This question can inspire levels of fury beyond my understanding, which is why I couldn’t have casually posed it on Reddit. This seems like a more good faith kind of crowd so I’ll ask it here.

This is a question I’ve put a lot of thought into for myself since 2020. I’m interested in my ideas being criticized and perhaps to criticize the ideas of others (Note: Not criticizing people or their character. Only ideas). I’m going to post my own answer in the comments.

  • beerd@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    This is something that im relly interested in lately. I was born in a quiet religious community and as i was exposed to more and more outside information i had to reevaluate my beliefs down to their core.

    As i started to rely more and more on the scientific method as a basis of truth i felt like i figured it out (atleast the way to figure things out), but then came an other fundamental shift in how i think about truth. At this point i dropped every belief that stood on anecdotes and authority or an ad hoc framing of subjective experiences etc. However i was also the kind of person that would think trans people and allys are idiots for wanting to use preferred pronouns since they are “male/female”.

    Then as i started to read up more on the views of said people i of course realised that the media i listened to previously set up a false narrative of people wanting to deny science, while in reality these people simply thought about this topic in a more nuanced way, separating biological sex and how someone feels and enjoys expressing themselves. This topic showed me how easy it is to be locked in a framework that fails to adress some parts of reality, while still seeming coherent and rational in its simplified framework.

    As of now my goal is not building beliefs but to try and put myself in as many frames of thinking as i can and explore how many ways something can be viewed, hopefully managing to adress ever more nuances of reality but never accepting them as facts.

    Of course this is the theoretical part of things, but when i have to make a real life decision i have to settle at my current best. Even then, treating everything i experienced and thought as probabilities and imperfect simplifications of reality helps avoid a lot of mistakes and makes it easier and more productive to work together with different people to find answers.

    • Kwakigra@beehaw.orgOP
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      1 year ago

      This is very similar to the development I’ve experienced, thank you for sharing the process itself. Our brains naturally chunk information, so the use of schemas to understand abstract concepts I think is completely intuitive. As you pointed out though sometimes a schema can turn out to be an over-simplification which falsely indicates a topic is less complex than it truly is. It’s interesting to look over all of the cognitive traps we’re vulnerable to which we could never escape if we didn’t admit to ourselves we could fall into them.

      • beerd@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Yes, it can be a bit overwhelming at times, but at the same time always exploring even seemingly understood questions makes life a lot more exciting!