Is free thinking dead?

demagogue on 18/3/2015 at 11:50

My idea of free thought just means not driven by any dogma & willing to drop any belief if the evidence weighs against it.

What I don't like is the bullying that goes on when people get questioned, and they try to shut down debate by definition than data. I don't mean RBJ style debate, where you're hammering good points, but the anti intellectual brand where you're bullied for doing more research. I expect it from the Right, but the Left is doing it more now too, like with the whole thing about listing books people should and shouldn't read.

faetal on 18/3/2015 at 14:26

There's a definite sense that it's "unfair" in debate to demand a certain level of rigour. Obviously it's an unusual situation where you have a trained research scientist debating with someone who has a passing interest in research, but there's an irritating amount of "your training just means you're brainwashed by the status quo" or "you're close-minded". The latter often when not considering every specious idea as somehow being equal to the ones backed up with empirical observations. I've got no issue with people not knowing what they're talking about, but having a go anyway - it's not like having an opinion should be restricted to those with some form of relevant training, but it's annoying when people double down when they're rebutted and then start trying to find ways to pick apart the very idea of providing proper justification for an idea, just because they can no longer engage at the same level.

What's the solution? I'm not sure. I don't think either person should be denied the platform for discussion, but, for example, I have done some recreational reading of theoretical physics, but you can damn well be sure I'll bow out of a debate with someone who works in research of the subject. If anything, I'll be interested in what they have to say, but this is, I suspect, the flip side of the Dunning-Kruger effect - I tend to under-estimate my overall ability in areas I'm not specialised to because I assume those that are know way more than I do. It's the same when I'm talking to other, more experienced people in my field. If I am sure of something and they question it, unless I'm sure I know something they don't, I'll defer to their opinion until I've found something solid to tell me otherwise.

Then you see some of the glaring silliness is debates about climate change. I've seen people quibbling that the ~90-97% consensus (depending on which articles you read) as being some kind of inroad to the whole thing being a sham, despite the fact that they're calling e.g. 90% a poor justification for acceptance without realising that they're touting the reflex, that 10% is somehow better. Likewise the anti-vax stuff. People are shunning protection from real diseases with real outcomes and genuine risk of complications ruining theirs and their kids' lives, as protection against undefined, completely refuted and/or causally nonsensical imagined risk of anything from autism to "over-loading my / my child's immune system" (all said without any in depth knowledge of what they immune system even does).

This thread is starting to Venn into the dilettantes thread. Probably because I'm being me as usual.

bjack on 18/3/2015 at 21:16

faetal, this is a free thinking thread, so if it goes elsewhere, that is freethinkful. I am saddened though about your comment about deferring to authority. If you know something is right, fight for it! I think this may have something to do with age though. When I was in my 30s, I let older people push me around too.

Here's a little secret about "authorities". Most of them are just bullshitting their way through life. They know a lot about very little, yet claim to know it all. The difference between the leaders and followers is the leaders are confident in their bullshit and confident that the followers will assume that BS is always right.

True leaders admit they do not know everything, so they surround themselves with people they think do know what needs to be done. Steve Jobs, Ford, Gates, Edison. This can back fire though, such as in the case of Tesla and Edison. The man stood up for what he knew was correct, in spite of his "superior" saying differently. This was a case where Edison thought he knew more than he did (mostly because it to deny his point was to lose boat loads of money).

There is a big trap being a free thinker. If you go against the grain and you are right, you may not reap the benefits of your apostasy. You may affect change, but may be deemed a troublemaker and untrustworthy. You will be marginalized, hated, and generally not get invited to lunch. I've been on both sides of the fence and learned to pick my battles very carefully.

For instance, arguing on this site is fairly harmless. The worse that can happen is someone can hack me and find out who I am and come "get me". Very unlikely. More likely is I would get banned if I became abusive and more than just a cock, of which I real am not. Just ask my mom… she thinks I'm cool… :joke:

But being a free thinker and going against the status quo in the wrong situation can end your life, be it metabolically, socially, or economically. Faetal, you are playing it safe by allowing others to overrule you, even when you know you are right and they are wrong, but you feel you may not have the ability to prove yourself. Welcome to everyone's world. My suggestion is to figure out a way that your ideas can be incorporated, or at least discussed somehow, without making anyone lose face. No one likes to hear or be told that they are wrong. The trick is to convince them they have some ownership in the new idea. This is why contrary viewpoints are not usually appropriate in meetings, unless already fully discussed ahead of time with your peers and managers. There are ways to disagree and win. It takes tact, something hard to come by in geeky worlds like IT, or physical sciences. Geeks are the worse bullies around, at least in my opinion. One slip up, no matter how minor and you are deemed irrelevant for life.

Tony_Tarantula on 18/3/2015 at 22:03

I'm curious why "anti vaxxers" bother you so much? You've been ranting about them in almost every thread on here. Not only is that a very broad brush painted(most that I've talked to are only concerned about the safety of additives used and would be eager to vaccinate if they were replaced with safer ones), but they're at most 3% of the American population. They make a lot of noise but they're trivial.

Oh, by the way, if it makes you feel better it turned out that the recent Measles outbreaks were NOT spread by "anti-vaxxers". It came from hispanic immigrants who, thanks to Obama and the big-business faction of the Republican party, were ushered into the USA without being given any medical screening prior to being released into the country's general population.

Tony_Tarantula on 18/3/2015 at 22:21

Quote Posted by bjack

Here's a little secret about "authorities". Most of them are just bullshitting their way through life. They know a lot about very little, yet claim to know it all. The difference between the leaders and followers is the leaders are confident in their bullshit and confident that the followers will assume that BS is always right.

I'm gonna link to an article that touches on this, written by a guy who should know: He's an alumnus of West Point and the Army(arguably the most "authority" driven organizations on the planet) and went to Harvard Business School then self employment after he got out. There's a section from one of his posts about the difference between the two that describes what you're talking about.

Quote:

True leaders admit they do not know everything, so they surround themselves with people they think do know what needs to be done. Steve Jobs, Ford, Gates, Edison.

Jack Welch had something to say about that:

Quote:

"I was never the smartest guy in the room. From the first person I hired, I was never the smartest guy in the room. And that's a big deal. And if you're going to be a leader -- if you're a leader and you're the smartest guy in the world -- in the room, you've got real problems.

Which is pretty much the opposite of the nerd mentality. Nerds ALWAYS have to be right, and seem to have an inferiority complex that drives them to relentlessly correct all the "wrong" beliefs or opinions of everyone else around them.

Quote:

Geeks are the worse bullies around, at least in my opinion. One slip up, no matter how minor and you are deemed irrelevant for life.

As was amply demonstrated by both #Gamergate and #antiGG. Both sides were more than happy to destroy their own for even the slightest slip up......(https://i.imgur.com/UhO68Yo.png) Brianna Wu is now in hot water for a reaction that basically consisted of describing someone who was SJW-deemed "bad person" in a light other than evil incarnate.

Anyways, this endless appeal to the "authorities" is a classic hallmark of people who external validation addicts. It's a long quote from this piece, so I'm going to put it in the next post:

(http://www.johntreed.com/process.html)

Tony_Tarantula on 18/3/2015 at 22:26

As promised:

Quote:

Another way to slice this point is dividing the world into those who need external validation and those who measure themselves by objective criteria. External validation is some person or committee saying you are a good person. We all need external validation when we are young. Going to a selective college like West Point is a way of obtaining that. In high school, my identity was moderately smart, quiet, slightly athletic guy. Replacing that with West Point cadet seemed like a big step up at the time.

I got a little more of that by getting a Harvard MBA, but my reason for that was more the experience and education than the external validation because I was 29 when I started there.

Now, my identity is author of over 80 books and over 5,000 articles; husband in one 37-year marriage; father of Dan, Steve, and Mike; long-time successful entrepreneur. At age 65, the fact that I went to West Point and was an Army officer for four years seems ancient history and anomalous.

Career military people, including those who are the entire management of West Point, are, by definition, people who spend their entire lives seeking external validation. That is, they want committees on promotion boards and such to anoint them with higher rank, especially early promotion to higher rank as well as plum (in an everything-is-relative sense) assignments. They encourage cadets to be like them. Like hell! Instead, you should adopt objective criteria by which you set goals and measure your life. Net worth. Marriage and family goals. Recognition (broad-based objective recognition like reputation or product sales, not recognition by a subjective committee). Contribution. Spiritual rewards from a sense of accomplishment. Making an honest living. Living up to the ideals of West Point—which—ironically—requires getting away from its parent organization after graduation.

You can spot external validation addicts by the way they describe themselves in their resume or bio. If it is a list of appointments they have received from various committees, like rank attained or plum assignments, they are external validation addicts. Those of us who think you can shove your external validation have different self-descriptions. Ours involve straight-commission jobs and marks like top producer; successful entrepreneurial activities; successful coaching in sports; books and articles written (“Getting published” is external validation. I published almost all my books and articles myself.); marks set in athletic competition; net worth; income; discoveries made; inventions patented; and so forth.
‘Self-proclaimed'

I sometimes get a telling accusation hurled at me. “Who put you in charge of _________?” or “You're just a self appointed _________.” These are the mating calls of the external-validation addict. When you spend a lifetime seeking external validation of your worth as a person, you lose the ability, if you ever had it, of recognizing that operating independently of the various anointing committees and bosses is possible, even preferable. Those people think you can only exert authority or even autonomy, if you are anointed by higher committees or bosses.

The profoundly disturbing thing to me about the external validation crowd is their cynical willingness to live a sleazy life in order to attain a position or rank that impresses those who are ignorant of the sleaziness that was required to attain the rank or position. In other words, they much prefer being anointed as a good person by some external committee—even when they have to be a bad person to win the committee's approval—than to be an actual good person, but not get their good “personness” validated by an incompetent or dishonest external committee.

By definition, people who are external validation oriented can not be free thinkers. To their minds what makes an opinion valid isn't whether there is a logical basis for that opinion, but whether those in a position of authority have anointed said opinion or conclusion with validity.

Another point: If you've ever spent any significant amount of time in a bureacratic organization you know that BlackJack is 100% right. People don't advance to those positions of authority by superior performance in most cases(unless said performance is in a manner that coincides with doing things the way an existing authority figure likes). They advance by being extremely good followers and possessing masterful abilities at sycophancy.

faetal on 18/3/2015 at 22:33

Quote Posted by Tony_Tarantula

Citation sorely needed for the Mexican thing. By citation, I don't mean a news article from a google search using the terms "measles outbreak mexican" either. Also, you don't get how herd immunity works either way. The people who don't understand how toxicology works or what vaccine additives do are risking the health of the elderly, the immunocomprimised and those allergic to vaccine additives like hen egg lysozyme just so they can hang on to some really bad idea of "keeping it natural" or whatever. It's literally rolling back one of the biggest achievements of modern medicine and it's only happening because ignorance is making a resurgence in people who've forgotten how fucking awful these diseases are, because they were next to eradicated.

The trends in epidemiology are chilling. Pertussis is making a comeback, measles is making a comeback, mumps too. I've worked with medics who are now seeing measles encephalitis starting to appear - something which should be too rare to ever see is now starting to return. I took a group of students to Spain for a field trip and three of them got mumps, one of whom went on to develop pancreatitis, and extremely painful and quite harmful condition.

People who are refusing vaccines are like drink drivers, it's their choice and fuck everyone else. That's why I care. That and it's a current issue and I'm an immunotoxicologist - it's literally within my field of expertise. If an architect notices a string of deaths and injuries because people with inadequate training decide that "hey, I can just google how to design buildings and away I go", then they might get quite the rant on also. Seeing the people with no training then scrabbling round google for links which back them up, doesn't ease this frustration. It's like confirmation bias has been given the new definition of "proof for people who don't understand research" and those of us who are trained are supposed to just give it an equal platform.

Bjack - I don't defer to authority, I defer to those who are more experienced than me when the topic of discussion is something which they are more experienced in. No one pushes me around. You need to grow up a bit I think. Try reading that Dunning-Kruger article I posted. There is a reason some people think their ideas are better than everyone else's and 99.99 times out of 100 it isn't because they are.

I get that it's not as nice for the ego to accept that you aren't as knowledgeable as someone else ina particular area, but if you have to lose all sense of humility to be a "free-thinker" then I think being a free-thinker is so indistinguishable from being a dick, that I don't see why we need to invent a longer word for it.

bjack on 18/3/2015 at 22:50

Tony_Tarantula, I used to be that nerd that had to prove everyone wrong. It started at about age 8 and lost me a lot of friends. I would actually seek out arguments and controversy (hummm…. maybe much has not changed? ooops) No one likes a know-it-all cynical butt plug, unless that said plug has lots of cash… I still fall into the trap from time to time and it usually involves vodka. :ebil:

Bob Lutz is another one that speaks of the leadership role. There would be no Viper without him, along with the wonderful, but now gone CTS wagon. He wishes he had more tact in his distant past, since that would have made him rise even higher. I think he went pretty far as-is.

There are top managers that know how to lead and respect that they are not the smartest in every area. Yes, the nerds are the ones that think they know everything. They are also the ones that give up their freedoms to authority. If the anointed say it is true and the anointed say it is true because they say it is true, it must be true right?

I can say that many of the recent failures I know of in management are those that are weasels that only bow down to the all mighty bean counters. These parasites are becoming the norm of late. One needs to only to read Dilbert to get the idea. They are concerned with quarterly profits only. Long term is measured in weeks. Complex issues that have been building up for decades must be solved in hours. Phone meeting of scores of people are required for even the most trivial issues. In depth RCA (root cause analysis) for simple human error, or lack of someone to swap out a dead drive in time. 80% remediation and 20% actual productive work. This is what we have today - at least in IT. So thinking freely, I left it. I do not see it changing anytime soon. Code first, it will break, blame everyone but the coders. Throw money at the problem. Never ever ever follow logical design practices. Oldthink is dead, long live agile programming. Let's see these clowns pull that off with a sky scraper!

bjack on 18/3/2015 at 23:12

Actually, the last I heard from the news, the measles came from a strain in the Philippines. Still, all of those illegal immigrants (most were not from Mexico by the way) were "wild" as in not vaccinated for anything. Cholera, mumps, small pox, etc. anyone?

And wow faetal, you seem to be misinterpreting my point. I use the term authority and you say experience. Well, I have found that experience is not all that it is cracked up to be. Young people in their 20s can run circles around me in some areas of my expertise. Why? Because they learn the new way and only the new way of doing things. I still cling to the old tried and true from time to time. My experience can limit my ability to further the game. Their knowledge that is contrary to mine is just the ticket. The difference is I will defer to the superior knowledge and not stand on my long term experience. I will be open to their new ideas, if they prove to be better. In your world, they should shut up and listen only to me because I am the ever so wise experienced truth holder. BULLSHIT!

There are many people with decades of experience that do not know shit about what they are talking about. Just because "they" have been doing something the wrong way for 30 years does NOT make them correct. Knowledge does not freeze. Yes there are some pretty basic axioms, but even these should be questioned if they start not to fit reality.

This has NOTHING to do with losing humility. It is about not being a slave.

I am posting this stuff because you make me sad. You may have insights to problems that could help mankind, or at least save a few people, or money... but you choose to accept that everyone older is better? Yes, I understand you respect the experience and that respect has its place. The truly intelligent. or those with incredible instincts, can tell when it is the right time to challenge. And no, I don't get it right all the time. But I try.

Tony_Tarantula on 18/3/2015 at 23:39

Quote Posted by faetal

Citation sorely needed for the Mexican thing. By citation, I don't mean a news article from a google search using the terms "measles outbreak mexican" either. .

Exactly where the fuck am I going to get a peer reviewed study about a one-time news event?

And if they're so concerned about what's best for people(it's clearly ENTIRELY altruistic and not at all about money), from what I've been told it would be easily possible but considerably more expensive to replace those additives that have a high metal content with ones that don't.

I don't think anyone is "anti vaxxine", but there's a lot of people who distrust big pharma. There's a strong parallel in agriculture where people no longer believe the studies that say that pesticides are completely safe, but still accept the idea of eating vegetables. ....creating a huge market for organic foods.

Anyway, let's go with an appeal to authority and "peer review". There's a wealth of literature indicating that some of the additives are questionable. An obvious solution is to replace them with better studied alternatives, so why is it heresy to suggest that as the solution?

(http://1awito2t72lx1idocf1h98ia.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/ThimerosalScienceSummary-SafeMinds.pdf)