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I’ve been pretty critical of PG’s essays recently but I thought this one hit the spot. Go into twitter right more and search for “great reset” for a perfect mir

I’ve been pretty critical of PG’s essays recently but I thought this one hit the spot. Go into twitter right more and search for “great reset” for a perfect mirror of this paragraph for example: > Without this fastidiousness about truth, you can't be truly independent-minded. It's not enough just to have resistance to being told what to think. Those kind of people reject conventional ideas only to replace them with the most random conspiracy theories. And since these conspiracy theories have often been manufactured to capture them, they end up being less independent-minded than ordinary people, because they're subject to a much more exacting master than mere convention.

mistermann 6y ago
To truly appreciate the beauty of such mirrors, one should take care to examine both sides...observe thousands of the conversations of not just the "excessively" open-minded who obsess over topics like The Great Reset and similar, but also of those who are the ideological opponents of these types. Observe how they talk about their opponents. See if any patterns (in talking, and thinking) emerge, and whether some of the patterns are the same in both communities. From TFA: > You can also take more explicit measures to prevent yourself from automatically adopting conventional opinions. The most general is to cultivate an attitude of skepticism. When you hear someone say something, stop and ask yourself "Is that true?" Don't say it out loud. Or, sometimes, do say it out loud, and watch hilarity (to the unconventional, at least) ensue. > Treat it as a puzzle. You know that some accepted ideas will later turn out to be wrong. See if you can guess which. The end goal is not to find flaws in the things you're told, but to find the new ideas that had been concealed by the broken ones. So this game should be an exciting quest for novelty, not a boring protocol for intellectual hygiene. And you'll be surprised, when you start asking "Is this true?", how often the answer is not an immediate yes. If you have any imagination, you're more likely to have too many leads to follow than too few. > More generally your goal should be not to let anything into your head unexamined, and things don't always enter your head in the form of statements. Some of the most powerful influences are implicit. How do you even notice these? By standing back and watching how other people get their ideas. > When you stand back at a sufficient distance, you can see ideas spreading through groups of people like waves. The most obvious are in fashion: you notice a few people wearing a certain kind of shirt, and then more and more, until half the people around you are wearing the same shirt. You may not care much what you wear, but there are intellectual fashions too, and you definitely don't want to participate in those. Not just because you want sovereignty over your own thoughts, but because unfashionable ideas are disproportionately likely to lead somewhere interesting. The best place to find undiscovered ideas is where no one else is looking.

mistermann 6y ago

To truly appreciate the beauty of such mirrors, one should take care to examine both sides...observe thousands of the conversations of not just the "excessively" open-minded who obsess over topics like The Great Reset and similar, but also of those who are the ideological opponents of these types. Observe how they talk about their opponents. See if any patterns (in talking, and thinking) emerge, and whether some of the patterns are the same in both communities. From TFA: > You can also take more explicit measures to prevent yourself from automatically adopting conventional opinions. The most general is to cultivate an attitude of skepticism. When you hear someone say something, stop and ask yourself "Is that true?" Don't say it out loud. Or, sometimes, do say it out loud, and watch hilarity (to the unconventional, at least) ensue. > Treat it as a puzzle. You know that some accepted ideas will later turn out to be wrong. See if you can guess which. The end goal is not to find flaws in the things you're told, but to find the new ideas that had been concealed by the broken ones. So this game should be an exciting quest for novelty, not a boring protocol for intellectual hygiene. And you'll be surprised, when you start asking "Is this true?", how often the answer is not an immediate yes. If you have any imagination, you're more likely to have too many leads to follow than too few. > More generally your goal should be not to let anything into your head unexamined, and things don't always enter your head in the form of statements. Some of the most powerful influences are implicit. How do you even notice these? By standing back and watching how other people get their ideas. > When you stand back at a sufficient distance, you can see ideas spreading through groups of people like waves. The most obvious are in fashion: you notice a few people wearing a certain kind of shirt, and then more and more, until half the people around you are wearing the same shirt. You may not care much what you wear, but there are intellectual fashions too, and you definitely don't want to participate in those. Not just because you want sovereignty over your own thoughts, but because unfashionable ideas are disproportionately likely to lead somewhere interesting. The best place to find undiscovered ideas is where no one else is looking.