chadwick
11-20-2009, 10:11 PM
Here is an interesting blog post I found recently; I think it is very applicable to the primal lifestyle and breaking away from the conventional thought on diet and exercise. And one of my favorite philosophical topics is epistemology (loosely applied here).
It is entitled: Why smart people defend bad ideas
The author gives four reasons why this is so:
One:
The problem with smart people is that they like to be right and sometimes will defend ideas to the death rather than admit they’re wrong. This is bad. Worse, if they got away with it when they were young (say, because they were smarter than their parents, their friends, and their parent’s friends) they’ve probably built an ego around being right, and will therefore defend their perfect record of invented righteousness to the death. Smart people often fall into the trap of preferring to be right even if it’s based in delusion, or results in them, or their loved ones, becoming miserable.
Two:
The second stop on our tour of commonly defended bad ideas is the seemingly friendly notion of communal thinking. Just because everyone in the room is smart doesn’t mean that collectively they will arrive at smart ideas. The power of peer pressure is that it works on our psychology, not our intellect. As social animals we are heavily influenced by how the people around us behave, and the quality of our own internal decision making varies widely depending on the environment we currently are in.
Three:
People worry about the wrong thing at the wrong time and apply their intelligence in ways that doesn’t serve the greater good of whatever they’re trying to achieve. Some call this difference in skill wisdom, in that the wise know what to be thinking about, where as the merely intelligent only know how to think.
and Four:
From what we know of evolution it’s clear that we are alive because of our inherited ability to think quickly and respond to change. The survival of living creatures, for most of the history of our planet, has been a short term game. Only if you can out-run your predators, and catch your prey, do you have the luxury of worrying about tomorrow.
It follows then that we tend to be better at worrying about and solving short term issues than long term issues. Even when we recognize an important long term issue that we need to plan for, say protecting natural resources or saving for retirement, we’re all too easily distracted away from those deep thoughts by immediate things like dinner or sex (important things no doubt, but the driving needs in these pursuits, at least for this half of the species, are short term in nature). Once distracted, we rarely return to the long term issues we were drawn away from.
Basically, people are too beholden to ideas because they would rather think they are right or be perceived to be right rather than be actually right. And this is especially exacerbated when people focus on the short-term and on trivial (perhaps unprovable things!) and miss the big picture (ex: eating bread has not killed me yet so why should I quit?).
The solution: examine every argument, never take the "obvious" for granted (for the truth might not be so obvious), and surround yourself with skeptical people!
Article: http://www.scottberkun.com/essays/40-why-smart-people-defend-bad-ideas/
It is entitled: Why smart people defend bad ideas
The author gives four reasons why this is so:
One:
The problem with smart people is that they like to be right and sometimes will defend ideas to the death rather than admit they’re wrong. This is bad. Worse, if they got away with it when they were young (say, because they were smarter than their parents, their friends, and their parent’s friends) they’ve probably built an ego around being right, and will therefore defend their perfect record of invented righteousness to the death. Smart people often fall into the trap of preferring to be right even if it’s based in delusion, or results in them, or their loved ones, becoming miserable.
Two:
The second stop on our tour of commonly defended bad ideas is the seemingly friendly notion of communal thinking. Just because everyone in the room is smart doesn’t mean that collectively they will arrive at smart ideas. The power of peer pressure is that it works on our psychology, not our intellect. As social animals we are heavily influenced by how the people around us behave, and the quality of our own internal decision making varies widely depending on the environment we currently are in.
Three:
People worry about the wrong thing at the wrong time and apply their intelligence in ways that doesn’t serve the greater good of whatever they’re trying to achieve. Some call this difference in skill wisdom, in that the wise know what to be thinking about, where as the merely intelligent only know how to think.
and Four:
From what we know of evolution it’s clear that we are alive because of our inherited ability to think quickly and respond to change. The survival of living creatures, for most of the history of our planet, has been a short term game. Only if you can out-run your predators, and catch your prey, do you have the luxury of worrying about tomorrow.
It follows then that we tend to be better at worrying about and solving short term issues than long term issues. Even when we recognize an important long term issue that we need to plan for, say protecting natural resources or saving for retirement, we’re all too easily distracted away from those deep thoughts by immediate things like dinner or sex (important things no doubt, but the driving needs in these pursuits, at least for this half of the species, are short term in nature). Once distracted, we rarely return to the long term issues we were drawn away from.
Basically, people are too beholden to ideas because they would rather think they are right or be perceived to be right rather than be actually right. And this is especially exacerbated when people focus on the short-term and on trivial (perhaps unprovable things!) and miss the big picture (ex: eating bread has not killed me yet so why should I quit?).
The solution: examine every argument, never take the "obvious" for granted (for the truth might not be so obvious), and surround yourself with skeptical people!
Article: http://www.scottberkun.com/essays/40-why-smart-people-defend-bad-ideas/