The Intersubjective Reality Test
Distinguish real constraints from collective agreements you can renegotiate
Harari distinguishes three levels of reality: objective (exists regardless of human belief, like gravity), subjective (exists in one individual's mind, like a personal preference), and intersubjective (exists because many people believe in it, like money, borders, or corporate hierarchies). Most of the constraints people experience as immovable are actually intersubjective: they are real only because enough people currently agree they are real. This framework trains you to classify the constraints you face by reality type and recognize that intersubjective constraints, while genuinely powerful, are fundamentally negotiable in a way that objective constraints are not.
- Objective realities cannot be changed by changing beliefs; intersubjective realities can be.
- Intersubjective realities are not less real than objective ones in their practical effects; they coordinate billions of people daily.
- The leverage point for changing an intersubjective reality is not logic but collective belief shift.
- Most professional and personal constraints are intersubjective, not objective: job titles, market categories, industry norms, and career paths are all constructed.
- Recognizing a constraint as intersubjective does not make it easy to change, but it does make it possible to change.
- List your current constraintsWrite down everything you believe limits what you can do in your work, career, or life. Include rules, norms, expectations, resource limitations, market conditions, and structural barriers.
- Classify each constraint by reality typeFor each constraint, ask: Would this exist if every human on Earth forgot about it overnight? If yes, it is objective (physics, biology, mathematics). If no, it is intersubjective (market norms, job requirements, industry standards, organizational rules). Most constraints will turn out to be intersubjective.
- Assess the enforcement mechanism of intersubjective constraintsFor each intersubjective constraint, ask: What happens if I act as though this constraint does not exist? Who enforces it? How strongly? Some intersubjective constraints have strong enforcement (legal systems, social ostracism) while others have weak enforcement (industry conventions, career path expectations).
- Target weakly enforced intersubjective constraints for changeFocus your energy on constraints that are intersubjective and weakly enforced. These are the rules you can break, redefine, or ignore with relatively low cost and high potential upside. For strongly enforced intersubjective constraints, pursue collective belief change rather than individual defiance.
The requirement for a four-year college degree for professional employment is an intersubjective reality. It is not an objective fact that four years of college make someone competent; it is a collectively agreed signal of competence. Companies like Google, Apple, and IBM have begun recognizing this by dropping degree requirements for many roles. They identified the constraint as intersubjective and weakly enforced in their contexts, then acted accordingly.
Harari points out that entities like Google, the United Nations, and the US dollar feel as real as mountains and rivers, but they are entirely different in nature. A mountain exists whether or not anyone believes in it. The US dollar exists only because billions of people believe in it. This distinction, once understood, reveals that most of the barriers we experience in careers, organizations, and markets are intersubjective: genuinely powerful but fundamentally constructed, and therefore changeable by changing collective belief.