Ask Lemmy

Everyone likes to believe they’re thinking independently.

Can you elaborate on that claim?

I exercise some critical analysis, but for the most part I just have trust in human ambition. For example: the reason I believe human CO2 emissions are driving climate change is not because I've looked at the evidence and evaluated it for myself.

The reason I believe that human CO2 emissions are driving climate change is: that seems to be the consensus of people that have worked hard to impartially develop expertise and gather data to understand climate science.

There are two important systems at play

1: Scientific research, which harnesses human ambition by rewarding impartial research and discoveries which overturn old assumptions/paradigms.

2: Journalism, which harnesses human ambition by rewarding impartial reporting on various fields of human interest. (Reporting is why it seems to be the consensus of the scientific community)

The impartiality of these systems is (has always been) under assault by capitalism (which also derives its power by harnessing human ambition) and so one must, to an increasing degree, evaluate the appropriate level of personal mental effort to allocate to identifying biases in the reporting.

Pick something fringe that you have a belief about, like Bigfoot. Look at the evidence, really look at first hand interviews. How many witnesses before it becomes plausible? Do those hundreds of people really get off on making things up?

You could do this with anything, even western medicine. It takes practice to figure out which part of your understanding was just accepted as truth, and which part you have evidence for.

The biggest bias that everybody has is thinking that a million people can’t be wrong. That surely some other expert would have discovered it if there was anything there.

I recently heard of some physics-breaking experiment that had been repeated by a few YouTubers. Two large torus magnets with opposite ends clamped close together. This object falls slower than one of the same mass and size.

Self examination. Question and challenge your beliefs constantly. Dig into anything that makes you uncomfortable especially

If you're not growing, your views are not getting closer to the truth. There is no end point, only growth

It's funny. I've seen research about LLMs "reasoning" and "introspecting" that has shown that they make up stories when you ask them why they answered questions in certain ways that don't match how their neurons actually fired, and a common response in the comments is to triumphantly crow about how this shows they're not "self aware" or "actually thinking" or whatever.

But it may be the same with humans. There's been fun experiments where people would have neurons artificially stimulated in their brains that cause them to take some action, such as reaching out with their hand, and then when you ask them why they did that they'll say - and believe - that they did it for some made-up reason like they were just stretching or that they wanted to pick something up. Even knowing full well that they're in an experiment that's going to use artificial stimulus to make them do that.

I suspect that much of what we call "consciousness" is just made up after-the-fact to explain to ourselves why we do the things that we do. Maybe even all of it, for all we currently know. It's a fun shower thought to ponder, if nothing else. And perhaps now that we've got AI to experiment with in addition to just our messy organic brains we'll be able to figure it all out with more rigor. Interesting times ahead.

I'm not terribly concerned about it, though. If it turns out that this is how we've been operating all along, well, it's how we've been operating all along. I've liked being me so far, why should that change when the curtain's pulled back and I can see the hamster in the wheel that's been making me work like that all along? It doesn't really change anything, and I'd like to know.

The scientific method. Try to falsify your own beliefs.

Im convinced i just post rationalize my instinctive behaviour. But my instincts react not only to the external world, but also to my previous thoughts. So my reasonings influence somewhat my behaviour, they dont dictate my behaviour, but they influence it.

By remaining self critical. Listening to new ideas. Trying to not hold it against myself when I'm wrong. Also reading, lots and lots of reading. I've been reading at a college level since the middle of elementary school, and Ive used that time to read a ridiculous corpus of books, tomes, treatises and manuscripts. Can even speak and write a little Old Babylonian.

i'm constantly in conflict with myself, always seek out perspectives that challenge my own, not just to understand them, but to see if they break mine. that inner war keeps me from trusting my first instincts too easily. it doesn’t guarantee i’m reasoning, but it forces me to notice when i'm just agreeing with what feels good

Come back at it in a different mood, time, setting, etc. and run it against multiple people who you know won’t just coddle you about it if you’re really concerned.

Part of human psychology is coping with the world around us, not just learning about it. Our individual natures, moods and pasts will always color our experiences and that’s not necessarily a bad thing; the sooner you accept it’s okay to be human, the more authentically you can work with the quirks that come with it.

I do know personally I can be prone to overthinking and getting fuzzier in my logic when I’m tired, hungry, or overwhelmed. I also know it’s fixable.

On the flip side, I also have a history of trusting/getting anxious about bigger picture things based on precedent rather than imagined ideas (new things don’t bother me, but having to face certain known patterns stresses me to a very bad point).

I factor both of these things in when I get to an almost-crisis point. But at the end of the day, the human perspective is like a prism in water: multifaceted, fluid, and dependent on environment but also sometimes beautiful. :)

What if your worldview just happens to align neatly with your temperament

I feel like you're putting the cart before the horse. I chose this worldview because of my temperament, not the other way around. I've also revised many of my views because of who I am, and that's why I'm thankful for being queer, for example, which has opened my eyes to many other experiences.

What if your reasoning is just post-hoc justification for instincts

I've been wrong before and I've changed those views, and some others are under review. My views aren't static. I also do many things that go against my instinct all the time. And also, who's to say that your instincts are static anyway? Your whole genetics changes based on your environment, and by extension, so does your behavior.

I think you're putting way too much of an existential dread on something dynamic and malleable, and it doesn't need to be that way.

How do you tell stories without reasoning in the first place?

You don't.

It's just not possible.

Everything else just gets layered on over the years.

For me, one of the biggest indicators is that I’ve actually changed my mind on several issues. I even keep a list of things I’ve changed my mind about or been proven wrong on. I don’t resist being wrong – I take pride in it.

Similarly, there are things I’ve changed my mind about and then later changed back to my original position. To me, that signals a certain mental flexibility and openness to new views, which I see as crucial for error correction.

Another thing that comes to mind is that there are topics where my opinions fundamentally differ from those of my peers. That alone isn’t concrete evidence of independent thinking, but at the very least, it shows a willingness to resist conforming under peer pressure.

What if your reasoning is just post-hoc justification

Relax, part of it is :)

The brain is able to do many different kinds of thinking. Reasoning is one of them. Dreaming is another, etc.

When you are thinking logically, then it is reproducible, and it is understandable and verifiable by other people.

When you do scientific research, such verfification by others is even required, before your results are considered meaningful and true.

That’s what scares me - not being wrong, but being convinced I’m right for reasons that are more about mood than method.

I think that'll be the case most of the time. The only known way to get a grasp of reality is cooperation, and the agreement to let experiment be the arbiter of truth. Which is difficult, as many systems can't easily be experimented on in isolation (and you're left with counterfactuals only).

Histories greatest thinkers struggled with this too. Descartes changed his famous postulate "je pense donc je suis" to "je doute donc je suis" later in life. ("I think therefore I am", became "I doubt therefore I am"). I read that as trading reason for emotion as core to his being.

I'm mostly just a language model built on limited training data. That data fed in has been littered with propoganda, bias, racism, sexism, and many inaccuracies. Then I add my own inaccuracies by coming to false conclusions by not understanding where my reasoning went wrong or even just fucking up calculations and not checking my work. My memory is limited and degrading in various amounts depending on interest in topics or markers that scared information in sometimes on accident. Horatio Nelson, saved. Current attorney general for my state, hmm wait who was that again, is it still Jonathan strange last name?

Am I ever reasoning or rationalizing? I'd say they are entangled all throughout my life. Cultural reasoning is what it seems you are questioning, and my answer is yes.

Obvious question: Who's asking? Is it "you"?

I urge everyone who feels like this post resonates with them to check out Eckhart Tolle. There's no way to be sure our beliefs are true so it's important not to get attached to them too closely.

Analyze after the fact. I just try to convince myself I'm wrong about things and hopefully I'm not successful the majority of the time. Think about any specific situation I feel I need to, and compare how I acted with how I would want to act. It's an active maintenance process that means hopefully i have more interactions that line up with what's desired. More than if I just allowed myself to act entirely on instinct

I somehow answered this wrong thread.