Mental Liquidity

> It might sound crazy, but I think a good rule of thumb is that your strongest convictions have the highest chance of being wrong or incomplete, if only because they are the hardest beliefs to challenge, update, and abandon when necessary.

I strongly disagree with this, unless we are only talking about beliefs that are about facts of the universe.

For example, my strongest belief is that all people have an equal right to exist and pursue their own purpose... this is not a belief about the facts of the universe, but about my own morality. I don't think it has a chance to be 'wrong'

This might be relevant: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-authorship

According to the Kegan theory, it's possible. I'd be fascinated to see it if anyone knows of a study that demonstrates self authorship in a population of real people.

I’ve yet to hear anything akin to self authorship from someone that didn’t have a book/seminar/consultancy to sell.

It’s a somewhat amusing thought that there is this human phenomenon wherein we can transcend nature, nurture, the id, the ego, the superego, biology and chemistry — and overwhelmingly those that achieve this enlightened state coincidentally tend to end up as self-help bloggers and motivational speakers.

What was that old definition of ideology, an unreal relation to real facts?

I believe that knowing and believe are two different things ;)

Belief is far stronger - that's why people do things all the time they themselves at one point "knew" they couldn't do.

If you start with a flawed belief - things won't improve from there. You'll ending "knowing" a whole lot of stuff that reinforces your flawed belief - simply glossing/ignoring/downplaying the facts that don't support... this becomes a bit of feedback loop after awhile.

So either learn to let go of your beliefs and adapt or at least don't firmly establish beliefs until after you know enough stuff to decide for yourself what to believe.

I reevaluate mine all the time and I'm not wrong on of my strong convictions - albeit from my point of view, which I've made as broad as possible but I'm still human.

My highest beliefs today are built upon a foundation of information, learning and mistakes - I may state a belief with a single sentence but I can write books about why I've arrived at that belief.

I don't that's morality - I sometimes do things I "know" to be immoral, when the justification warrants it, I've never knowingly decided to believe something I know is wrong - even if I was forced, I'd only pretend to believe at best.

In college I'd cheat on a test tho if I thought it the only way I'd pass - bc I believed passing was more important than the test... maybe it's a bad example of immorality.

Anyways, I completely agree with Cortesoft - I'm settling on the understanding that all people everywhere are fundamentally important, collectively and individually.

Allowing and empowering all people to live their best lives is in all of our best interest. I've gone further even than equal right to existence and yet I'm supremely confident.

I think this rant also rather effectively demonstrates exactly what the OP was saying about our strongest convictions.

An incorrect fundamental belief - like say I believed the earth was flat, that belief would be implicit in all that I believe after that, just part of my world view and muddling up everything I think about anything - I wouldn't even be aware of that.

Mental liquidity. Fantastic.

Otherwise knowledge can be an immovable trap that becomes harder to avoid/escape the more stuff you know.

Scientists are great examples of this - if it can't be scientifically methoidized it doesn't exist and therefore must be explainable within the framework they already know, bc that's always right ;)