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nickernst comments on Five-minute rationality techniques - Less Wrong
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Should we be listing the oldies here as well? One of my favorites is still "Don't believe everything you think."
That one made it to book-title and t-shirt status, but I've never heard anyone actually say it. I've read it only a couple of times.
As true as that is, I don't see how it would lead people to do anything differently -- don't most people already think, er, believe they're living up to whatever that quote asks of them?
I don't think so. I'm pretty sure most people labor under the impression they have something like a unity of consciousness, so while "don't believe everything you see" might seem obvious, "don't believe everything you think" does not, unless specifically considering situations like hallucinations (which many would categorize under "see" rather than "think").
ETA: That's why this is a cornerstone of rationality. Even I am moved to remember the slogan, so that when I think to say, "That's not true!" I stop and ask myself why I think so and whether I should believe this impulse of mine.
Okay, in that case, I had come up with with a saying to express that same idea but which makes the implications clearer. Here goes:
"Blindness isn't when you see nothing; it's when you see the same thing, regardless of what's in front of you.
"Foolishness isn't when your beliefs are wrong; it's when you believe the same thing, regardless of what you've seen."
I particularly like the first, since the second clause technically includes literal blindness.
I might change "wrong" to "false" when repeating the second.
Thanks! Any help with touching up my version so it flows better is much appreciated.
Yes, I think this is particularly important, because the cognition involved in literal seeing is a form of believing: your brain is making inferences before there's even an image in your mind. (The raw retinal data looks like garbage.)
I estimate most people would lump "don't believe everything you think" into the space occupied by slogans like "think different" and "question authority"; i.e. at best a generalized endorsement of counterculture ideals, and at worst a cynical attempt to break down any and all ideals in hopes that the gap will be filled by something more congenial to the speaker. The general population is familiar with ideology and unfamiliar with abstract cognition, so unqualified ideas about ideas will usually be taken to refer to the former.
This misconception could be dissolved with half a minute of explanation, but that half minute wouldn't fit on a bumper sticker.
Thanks, you said what I was thinking so much better.
This reminds me of "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." -- Aristotle
To me, this uses "educated" in the sense it ought to be meant.
Can you think of a way to explain that to people so they may be able to apply it themselves? It's a nice slogan, but a clever turn of phrase isn't too useful by itself.
Frank Lantz spends the first five minutes of this video explaining the slogan and suggesting a way to apply it.
Thanks for the link.
For me, the most interesting thing is that Lantz doesn't appear to be retarded [1], and yet it was a huge shock for him to find out as an adult that it was possible to think about the odds of a decision being right rather than assuming that decisions were absolutely right or wrong.
I have no doubt that my description of needing years to assimilate the idea that people are really different from each other without this necessarily indicating something the matter with any of them is equally shocking to people who've been vividly aware of psychological differences as long as they can remember. Or I could be wrong-- the variation in clue distribution might be one of the things such people are apt to be clear about.
[1] He actually seems pretty smart-- but "doesn't appear to be retarded" is the only way I can think of to adequately express my surprise that it took him so long to acquire that particular clue.