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.
> 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.
On the other hand, as people get older they start to lose fluid intelligence and deliberative capacity and instead more regularly fall back on gut feelings and intuitions that might no longer apply in the present the same way they did in the past without thorough examination. There's also simply the fact that things we believed and people may have internalized from the past are often extremely questionable in light of the scientific and social progress that we've made today.
> more regularly fall back on gut feelings and intuitions
also known as heuristics. And let's not pretend that younger people approach every problem through some kind of rigorous logical analysis. Young people round here look less prepared than ever for what awaits them (yes, I know we've been saying this since Roman times etc etc.)
> And let's not pretend that younger people approach every problem through some kind of rigorous logical analysis. Young people round here look less prepared than ever for what awaits them (yes, I know we've been saying this since Roman times etc etc.)
I won't argue that, but it would be good to engage with them on the level of rigorous logical analysis, just as it's good for young people to try to understand the underlying reasoning behind older generation's heuristics.
In general, the more time and power we have to devote towards thinking critically about issues, the more we should use it. Heuristics are only valuable when time and resources are short. In a world of overwhelming technological advancement, opting not to look past the heuristic is simply covering your ears.
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.
People outside the mainstream on a topic who are not deeply experienced specialists in that field have almost certainly fallen prey to well-crafted arguments that advance a falsehood. These arguments are far more common than novel ideas that are both correct and dominated by an incorrect mainstream idea. So when you encounter any argument against a mainstream position you need to be deeply skeptical of it, and if you don't have dozens of hours to research it all yourself you should fall back to the mainstream position.
>People outside the mainstream on a topic who are not deeply experienced specialists in that field have almost certainly fallen prey to well-crafted arguments that advance a falsehood.
First off, these are not mutually exclusive stances. Both you and GP can be right at the same time.
Second, I'd leave it at "well-crafted" and omit the claim that they are falsehoods. Whether they are true or false is the source of endless debate, which is rather the point.
Having said that, my experience is that while you say is often true (I'd argue about "almost certainly"), it's even more true when you find someone who almost entirely espouses mainstream views. They don't believe what they do because they spent much time musing over it and studying it. They believe it because they bought into a prevailing narrative without much thought.
> They believe it because they bought into a prevailing narrative without much thought.
And I'm arguing that this is the most rational thing to do in most cases. If you are outside your field, you should just accept the mainstream position unless you have devoted a great deal of (well-spent) time to the study of the topic. For any given matter of fact there is only one truth and unlimited falsehoods, and many of the falsehoods will have well-crafted arguments supporting them with lots of adherents. Its possible one of those could be the mainstream view but I believe that over time truths become mainstream.
>For any given matter of fact there is only one truth and unlimited falsehoods
For simple things, yes. For most debated things in society, no. Or at least, not in any knowable fashion. Whether a single payer system is better than a private insurance system is not something you'll ever reduce to a fact, because of the sheer number of variables, and even more importantly, because the notion of "better" is nebulous.
And as someone else has already commented, mainstream opinions on the same topic can differ widely from society to society (healthcare, public vs private services, etc). As someone who has lived in fairly disparate societies, that alone is reason enough for me not to put too high a value on mainstream positions in any society, since I know that if I did, I will often be "wrong".
And then there is the reality that there have always been mainstream views that conflict with science.
Not to take away from your wider point. Yes, I agree that one needs to have fairly good analytical abilities, and the average person often goes wrong when straying from the mainstream because it's easy to fall into "local" logical traps. However, I do think that at times one recognizes the mainstream to be one of those logical traps. In my experience, both elegant and simple ideas have a way of gaining hold in society - particularly in philosophy (think Kant's Categorical Imperative, or the Golden Rule), but reality rarely yields to simplicity and elegance.
>For any given matter of fact there is only one truth and unlimited falsehoods
Local maxima and global maxima may not align. In any system assembled from smaller systems and interacting with variable components no one truth may cover all outcomes.
Also this neglects that when it comes to profit motivations, there are intests that will sell a mainstream view that is categorically false for their own financial gain.
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.
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.
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.
Nearly no issues fall on 2 sides. Is there a time of pregnancy where abortion is ok? What guns do you want to control, and what kind of control do you want to have? Are your taxes progressive or proportional? How progressive? Where does progressiveness stop? Do you create product-specific taxes?
Anyway, take 10 issues that fall on exactly 2 sides, and you should never meet two people that agree with them all.
Does the pigeonhole principle not apply anymore? Surely you will find at least 2 people who agree on 10 binary issues in any group of 1025 people, unless this is some roundabout way of saying there are no binary issues.
I don’t have to. That’s the point: there are only 1024 possible positions on any 10 binary issues. Therefore, in a group of 1025 individuals, two must hold the same position.
These issues are framed as binaries because it serves the political goals of a two party system. It couldn't be further from the truth.
Actually, this right here is a stellar example of how political concerns and the vying of organizations for power warps the way we think about nuanced concepts on a fundamental level. It ends up the detailed, even-handed treatments make for poor slogans.
"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.