cases, I wouldn't recommend listening to anything this psychopath had to say.

But this time... I'll admit it — this is a bar.

So my question for you is — how do you actually know when shit's hitting the fan? Not in your personal life, per say, but when something genuinely consequential is happening in the world?

For instance, this week we witnessed one of the "worst intelligence failures of the modern era":

• High-ranking U.S. officials (the VP!!!) used an unapproved line of communication (the app called Signal) to coordinate a high-risk military operation _{(but her emails...)}

• They activated the feature for messages to self-destruct _{(big illegal - oopsy..?)}

• They poo poo’d on critical military allies we rely on for gathering intelligence against adversaries with nukes pointed at us.

This should be a five-alarm fire. Yet, for many people, it barely registers. Why? Because so many of us are using broken mental software to process the world.

Consider today's post your mental oil change — we're taking a peep at the sludgy frameworks acting like gremlins in your brain, sabotaging your understanding and coming at you faster than the Sunday Scaries.

Let’s take a crack at it.

The Morality Trap: "Bad things happen to bad people. Good things happen to good people."

If only life were this simple, where outcomes directly reflected moral character. But that’s not how the cookie crumbles.

As best-selling author Robert Greene points out:

This lens is psychologically comforting. It gives you a sense of order in a chaotic world, reinforces your belief in justice, and makes you feel safe — everything I felt watching Avengers: Endgame.

But when you take in news through this framework, you end up:

• Casting the first stone: "Those people wouldn't have suffered from the hurricane if they hadn't been so sinful.” (I know this sounds crazy but I’ve heard many people say crap like this).

• Over-moralizing economic outcomes: "Poor people must have made bad choices" or "rich people must be exploitative.”

• Creating simplified heroes and villains: Every conflict gets reduced to good guys vs. bad guys without any nuance

• Ignoring the complexity: By focusing only on individual morality, we miss institutional failings, historical context, and plain bad luck.

Attributing major events purely to morality is an intellectual shortcut that lets you feel righteous while understanding nothing.

Best you be aware of how this shows up not just in the news, but in your personal life with family, friends, and partners.

The Nature Cult: How 'It's Natural' Became Our Dumbest Defense.

Oh boy, now we’re heating up with a controversial one _(salivates).

This one had me in a chokehold for a HOT minute. It's a completely false binary that fails to even define what should be considered "natural" versus "unnatural."

As Dr. Mike Israetel says, “Everything is chemicals.”

His point is that all substances, natural or artificial, are composed of chemicals, and the focus should be on their effects and how they interact with the body, rather than arbitrary categories or demonizing specific substances _{(usually - unless it’s heroin).}

This breaks down into two logical fallacies:

1. The Appeal to Nature Fallacy – Marketers exploit your instinct to associate something called "natural" with good and "unnatural" with bad. That's how "processed" became a dirty word with zero pushback. With seed oils, people argue that because they can lubricate machines, they must be harmful to consume, ignoring that what matters is the actual chemistry. Arsenic is natural and antibiotics are synthetic. Which one would you rather ingest???

2. False Analogy – Two things are compared in a way that doesn’t actually make sense. Just because a substance is used in one context (like machine lubrication) doesn’t mean it has the same effects or risks in another (like food consumption). Water is used in car batteries, but that doesn’t mean drinking water is dangerous.

Media thrives on exploiting your confusion about what's "natural" by hyping up every outlandish study and fad. Unfortunately though, people eat this stuff up!

For example, your local news will trigger panic attacks over research where mice were exposed to 10,000x normal doses of something, conveniently omitting that _small detail.

Just check out how they're so desperate to cover the sudden obsession with cooking everything in beef tallow _{(the fuck?)}.

This "natural" framework goes beyond food to areas like technology.

I know people who grandstand about not using AI because it's not "natural" like a human. They're fighting to climb up some vague moral high ground while typing their objections on clearly “unnatural” computers, probably while sitting in a climate-controlled room.

It's like insisting on riding a horse instead of driving a car, on principle. You can have your concerns about the cons that come with the pros of technology, but make sure you’re focused on the real stuff.

Remember: "flat earthers still get on planes."

The Victim Vortex: The Ultimate Thought-Terminating Device

To be real, I may lose you here.

But it was a necessary act. I guess I’m going out on my shield 🪦

This is the lens on life where people increasingly interpret all events through the lens of victimhood and oppression. This essentially creates a self-reinforcing spiral, where everything becomes evidence of being wronged, persecuted, or targeted. Like a self-fulfilling prophecy on overdrive.

There is literally no end.

That’s why this is key question for you to think about: what are you assigning agency to? And what and who are you taking agency from?

Author Derek Thompson nails it:

Here’s how to recognize if you’re caught in the victim vortex:

• Selective Perception: You only notice information that confirms your victim status.

• Racing to the Bottom: You compete on who has suffered most, creating "Oppression Olympics" that prevent actual problem-solving.

• Hypersensitivity: You're primed to interpret any statement as harmful or "violent," regardless of intent. I bet you’re fun at parties.

• Overextending patterns: You connect isolated incidents into evidence of systematic targeting, even when those connections are tenuous.

• Above All — Agency Surrender: You see world events as things that happen TO people rather than complex situations people can influence. As the saying goes, life happens TO you. You do not happen to life. Ain’t no way you’re kicking a dent in the universe.

You can even find this framework infecting both sides of the political spectrum.

Here’s your handy-dandy guide to what you’ll see in the wild.

But first, I’ll preface with this:

How the Left Falls Into the Victim Vortex:

• The oligarchy and billionaires: all social ills are attributed to "oligarchs" and billionaires controlling society, even when local policy better explains differences.

  • Oligarchy can’t be a one-stop shop. It’s not why Austin builds more housing than Boston, for instance.
    

• Systemic racism: the explanation for every disparity
  

• Big ___: Insert Pharma, Tech, Food, or whatever — complexity doesn’t matter, nor does going after actual monopolized industries (meat!) that aren’t mainstream.
  

• Everything is violence: all policy disagreements are "violence" or "attacks on communities".

And if you try disagreeing, good luck. You’ll probably get hit with the usual response — you just don’t know any better, since you’re the product of “false consciousness” (a fancy phrase for brainwashing).

How the Right Falls Into the Victim Vortex:

• The Woke Mind Virus: DEI is the cause of everything, from plane crashes to military failures.
  

• Deep state: Blames the shadowy "deep state" for thwarting goals (somehow both all-powerful and incompetent).
  

• Ivory towers: views academia as a monolithic force, indoctrinating society at all levels.

Don’t get me wrong — there are real problems and validity to some of these concerns, but when they become all-encompassing explanations that remove human agency entirely, you just end up sacrificing actual understanding at the altar of ignorance.

This isn’t about being right, but about seeing reality clearly enough for you to actually navigate the world.

The most dangerous frameworks aren't the ones that are completely wrong; they're the ones with just enough truth to be believable while sending you in the totally wrong direction.

Thanks for taking the Pack,

Zach

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Disclaimer: This is not financial advice or recommendation for any investment. The Content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.