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I think that absolutist thinking has something to do with social signalling and interpretation thereof. Someone who thinks in an absolutist manner might be mor
by haffi112 9y ago
I think that absolutist thinking has something to do with social signalling and interpretation thereof.
Someone who thinks in an absolutist manner might be more likely to jump to conclusions based on vague evidence instead of collecting more observations before passing judgement. Today with social media, instant communication and expectation to be answered immediately the absence of a like from a friend has the potential to be devastating.
It's as if the observer is doing bayesian inference where his prior is: "everything is either good or evil". With that prior they can never assign probability mass to hypotheses/explanations which lie somewhere in-between. Furthermore, by reacting to their interpretation I suspect that they are more likely to create the circumstances that lead them later to confirm that they where right which then might further sharpen their prior (if it wasn't already extreme in one way or another).
- jackhack 9y agoCurious. Wasn't Steve Jobs somewhat infamous for classifying everything as either "the greatest thing ever!" or "shit"? Jobs as Bayesian classifier! Depending on the corpus, that could be very amusing.
- tonyedgecombe 9y agoThat was just marketing, every thing Apple does is great, everything the competition does is shit. He was very quick with his quips about the competition.
- jackhack 9y agoUnfortunately, he was this way with even his trusted inner circle of developers and engineers on the Macintosh project, NeXT, etc. He was well known for this binary trait; he could shower with praise, or explode in intense criticism without regard to feelings (ticking quite a few DSM-IV boxes in the process, no doubt!)
- otakucode 9y agoI could see where you might draw that conclusion, but I think it more likely that the two things simply aren't correlated at all. I use absolutist language constantly, but it is more along the lines of "strong beliefs, held lightly." It is generally quite useful to get people to challenge your statements if you've making them in a sort of absolutist manner, and then you get to find the difficulties and nooks and crannies.