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> As every freshman course in “critical thinking” reminds us, the dull, unhappy burden of the rational mind is to follow the evidence where it leads, not the ba

> As every freshman course in “critical thinking” reminds us, the dull, unhappy burden of the rational mind is to follow the evidence where it leads, not the bandwagon. If you do that you frequently end up with a position that is "extremist" to someone or another. This effect is so reliable that if you meet someone who isn't extremist about anything it's safe to say that they don't think for themselves, rationally or not. As a corollary if you agree with all of the mainstream positions of your (aspirational or actual) social group, whether you realize it or not, you've probably arrived there via social pressure rather than an open, honest, rational method. So I don't hold an accusation of extremism as an insult, but more a prerequisite of someone capable of independent thought. That doesn't mean such a person won't be wrong as much as anyone else, but they're not necessarily more wrong than conventional wisdom, and they tend to be right or wrong in interesting ways. Which is valuable.

barrkel 7y ago
The easiest way for an aspiring rationalist to talk himself into supporting a faulty conclusion is to start with a feeling of rightness or wrongness, examine those feelings and pluck out some rationalisations, then mistake them for principles and follow them to extremes.
- platz 7y ago
  Which is why highly educated folks have some of most flagrant biases.
0815test 7y ago
"Social pressure" comes in many varieties. Many, perhaps even most, extremist positions aren't sustained by truth seeking based on perceived evidence, but by 'evaporative cooling' of fringe social groups, pushing the group away from reasonable stances and towards more distinctive and extreme ones.
lostmymind66 7y ago
Just because you came to the same conclusion as the mainstream population, doesn't mean your are incapable of independent thought. "That doesn't mean such a person won't be wrong as much as anyone else, but they're not necessarily more wrong than conventional wisdom" Conventional wisdom usually is a result of many generations passing down wisdom and knowledge down to the next generation. It's not always correct, but I will give it more credibility than extremist views, which are almost always incorrect and based more on emotion than facts. Extremest views are also usually held by younger people, which immediately should be put up to more scrutiny, simple based on a lack of knowledge and life experience.
- jlawson 7y ago
  Responding to your first paragraph. If you came to the same conclusion as the mainstream on every issue, it almost certainly means you're incapable of independent thought. Not just one issue.
  - lostmymind66 7y ago
    I still disagree. Many issues usually fall into 2 or a few sides (abortion, taxes, gun control, etc), so statistically, it's fairly easy to come up with your own opinion on any one issue and match the mainstream. There are also many people that go to the extremist views because they want to be different. They are guided by the mainstream and choose a different side, just so they can feel like a rebel. I don't really consider this independent thought.
    - Retric 7y ago
      Issues are almost never binary, even if political parties love for people to think that way. Seemingly binary choices like abortion always have the third option of not caring. But again that’s the headline stance policy deals with complexity. If someone feels very late term abortion is an abomination but the morning after pill is fine they need to define where that border exists. The extreme end is something like banning condom usage. Side issues like aborting for genetic issues or birth defects further split the issue. Taxes are about as far from a binary issue as it gets. Unless you abolish government they need to collect some money, so the real question is exactly how much money they want to collect and from whom. Hand all the different numbers to every American and there is a reasonable chance none of them would pick the same budget as was past last year.
      - Der_Einzige 7y ago
        Fourth option, and one that may seriously be advocated by Anti-natalists, is a "pro-death" view which would advocate for as many abortions as possible because all life invokes harm and on balance the ethical harm of even a small amount of suffering outweighs the ethical good of the pleasure of enjoyment - leading to the attempt to create a "benevolent end of the world" through not having children. The only reason that the person before you didn't include this view is because its outside of their overton window.
Der_Einzige 7y ago
This is exactly why the term for what this article is criticising is "Critical Theory". Leftist postmodernists are damn good at critiquing things, and calling out why one should reject a mainstream position. Of course, they forgot that the seductive belief in rationalism - specifically in the claim that some human recognize reality more correctly than others (and education is what separates the wrong from the correct) - is most likely the beginning of every from of hierarchy and oppression that they critique. Why is it that Foucault - an author who writes all about how shitty schools are - is required reading in many undergraduate classes? If he saw people being graded for regurgitating his ideas, he'd be spinning in his grave! The Academy is where critical theory goes to be neutered. And it must be, as it would be too subversive without tenured academics to keep the proles from direct action.
- xfs 7y ago
  Well, you have to master the language of critique before being able to critique the language itself.
  - Der_Einzige 7y ago
    No you don't. Lay-people offer great criticism against "language" without knowing the "language of critique". I don't need to say "Your epistemology is built upon a reductionist and totalizing conception of the self". I can say "There is no all-knowable truth in the world if there is no directly identifiable self"
  - menacingly 7y ago
    The language of critique itself is designed to reach certain conclusions and be blind to others. It's like a calculator with no odd numbers.
traverseda 7y ago
Extremism isn't an understanding it's a way of doing things. I don't imagine that people are getting called extremists for jumping on the communism bandwagon, as an example. They're getting called extremists for how they're behaving, how they're promoting their ideas. >There are many animals which have what are called dominance contests. They rush at each other with horns - trying to knock each other down, not gore each other. They fight with their paws - with claws sheathed. But why with their claws sheathed? Surely, if they used their claws, they would stand a better chance of winning? But then their enemy might unsheathe their claws as well, and instead of resolving the dominance contest with a winner and a loser, both of them might be severely hurt. You can think of the marketplace of ideas as a sort of dominance contest. The academic extremists I've encountered don't keep their claws sheathed, they're willing to do whatever it takes to make sure their ideas are the winner. And that's a problem because it poisons the discourse for everyone and promotes anti-intellectual sentiment. If you're being called an extremist just for having some out-there ideas, well I don't know what's up with your social group but I don't think that's normal. Extremism is about tactics, it's about the fanaticism that keeps you from being able to co-exist with other ideas.
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  Well call both "extremism". What is bad, because they are very different. Like the GP says, extremist ideas are the very natural consequence of thinking by oneself. But extremist actions are the consequence of the very misguided arrogance of thinking that you are correct just because your ideas leaded you there.
kartan 7y ago
extremism /ɪkˈstriːmɪz(ə)m,ɛkˈstriːmɪz(ə)m/ noun the holding of extreme political or religious views; fanaticism. Update: My point is that you are redefining what "extremism" means. e.g. The far-right is extremism. To think that you can create colonies in Mars in the next 10 years is "unorthodox". If you redefine extremism to something that is acceptable, and most people defines far-right as extremism, you are defining the far-right as something that is acceptable. That is the danger of redefining words.
- pixl97 7y ago
  The word extremism has nothing to do with right or wrong itself. If I live in an area that has had a stable climate for 1000 years, but i had at least some evidence that an 'extreme' change was going to occur, most people would consider that extremism. Especially since people will radically have to alter their behavior to survive. In general extremist are incorrect, yet due to black swans, not always.
- brighter2morrow 7y ago
  >If you redefine extremism to something that is acceptable, and most people defines far-right as extremism, you are defining the far-right as something that is acceptable. That is the danger of redefining words. Your premise here being it's good to ostracize people? Those who fall into far-right and far-left politics should be talked with because society is far-less isolating than they have been lead to believe. Extremist political groups live by isolating their membership from mainstream society. Mainstream society's way to reduce the reach of the far-right and far-left is to reach out to their low-level rank-and-file members to sooth their fears and invite them back to mainstream society.
  - aalleavitch 7y ago
    This simply doesn't work in a bipolar system. Acknowledging the legitimacy of the opposite party's extremists is directly counter to either party's political goals, as it encourages mainstream opinion to shift in the opposite direction of where they want it to. The only winning play is to demand that extremists be ejected from the dialog altogether.
mrrrgn 7y ago
Certain personality types are more likely to ignore social pressure and pursue logical conclusions of ideals. It's probably no accident that such personality profiles only account for a small percentage of our population as logical conclusions based off of faulty models can lead to huge disasters. The great mass of people who don't do much deep thinking act as a dampener and probably prevent our society from shaking itself apart as it whips to and fro across the space of all possible ideologies.
- hirundo 7y ago
  This is an argument against teaching critical thinking skills, which in the current zeitgeist is an extremist position. By thinking independently like this you weaken the dampener and risk the disintegration of society. If that's followed by an adaptive reintegration, it's a feature not a bug.
- aalleavitch 7y ago
  I don't think that's so much an adaptive aspect of human societies as it is a result of the sort of memes that are effective at propagating themselves. If you are a meme that is facing selective pressures towards persisting for as long as possible, you'll fare best if you exploit human psychology such that you're very hard to get rid of and invoke behavior in the people that carry you that is oppressively dogmatic and ideally prevents the sort of exploratory behavior that might see you replaced by another meme.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  That sounds a bit naturalist fallacy - just because it is selected for doesn't mean it is ideal. Legacy is perfectly capable of leaving maladaption. The inertia can and has worked against them too. For instance it could have been from the history of human group hunting, warfare that sort of cohesion served better than intellectual ability in the short term. But under modern conditions the utility would invert - muscle power is basically worthless compared to machines for labor for one. Not falling for the stupid delusions of the day can give a lead of centuries. Besides shouldn't proper deep thinkers should be able to weigh risks of ideologies? The unthinking masses would continue along with disaster while critical thinkere would say "stop!".
13415 7y ago
This is mostly wrong, because there is only one reality. As trivial as this may sound, if you're interested in reality, then you will invariably get to the same conclusion as many other people. Of course, there will always be some shifts in knowledge and at that time a fringe position can be the right one, but these are rare - very rare, indeed. Generally, the fact that there is one reality means that scientific opinions will converge and they do so fairly quickly. The majority of the work in science is adding a little bit here and there and refining theories, not coming up with radically new theories that contradict existing opinions in a radical way. I'd be wary about areas in which this is not the case. There are such areas, particularly in the humanities, but these are the ones with major methodological problems.
- ajna91 7y ago
  But most of what people care about are not "mere facts" of reality. What is the correct answer to the questions of morality, politics, etc?
- Der_Einzige 7y ago
  There's entire books written which contradict every point you've brought up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Re... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proofs_and_Refutations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proofs_and_Refutations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imre_Lakatos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imre_Lakatos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ego_and_Its_Own https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ego_and_Its_Own (his stuff on epistemology not the rest) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem
  - 13415 7y ago
    I know most of these books and issues, I'm a philosopher myself. Most of them do not contradict anything I've said, so you'd need to be a bit more specific. You will not get me very warm with Feyerabend and Kuhn, though. On a side note, what you're doing is appeal to authority. Not every successful author in philosophy is really an authority, philosophy doesn't work that way.
alexashka 7y ago
If you change 'extremist' to 'unconventional', then we're in full agreement. Extreme positions for an independent thinker make sense if you're in your 20s or 30s because you form ideas in contrast to status quo, often by swinging in the opposite direction. By the time you've had a decade or two to test your ideas in the real world, the extremism fades away into either 'things are far more complex than I thought' or 'I'd need to change many minds to make this work and I see no clear path to get there' - which are not extreme positions as far as I can tell.
UncleMeat 7y ago
Second option bias is a real thing. People are often quick to criticize the mainstream but then fail to apply the same skepticism to the ideas that follow. There is tremendous risk in unexamined skepticism.
aalleavitch 7y ago
At pretty much every point in time prior to today, in essentially every field, a large portion of the broad academic consensus was either flat-out wrong or missing a large amount of vital nuance, and eventually a fringe idea developed prominence and replaced it to make academic consensus closer to the truth (we hope). We'd be daft to think the same is not true today. It is very likely that there is some fringe position right now that is far more accurate than whatever passes as consensus, but we may not find that out for some time still. Don't get me wrong; the majority of fringe positions are even wronger still. Ideally, we should have fringe positions branching out from consensus in every direction, serving as the filopodia of academic thought.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- roenxi 7y ago
  > Don't get me wrong; the majority of fringe positions are even wronger still. Which goes to a real problem that is easy to overlook - using a rational method to make decisions is extremely risky. If you get any of your assumptions wrong, it will cause a cascade of stupid-but-logical decisions and conclusions. And basically everyone believes something that is untrue in some sense, so it seems almost pot luck whether the untrue things are relevant or irrelevant in practice. There are a lot of geniuses in history who also believed some clearly stupid things. Decisions made via social pressure are very tolerant of bad assumptions. If people don't understand why they are doing things but follow the crowd, they probably aren't going to end up anywhere too scary. If they try and make rational decisions from bad assumptions they could end up doing things that are profoundly foolish.
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    But every other method of reaching conclusions has the same flaw: reaching entirely false concliusions. Rationality paired with empiricism offers not a foolproof alternative, but at. least one with verifiable checks at evert stage of observation and reason along the way. If it's been found that either (evidence or reasoning) are flawed, then the entire derived chain of conclusions is called into question. And we cannot dispense entirely with reason, observation, or trust in participants and process. Reason allows leaps beyond (but hopefully eventually validated by) observation, and trust enables a provisional belief to be extended to that which our eyes or minds have not, or can not, seen or grasped. Groupthink's many failures are merely proof that truth is not a popularity contest.
shrimpx 7y ago
I think the crux of what you're saying is that if you're a member of group A and you do some "critical thinking", you might find yourself associating with the ideas of group B instead. But you're still a member of group A, so some members of group A will find your new ideas to be incongruent... Of course if you leave group A and hang out in group B instead, nobody will disagree with your "extreme" ideas.
dfgdghdf 7y ago
> If you do that you frequently end up with a position that is "extremist" to someone or another. This is a big claim. Evidence?
- invalidOrTaken 7y ago
  What sort of evidence would convince you?
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  Here is an easy example through history - republicanism vs monarchy. Previously advocating for self governance was radical. Now advocating for a return to ruling monarchies is extremist. John Brown was also an extremist but now not being an abolitionist is extremist.
glennpratt 7y ago
> This effect is so reliable that if you meet someone who isn't extremist about anything it's safe to say that they don't think for themselves, rationally or not. This seems rather self indulgent when you've set the criteria so vaguely. Perhaps an example of an extemist view would be beneficial.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  The tax system is incredibly poorly designed everywhere. Rather than the hodgepodge of different races, levied at different places and times for different reasons by different levels of government a single tax is best. I’m partial to either a Georgist Land value tax or a consumption tax but I’m sure there are other good options. Large scale immigration is incompatible with a welfare state unless immigrants are highly selected, as in Canada or Australia. If the US continues its march to open borders the welfare state will be dismantled or citizenship law will change to have multiple categories of rights for different types of citizens and residents. Civic nationalism is incoherent unless people can be expelled from the community. Ethnic nations make sense, because people are loyal to their kin or cultural group. A group where people had to sign on to an explicit statement of values makes sense because then there’d be a very clear signal of whether you were in or out. Liberalism only works with a huge majority in favour of its values and without that huge majority that agree on most things it will slide towards political violence and likely civil war without vicious political repression.
  - spaced-out 7y ago
    > The tax system is incredibly poorly designed everywhere. Rather than the hodgepodge of different races, levied at different places and times for different reasons by different levels of government a single tax is best. I’m partial to either a Georgist Land value tax or a consumption tax but I’m sure there are other good options. So you don't agree with how taxes work and think you could do better? I challenge you to find someone who DOESN'T think that. >If the US continues its march to open borders the welfare state will be dismantled or citizenship law will change to have multiple categories of rights for different types of citizens and residents. This is already the case. There are many services open to only US citizens, and others open only to citizens and lawful permanent residents. >Civic nationalism is incoherent unless people can be expelled from the community. In the US we refer to this as "jail". >A group where people had to sign on to an explicit statement of values makes sense because then there’d be a very clear signal of whether you were in or out. Many Protestant Christian denominations refer to this as "confirmation". I believe there is an equivalent concept in Catholicism; Bar/Bat mitzvah serves this purpose in Judaism. ... My point being, all of these views are completely mainstream.
renox 7y ago
>> As every freshman course in “critical thinking” reminds us, the dull, unhappy burden of the rational mind is to follow the evidence where it leads, not the bandwagon. >If you do that you frequently end up with a position that is "extremist" to someone or another. Especially in the USA with its huge number of religious followers, in Europe (depends on which part) maybe not so much? That said when talking about society, critical thinking is easy, coming up with credible proposals is hard.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  > Especially in the USA with its huge number of religious followers, in Europe (depends on which part) maybe not so much? The unity of views on many, many different topics among followers of a single political party would be vanishingly unlikely unless they were taking their beliefs and talking points from their fellow party members rather than thinking for themselves. This is not a US specific thing. Normal people don’t reason from principle, they reason coalitionally, based on the two most important questions in politics Who, Whom?
  - SantalBlush 7y ago
    They're not unified by their views so much as by the "other" that they share. A common enemy helps them overlook their ideological differences, so those differences are not often discussed. This gives a stronger appearance of groupthink.
Sniffnoy 7y ago
The thing is, there are two different things meant by the word "extremism", and the word itself serves to conflate the two. One is what you discuss -- object-level positions that are extreme in some way. This is, as you say, no vice. The other thing that is meant by "extremism" is what one might call "meta-level extremism"; it includes such things as trying to silence one's opponents rather than argue with them, the use of violence, etc. This, obviously, is a bad thing. (And while I called it "meta-level extremism" above, what it really is, I'd say, is illiberalism.) For this reason, I don't like the word "extremism", as it conflates the two. Of course, it's possible that the reason the same word is used for both is because, for pyschological reasons, in humans these tend to go together. But they are logically separate.
teslaberry 7y ago
wow. very well articulated, and interesting observation . thank you.

barrkel 7y ago

The easiest way for an aspiring rationalist to talk himself into supporting a faulty conclusion is to start with a feeling of rightness or wrongness, examine those feelings and pluck out some rationalisations, then mistake them for principles and follow them to extremes.

platz 7y ago
Which is why highly educated folks have some of most flagrant biases.

0815test 7y ago

"Social pressure" comes in many varieties. Many, perhaps even most, extremist positions aren't sustained by truth seeking based on perceived evidence, but by 'evaporative cooling' of fringe social groups, pushing the group away from reasonable stances and towards more distinctive and extreme ones.

lostmymind66 7y ago

Just because you came to the same conclusion as the mainstream population, doesn't mean your are incapable of independent thought. "That doesn't mean such a person won't be wrong as much as anyone else, but they're not necessarily more wrong than conventional wisdom" Conventional wisdom usually is a result of many generations passing down wisdom and knowledge down to the next generation. It's not always correct, but I will give it more credibility than extremist views, which are almost always incorrect and based more on emotion than facts. Extremest views are also usually held by younger people, which immediately should be put up to more scrutiny, simple based on a lack of knowledge and life experience.

jlawson 7y ago
Responding to your first paragraph. If you came to the same conclusion as the mainstream on every issue, it almost certainly means you're incapable of independent thought. Not just one issue.
- lostmymind66 7y ago
  I still disagree. Many issues usually fall into 2 or a few sides (abortion, taxes, gun control, etc), so statistically, it's fairly easy to come up with your own opinion on any one issue and match the mainstream. There are also many people that go to the extremist views because they want to be different. They are guided by the mainstream and choose a different side, just so they can feel like a rebel. I don't really consider this independent thought.
  - Retric 7y ago
    Issues are almost never binary, even if political parties love for people to think that way. Seemingly binary choices like abortion always have the third option of not caring. But again that’s the headline stance policy deals with complexity. If someone feels very late term abortion is an abomination but the morning after pill is fine they need to define where that border exists. The extreme end is something like banning condom usage. Side issues like aborting for genetic issues or birth defects further split the issue. Taxes are about as far from a binary issue as it gets. Unless you abolish government they need to collect some money, so the real question is exactly how much money they want to collect and from whom. Hand all the different numbers to every American and there is a reasonable chance none of them would pick the same budget as was past last year.
    - Der_Einzige 7y ago
      Fourth option, and one that may seriously be advocated by Anti-natalists, is a "pro-death" view which would advocate for as many abortions as possible because all life invokes harm and on balance the ethical harm of even a small amount of suffering outweighs the ethical good of the pleasure of enjoyment - leading to the attempt to create a "benevolent end of the world" through not having children. The only reason that the person before you didn't include this view is because its outside of their overton window.

Der_Einzige 7y ago

This is exactly why the term for what this article is criticising is "Critical Theory". Leftist postmodernists are damn good at critiquing things, and calling out why one should reject a mainstream position. Of course, they forgot that the seductive belief in rationalism - specifically in the claim that some human recognize reality more correctly than others (and education is what separates the wrong from the correct) - is most likely the beginning of every from of hierarchy and oppression that they critique. Why is it that Foucault - an author who writes all about how shitty schools are - is required reading in many undergraduate classes? If he saw people being graded for regurgitating his ideas, he'd be spinning in his grave! The Academy is where critical theory goes to be neutered. And it must be, as it would be too subversive without tenured academics to keep the proles from direct action.

xfs 7y ago
Well, you have to master the language of critique before being able to critique the language itself.
- Der_Einzige 7y ago
  No you don't. Lay-people offer great criticism against "language" without knowing the "language of critique". I don't need to say "Your epistemology is built upon a reductionist and totalizing conception of the self". I can say "There is no all-knowable truth in the world if there is no directly identifiable self"
- menacingly 7y ago
  The language of critique itself is designed to reach certain conclusions and be blind to others. It's like a calculator with no odd numbers.

traverseda 7y ago

Extremism isn't an understanding it's a way of doing things. I don't imagine that people are getting called extremists for jumping on the communism bandwagon, as an example. They're getting called extremists for how they're behaving, how they're promoting their ideas. >There are many animals which have what are called dominance contests. They rush at each other with horns - trying to knock each other down, not gore each other. They fight with their paws - with claws sheathed. But why with their claws sheathed? Surely, if they used their claws, they would stand a better chance of winning? But then their enemy might unsheathe their claws as well, and instead of resolving the dominance contest with a winner and a loser, both of them might be severely hurt. You can think of the marketplace of ideas as a sort of dominance contest. The academic extremists I've encountered don't keep their claws sheathed, they're willing to do whatever it takes to make sure their ideas are the winner. And that's a problem because it poisons the discourse for everyone and promotes anti-intellectual sentiment. If you're being called an extremist just for having some out-there ideas, well I don't know what's up with your social group but I don't think that's normal. Extremism is about tactics, it's about the fanaticism that keeps you from being able to co-exist with other ideas.

marcosdumay 7y ago
Well call both "extremism". What is bad, because they are very different. Like the GP says, extremist ideas are the very natural consequence of thinking by oneself. But extremist actions are the consequence of the very misguided arrogance of thinking that you are correct just because your ideas leaded you there.

kartan 7y ago

extremism /ɪkˈstriːmɪz(ə)m,ɛkˈstriːmɪz(ə)m/ noun the holding of extreme political or religious views; fanaticism. Update: My point is that you are redefining what "extremism" means. e.g. The far-right is extremism. To think that you can create colonies in Mars in the next 10 years is "unorthodox". If you redefine extremism to something that is acceptable, and most people defines far-right as extremism, you are defining the far-right as something that is acceptable. That is the danger of redefining words.

pixl97 7y ago
The word extremism has nothing to do with right or wrong itself. If I live in an area that has had a stable climate for 1000 years, but i had at least some evidence that an 'extreme' change was going to occur, most people would consider that extremism. Especially since people will radically have to alter their behavior to survive. In general extremist are incorrect, yet due to black swans, not always.
brighter2morrow 7y ago
>If you redefine extremism to something that is acceptable, and most people defines far-right as extremism, you are defining the far-right as something that is acceptable. That is the danger of redefining words. Your premise here being it's good to ostracize people? Those who fall into far-right and far-left politics should be talked with because society is far-less isolating than they have been lead to believe. Extremist political groups live by isolating their membership from mainstream society. Mainstream society's way to reduce the reach of the far-right and far-left is to reach out to their low-level rank-and-file members to sooth their fears and invite them back to mainstream society.
- aalleavitch 7y ago
  This simply doesn't work in a bipolar system. Acknowledging the legitimacy of the opposite party's extremists is directly counter to either party's political goals, as it encourages mainstream opinion to shift in the opposite direction of where they want it to. The only winning play is to demand that extremists be ejected from the dialog altogether.

mrrrgn 7y ago

Certain personality types are more likely to ignore social pressure and pursue logical conclusions of ideals. It's probably no accident that such personality profiles only account for a small percentage of our population as logical conclusions based off of faulty models can lead to huge disasters. The great mass of people who don't do much deep thinking act as a dampener and probably prevent our society from shaking itself apart as it whips to and fro across the space of all possible ideologies.

hirundo 7y ago
This is an argument against teaching critical thinking skills, which in the current zeitgeist is an extremist position. By thinking independently like this you weaken the dampener and risk the disintegration of society. If that's followed by an adaptive reintegration, it's a feature not a bug.
aalleavitch 7y ago
I don't think that's so much an adaptive aspect of human societies as it is a result of the sort of memes that are effective at propagating themselves. If you are a meme that is facing selective pressures towards persisting for as long as possible, you'll fare best if you exploit human psychology such that you're very hard to get rid of and invoke behavior in the people that carry you that is oppressively dogmatic and ideally prevents the sort of exploratory behavior that might see you replaced by another meme.
Nasrudith 7y ago
That sounds a bit naturalist fallacy - just because it is selected for doesn't mean it is ideal. Legacy is perfectly capable of leaving maladaption. The inertia can and has worked against them too. For instance it could have been from the history of human group hunting, warfare that sort of cohesion served better than intellectual ability in the short term. But under modern conditions the utility would invert - muscle power is basically worthless compared to machines for labor for one. Not falling for the stupid delusions of the day can give a lead of centuries. Besides shouldn't proper deep thinkers should be able to weigh risks of ideologies? The unthinking masses would continue along with disaster while critical thinkere would say "stop!".

13415 7y ago

This is mostly wrong, because there is only one reality. As trivial as this may sound, if you're interested in reality, then you will invariably get to the same conclusion as many other people. Of course, there will always be some shifts in knowledge and at that time a fringe position can be the right one, but these are rare - very rare, indeed. Generally, the fact that there is one reality means that scientific opinions will converge and they do so fairly quickly. The majority of the work in science is adding a little bit here and there and refining theories, not coming up with radically new theories that contradict existing opinions in a radical way. I'd be wary about areas in which this is not the case. There are such areas, particularly in the humanities, but these are the ones with major methodological problems.

ajna91 7y ago
But most of what people care about are not "mere facts" of reality. What is the correct answer to the questions of morality, politics, etc?
Der_Einzige 7y ago
There's entire books written which contradict every point you've brought up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Re... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proofs_and_Refutations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proofs_and_Refutations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imre_Lakatos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imre_Lakatos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ego_and_Its_Own https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ego_and_Its_Own (his stuff on epistemology not the rest) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem
- 13415 7y ago
  I know most of these books and issues, I'm a philosopher myself. Most of them do not contradict anything I've said, so you'd need to be a bit more specific. You will not get me very warm with Feyerabend and Kuhn, though. On a side note, what you're doing is appeal to authority. Not every successful author in philosophy is really an authority, philosophy doesn't work that way.

alexashka 7y ago

If you change 'extremist' to 'unconventional', then we're in full agreement. Extreme positions for an independent thinker make sense if you're in your 20s or 30s because you form ideas in contrast to status quo, often by swinging in the opposite direction. By the time you've had a decade or two to test your ideas in the real world, the extremism fades away into either 'things are far more complex than I thought' or 'I'd need to change many minds to make this work and I see no clear path to get there' - which are not extreme positions as far as I can tell.

UncleMeat 7y ago

Second option bias is a real thing. People are often quick to criticize the mainstream but then fail to apply the same skepticism to the ideas that follow. There is tremendous risk in unexamined skepticism.

aalleavitch 7y ago

At pretty much every point in time prior to today, in essentially every field, a large portion of the broad academic consensus was either flat-out wrong or missing a large amount of vital nuance, and eventually a fringe idea developed prominence and replaced it to make academic consensus closer to the truth (we hope). We'd be daft to think the same is not true today. It is very likely that there is some fringe position right now that is far more accurate than whatever passes as consensus, but we may not find that out for some time still. Don't get me wrong; the majority of fringe positions are even wronger still. Ideally, we should have fringe positions branching out from consensus in every direction, serving as the filopodia of academic thought.

deleted 7y ago
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roenxi 7y ago
> Don't get me wrong; the majority of fringe positions are even wronger still. Which goes to a real problem that is easy to overlook - using a rational method to make decisions is extremely risky. If you get any of your assumptions wrong, it will cause a cascade of stupid-but-logical decisions and conclusions. And basically everyone believes something that is untrue in some sense, so it seems almost pot luck whether the untrue things are relevant or irrelevant in practice. There are a lot of geniuses in history who also believed some clearly stupid things. Decisions made via social pressure are very tolerant of bad assumptions. If people don't understand why they are doing things but follow the crowd, they probably aren't going to end up anywhere too scary. If they try and make rational decisions from bad assumptions they could end up doing things that are profoundly foolish.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  But every other method of reaching conclusions has the same flaw: reaching entirely false concliusions. Rationality paired with empiricism offers not a foolproof alternative, but at. least one with verifiable checks at evert stage of observation and reason along the way. If it's been found that either (evidence or reasoning) are flawed, then the entire derived chain of conclusions is called into question. And we cannot dispense entirely with reason, observation, or trust in participants and process. Reason allows leaps beyond (but hopefully eventually validated by) observation, and trust enables a provisional belief to be extended to that which our eyes or minds have not, or can not, seen or grasped. Groupthink's many failures are merely proof that truth is not a popularity contest.

shrimpx 7y ago

I think the crux of what you're saying is that if you're a member of group A and you do some "critical thinking", you might find yourself associating with the ideas of group B instead. But you're still a member of group A, so some members of group A will find your new ideas to be incongruent... Of course if you leave group A and hang out in group B instead, nobody will disagree with your "extreme" ideas.

dfgdghdf 7y ago

> If you do that you frequently end up with a position that is "extremist" to someone or another. This is a big claim. Evidence?

invalidOrTaken 7y ago
What sort of evidence would convince you?
Nasrudith 7y ago
Here is an easy example through history - republicanism vs monarchy. Previously advocating for self governance was radical. Now advocating for a return to ruling monarchies is extremist. John Brown was also an extremist but now not being an abolitionist is extremist.

glennpratt 7y ago

> This effect is so reliable that if you meet someone who isn't extremist about anything it's safe to say that they don't think for themselves, rationally or not. This seems rather self indulgent when you've set the criteria so vaguely. Perhaps an example of an extemist view would be beneficial.

barry-cotter 7y ago
The tax system is incredibly poorly designed everywhere. Rather than the hodgepodge of different races, levied at different places and times for different reasons by different levels of government a single tax is best. I’m partial to either a Georgist Land value tax or a consumption tax but I’m sure there are other good options. Large scale immigration is incompatible with a welfare state unless immigrants are highly selected, as in Canada or Australia. If the US continues its march to open borders the welfare state will be dismantled or citizenship law will change to have multiple categories of rights for different types of citizens and residents. Civic nationalism is incoherent unless people can be expelled from the community. Ethnic nations make sense, because people are loyal to their kin or cultural group. A group where people had to sign on to an explicit statement of values makes sense because then there’d be a very clear signal of whether you were in or out. Liberalism only works with a huge majority in favour of its values and without that huge majority that agree on most things it will slide towards political violence and likely civil war without vicious political repression.
- spaced-out 7y ago
  > The tax system is incredibly poorly designed everywhere. Rather than the hodgepodge of different races, levied at different places and times for different reasons by different levels of government a single tax is best. I’m partial to either a Georgist Land value tax or a consumption tax but I’m sure there are other good options. So you don't agree with how taxes work and think you could do better? I challenge you to find someone who DOESN'T think that. >If the US continues its march to open borders the welfare state will be dismantled or citizenship law will change to have multiple categories of rights for different types of citizens and residents. This is already the case. There are many services open to only US citizens, and others open only to citizens and lawful permanent residents. >Civic nationalism is incoherent unless people can be expelled from the community. In the US we refer to this as "jail". >A group where people had to sign on to an explicit statement of values makes sense because then there’d be a very clear signal of whether you were in or out. Many Protestant Christian denominations refer to this as "confirmation". I believe there is an equivalent concept in Catholicism; Bar/Bat mitzvah serves this purpose in Judaism. ... My point being, all of these views are completely mainstream.

renox 7y ago

>> As every freshman course in “critical thinking” reminds us, the dull, unhappy burden of the rational mind is to follow the evidence where it leads, not the bandwagon. >If you do that you frequently end up with a position that is "extremist" to someone or another. Especially in the USA with its huge number of religious followers, in Europe (depends on which part) maybe not so much? That said when talking about society, critical thinking is easy, coming up with credible proposals is hard.

barry-cotter 7y ago
> Especially in the USA with its huge number of religious followers, in Europe (depends on which part) maybe not so much? The unity of views on many, many different topics among followers of a single political party would be vanishingly unlikely unless they were taking their beliefs and talking points from their fellow party members rather than thinking for themselves. This is not a US specific thing. Normal people don’t reason from principle, they reason coalitionally, based on the two most important questions in politics Who, Whom?
- SantalBlush 7y ago
  They're not unified by their views so much as by the "other" that they share. A common enemy helps them overlook their ideological differences, so those differences are not often discussed. This gives a stronger appearance of groupthink.

Sniffnoy 7y ago

The thing is, there are two different things meant by the word "extremism", and the word itself serves to conflate the two. One is what you discuss -- object-level positions that are extreme in some way. This is, as you say, no vice. The other thing that is meant by "extremism" is what one might call "meta-level extremism"; it includes such things as trying to silence one's opponents rather than argue with them, the use of violence, etc. This, obviously, is a bad thing. (And while I called it "meta-level extremism" above, what it really is, I'd say, is illiberalism.) For this reason, I don't like the word "extremism", as it conflates the two. Of course, it's possible that the reason the same word is used for both is because, for pyschological reasons, in humans these tend to go together. But they are logically separate.

teslaberry 7y ago

wow. very well articulated, and interesting observation . thank you.