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People don't need to understand everything, but they should understand that nobody has the answers and that's why independent thinking is so important. Indepen

People don't need to understand everything, but they should understand that nobody has the answers and that's why independent thinking is so important. Independent thinking is simply about questioning everything you're taught. Most people believe that if some idea is popular, then it must be right; but in reality, most of the time the opposite is true.

majormajor 9y ago
> Most people believe that if some idea is popular, then it must be right; but in reality, most of the time the opposite is true. Isn't this just as dangerous a heuristic as the reverse? Flat earth, fake moon landing, 9/11 was an inside job...
danharaj 9y ago
What does that mean? Brains are their own little worlds of thought, but they also communicate-- thinking has a social component as well. Both are absolutely crucial and trivially present in all thinking. The scientific method, for example, is founded upon a tension between independent and social examinations of scientific ideas. Clearly there's a good way to think independently and a bad way; a good way of thinking as a group and a bad. How is the line drawn? It's certainly not a line that can be drawn in advance. In your post you said: > It makes me think that there must be some really powerful evolutionary processes in place which make it so that irrational idolists have more children and live longer than rational people. That seems rather essentialist to me: Do you really think people are so transparent that you can not only judge whether they are intrinsically rational or irrational but also that quality is hereditary and also that there is a mysterious force that makes us idiots via natural selection? Better instead to ponder what social and psychological processes can draw someone into a cult and how those processes play out in your own life. We take for granted how thin the margin is between our own lives and the lives of others. It is almost surely the case that all of us hold absolutely absurd delusions about our lives and how we should go about them.
- jondubois 9y ago
  The advantage of the scientific method over humanities is that the problem domain is narrower and therefore the rules that you can use to verify statements are simpler to understand for an individual. If you look at mathematics, an individual who understands the basic rules can prove a statement to themselves without having to defer any judgement to a higher intellectual authority. In most aspects of life, people tend to defer the majority of their thinking to intellectual authorities; 'thought leaders'. >> Do you really think people are so transparent that you can not only judge whether they are intrinsically rational or irrational but also that quality is hereditary and also that there is a mysterious force that makes us idiots via natural selection? It's probably both genetic and environmental. I think that there is an evolutionary reason why humans are so bad at making the distinction between cause and effect (and nature vs nurture) - There is often a self-reinforcing feedback loop between the two.

majormajor 9y ago

> Most people believe that if some idea is popular, then it must be right; but in reality, most of the time the opposite is true. Isn't this just as dangerous a heuristic as the reverse? Flat earth, fake moon landing, 9/11 was an inside job...

danharaj 9y ago

What does that mean? Brains are their own little worlds of thought, but they also communicate-- thinking has a social component as well. Both are absolutely crucial and trivially present in all thinking. The scientific method, for example, is founded upon a tension between independent and social examinations of scientific ideas. Clearly there's a good way to think independently and a bad way; a good way of thinking as a group and a bad. How is the line drawn? It's certainly not a line that can be drawn in advance. In your post you said: > It makes me think that there must be some really powerful evolutionary processes in place which make it so that irrational idolists have more children and live longer than rational people. That seems rather essentialist to me: Do you really think people are so transparent that you can not only judge whether they are intrinsically rational or irrational but also that quality is hereditary and also that there is a mysterious force that makes us idiots via natural selection? Better instead to ponder what social and psychological processes can draw someone into a cult and how those processes play out in your own life. We take for granted how thin the margin is between our own lives and the lives of others. It is almost surely the case that all of us hold absolutely absurd delusions about our lives and how we should go about them.

jondubois 9y ago
The advantage of the scientific method over humanities is that the problem domain is narrower and therefore the rules that you can use to verify statements are simpler to understand for an individual. If you look at mathematics, an individual who understands the basic rules can prove a statement to themselves without having to defer any judgement to a higher intellectual authority. In most aspects of life, people tend to defer the majority of their thinking to intellectual authorities; 'thought leaders'. >> Do you really think people are so transparent that you can not only judge whether they are intrinsically rational or irrational but also that quality is hereditary and also that there is a mysterious force that makes us idiots via natural selection? It's probably both genetic and environmental. I think that there is an evolutionary reason why humans are so bad at making the distinction between cause and effect (and nature vs nurture) - There is often a self-reinforcing feedback loop between the two.