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Most people have no desire to actually use their brain and think independently. For one thing, other people who've blindly accepted a point of view from some au
by bdw5204 3y ago
Most people have no desire to actually use their brain and think independently. For one thing, other people who've blindly accepted a point of view from some authority figure might be nasty to them. Also, they can't possibly imagine that somebody whom they really like/respect or who helped them get some code working might be wrong sometimes.
There are very good evolutionary reasons why most humans are wired to conform rather than to think. If you thought too independently in a pre-modern society, you were liable to end up burned at the stake or otherwise executed in an especially brutal and inhumane manner for "heresy" or "witchcraft". While this is adaptive for living in a pre-modern society, this is maladaptive for living in a liberal democracy where being able to think independently and to respectfully disagree with others are among the most critical life skills. This tendency towards mindless conformity is also adaptive for an industrial assembly line but maladaptive for a modern knowledge economy where productivity depends upon creativity and critical thinking not following orders and repetitively doing the same thing.
- louwrentius 3y agoIt’s funny to me that you write this down and not be reflective about your own claims. I don’t buy the quasi-scientific part about evolutionary reasons. Ad for that matter, I don’t even buy your first claim, that people don’t want to think independently. But it doesn’t matter in the end, the whole point of the article - to me at least - is that it’s a good thing to always take the time and at least understand the reasons for choices, and challenge them if it makes sense to do so. If I allow myself a wild stab at things, I think it’s more that people are “trusting” by nature and assume that things are well thought-out, which the article points out.
- CPLX 3y agoThis is nonsense. Leveraging the collective wisdom of the society you’re in is probably the most adaptive thing a human can do in any given situation. Doing the same thing you observe others doing is going to be the safest choice most likely to preserve your life and allow you to reproduce, and it’s not a close contest at all.
- kazinator 3y ago> While this is adaptive for living in a pre-modern society, this is maladaptive for living in a liberal democracy where being able to think independently and to respectfully disagree with others are among the most critical life skills. That is utterly false when it comes to science and engineering, where you're standing on the shoulders of the proverbial giants in order to do anything, and reinventing wheels is mainly the path to low productivity.
- aliasxneo 3y agoThis reads like a rant from Richard Dawkins.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]