How to Think for Yourself

Who knows what ideas (and communications of ideas) really are, how they really work, what influence they exert on the very fabric of the environment (this infinitely complex, magical soup that we refer to as reality) in which they (and we) are contained, and what the infinite, recursive downstream consequences are of this influence.

At the end of the day, they "are what they are" and "do what they do", and the same applies to their (unseen, unrealized, misunderstood) systemic consequences. We can culturally deny such things (just as conspiracy theory culture collectively denies many things) all we want, but this does not stop it from being actually true. Mother Nature does not require our agreement when organizing the structure and affairs of the universe, but we may mind a great deal when the system she has designed (that we rarely try to truly understand) serves up the consequences of any wilful ignorance that we may be guilty of (see: Planet Earth, 2020).

An extremely large number of people confidently (and sincerely) make claims that seem to suggest they have a deep, accurate understanding of all this complexity. My intuition suggests that these people may not actually be as correct as they perceive themselves to be.

>> Find a way to get rationalists out of believing that these examples are an accurate representation of the beliefs of the conspiracy world in general, and you may be well on your way to a universal solution.

This is but one instance of a much larger problem. But solve this one, and you may have unknowingly solved many others.

FTA:

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. I'm not suggesting that you impose on everyone who talks to you the burden of proving what they say, but rather that you take upon yourself the burden of evaluating what they say.

"Saying things out loud" certainly has consequences (which come in many forms....loss of friends, ostracization, downvotes, etc). I wonder...might there also be some downstream systemic consequences to not "saying things out loud"...like for example when some of the things that are not said out loud are ~unpopular/unpleasant to ponder, but also true and extremely important.

I'm not sure about this. I think people are aware of what is conventional, and that's why they gravitate towards it. It's a risk-mitigation strategy, or in the case of curiosity, the explore-exploit trade-off at work.

Life presents you with a bewildering array of options. It greatly helps to establish what the conventional choice is. It will generally be the safe option, a path well-trodden. You can try to reverse-engineer why it became the conventional choice, gain an appreciation of its advantages, maybe tweak things to find a slightly more optimal solution for your personal circumstance... but sticking with convention qua convention is generally justified. People don't 'accidentally' make the same choices as most others, they deliberately identify what is conventional and follow that path. Go to university, buy a house with a mortgage, get a car on PCP, marry before having children, etc etc

Likewise for a small child there is no downside to curiosity, only upside. As an adult, there is an awareness that you need to earn your daily bread, before all else. Working with people who seem to just follow flights of fancy, risking their livelihood, can be infuriating.

And then there is the whole meta-question of conventional thoughts versus conventional statements. If you believe something that is widely disbelieved, and you speak up, you're sticking your neck out. When I see people do this I tend to get the impression they have not really calibrated their bet on being right against the reputational risk they are assuming.

Two weeks ago on some forum for developers I have seen a guy that was basically refusing to learn what other people did because he was convinced that he should be "inventing new unseen algorithms".

That was an IT undergrad that was bored with learning about things other people already invented. He just could not understand that in order to invent something new and groundbreaking you have to learn quite a lot of what already was there. Otherwise you will invent something that someone in 1820 came up with and think that you are genius.

So I agree with PG that there is a lot of value in independent thinking, but one has to be smart enough to realize where to stop. Essay is also not saying "non novel thinking is useless", because it is really useful.