bjack on 17/3/2015 at 22:12

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Free thinking seems to be dying, at least in America. 4 decades ago, we were taught to think freely and to question authority. Not to outright disrespect or deny the current rules of the land, but to question the validity of everything. It was an outcrop of the weed and acid induced stupor of the 60s and I ate it up like candy. What little kid would not like to challenge Mom and Dad about the logic of his bedtime?

Was the free thinking movement of the 70s too much? Were there too many "Fight Back with David Horowitz" type shows? Maybe that is a bad reference; but, a big part of the 70s free thinkers was to question things. All things. Roam the way you want to and don't just take the common path.

I ask this because of the current trend of "train rail" gaming, such as the new Thief. You go only where they say you go. You must meet the objective in their way, not backward. I HATE this with a passion. One thing that is really nice about games like T1 and T2 and most of their FMs is they are not too linear. Free roam is very much like free thinking. You accomplish things as you go, your own way.

But today, games are so linear. So is political discourse. So is belief in ideas. Everything seems either right or wrong with many people. No more greys. All is either black or white and all must bow down to the authority that tells you what is correct. You are not allowed to think for yourself, to come to your own conclusions. You are not qualified! Sounds like a medieval guild mentality to me, but then, what do I know? The Earth is in the center and that is that! GOD says it is, so that is that. Oh, some evidence shows the Earth orbits the Sun? Can't be! You are a denier! 97% of all priests say the Earth is in the center and the 3% will soon be defunded with a nice set of burning stakes.

But I digress… Do you think that group think is becoming more prevalent today? Remember that if you agree, you are part of a group that does, therefore you are expressing groupthink! AAAAGGGHHHH, the horror of it all :eek::joke:

Gryzemuis on 17/3/2015 at 23:48

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I think both issues are pretty much unrelated.

About the politics. The people who were born and raised in the fifties and sixties with free-thinking, are now the people in control. In politics, in the media, and in multinationals. In the fifties and sixities, new ways of thinking would cause a clash between establishment and the new thinkers. Now it's different. The establishment is very well aware of free-thinking or any kind of thinking or culture. And therefor they know how to deal with it. How to anticipate. How to talk the talk. While on the other hand doing exactly the same things that establishment has always done. In fact, the establishment is even better at holding on to power, because they understand media, marketing, the internet, etc. Politics today is not about actions, only about perception.

About gaming. This is really simple. If you make a product, sometimes you need to chose which market you are going to tailor your product to. The market for games for smart people is 10%. The market for games for dumb people is 90%. Therefor, if you want to make money, you tailor your product towards the idiots. And then you hope the remaining 10% will buy your product anyway, because nobody is making products for the smart 10%.

Tony_Tarantula on 17/3/2015 at 23:54

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Last time I checked it doesn't cost you any money to think, so no.

Kolya on 18/3/2015 at 01:17

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Back in the 60s/70s you had a small avantgarde (in any field) that tried to change the paradigm and remove the filters, but most everyone else were still just receivers.
Now everyone is a sender, there are no filters any more and to cope with all the information tribalisation has set in. Massively.

There's the pro-russian tribe that believes in Putin more than in democracy (oh god, is the grand dictator ill???). There's the anti-vaxxers and the global warming sceptics, the gluten free crowd, gender studies, chemtrails, fluoride, PC vs. console and millions more.

There's no unifying experience any more because TV has lost its authority and nobody is gathering around its modern campfire on Sunday evenings any more. We're not reading newspapers any more. There are no gatekeepers and no society reflecting on itself any more. The filters are truly gone.

So was it such a good idea to remove those filters? Haven't we all just become isolated, lonely and lost orientation? That's where a lot of people actually stop thinking and wish back the old times, which is useless and wrong. Because the filters we once had sucked big time. They were based on self-repeating hierarchies, money, sexism, elitism. They were shit filters. The only thing they did well was to limit our input and therefore make it easy to talk about last night's episode of Miami Vice or come to similar political conclusions.

We will never get that limited input back. Unless we establish a dictatorship that does it for us. Hello Turkey, Russia, Hungary! You guys are on a good way.
But for the rest of us, who like our freedom, we have to invent better filters or drown in mediocrity.

scumble on 18/3/2015 at 11:30

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Indeed faetal, you have to work to achieve free-thinking and be self aware enough to take account of cognitive bias.

You have to look for free thinking in the right places. It's still happening and it might help if everyone stopped saying it only happened between 1966 and 1974...