Week 2: Think for Yourself

News

A great danger in the time we live in is that we are fed too much information.

Quantity is a problem because the overload of data makes it more difficult for us to organize our knowledge, this has the effect of confusing us, and not giving us clarity. Data is available and abundant, and this is a gift, but it can also be a curse.

There is this idea that social media has liberated the mind by giving it more options. Before, news was centralized, a few networks decided what people believed in. But this dichotomy isn’t very useful. Yes, there are more options today, but that is not necessarily a good thing.

A trained mind, that is willing fact check and engage with the arguments will benefit from the modern system of disseminating information, but an untrained (or busy) mind will not. The major news outlets are now a more benign form of this danger. They ship out prepackaged opinions that are being mass consumed and shared every day, but less people rely on them.

Think of the Covid-19 epidemic, where so many poor opinions, conspiracies, false information are floating around online. It is critical to be aware of your own limitations at this point, to avoid the tendency to become another expert, and at the same time, to have enough common sense and patience to see past the incessant noise that exists online.

Forget the fact that most information is noise, which is a large problem on its own. The simple act of depending on other people to inform your worldview is dangerous, especially if you are unwilling to think critically.

Wisdom

It is no different when it comes to gaining knowledge. There is an abundance of books to read, and no shortage of opinions to adopt and to read about. But we must always be wary of falling for the trap of deluding ourselves into thinking we have gained knowledge when we have not. This is much more the case when it comes to wisdom.

The Buddha taught that there are three ways of gaining wisdom.

1) Received Wisdom: By just repeating or internalizing whatever you have heard or read. This includes what you have learned from others and from books or lectures. This is the easiest way, but it is not your own wisdom – it is borrowed wisdom.

2) Intellectual Wisdom– This is superior to imitation, because it requires some level of discernment, but ultimately, it is still a form of illusion. You may read something and after you examine it, you decide that it is useful or practical, so you accept it. But it is only intellectualizing wisdom that you have heard.

3) Experiential Wisdom – This is wisdom that arises out of your own experience, or personal realization of truth. This happens slowly and with more difficulty, but this type of wisdom will transform your mind and your actions.  

It is common for these stages to happen chronologically. That is, to begin with imitation, to graduate to intellectualization, and finally to confirm (or deny) with experience. In fact, the first two forms of wisdom are only useful if they guide you to the third form of wisdom, experiential wisdom.

Knowledge

What is most of our boasted so—called knowledge but a conceit that we know something, which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance.

— Henry David Thoreau, Walking

It is great to seek wisdom through experience, but knowledge needs to be gained more quickly. It would be impractical to be wholly self-reliant in this case, but you still need to be thoughtful about how you acquire knowledge.

Many people think they have understood something because they found a convenient fact that validates it (confirmation bias), or they think something is true because it sounds good, or they think it’s true because they highly esteem the person who said it (argument from authority fallacy).  

But they have not really understood anything. Like a drug, borrowed knowledge can be addictive, because it gives them the illusion of progress and understanding. If you want to find out if someone is in possession of an idea or the other way around, challenge them. Watch how they respond. If they are too resistant, then they are not in possession of an idea, but of a dogma that is in control of them.

A constant flow of thoughts expressed by other people can stop and deaden your own thought and your own initiative… That Is why constant learning softens your brain. … Stopping the creation of your own thoughts to give room for the thoughts from other books reminds me of Shakespeare’s remark about his contemporaries who sold their land in order to see other countries.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

When you read a book, you can either accept the author’s ideas and move on, or you can challenge them. If you are a novice on the subject, you will probably accept the ideas and move on. That is why the statement “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing” is a proverb.

Given this limitation, we should never read one book about a subject we are trying to learn about, and if we do, we must be overly skeptical about the information we are given. If you don’t know anything about nutrition, never read one book about nutrition and accept it as the truth. The same goes for fitness, philosophy, psychology, or business. The more knowledge you are exposed to, the better.

And this brings us to the paradox of knowledge. If we read too much, then we lose our ability to think for ourselves, because we are depending on the work of others. If we read too little, then we can dangerously be misguided into believing false information.

So, read voraciously, but at the same time, be critical of everything you read. This can be as simple as taking some time, every month, to pause and reflect on what you have learned, whether you think the information was valuable, and why. Skepticism is important, but it is equally important that it does not devolve into sophism.

Anyone who has read the Apology of Socrates should understand
the imperative that we must not pretend to know what we do not
know. The loss of such intellectual humility marks the beginning of
a closed mind and a closed system of thought. “Speculative boldness
must be balanced by complete humility before logic, and before fact”
(PR 17).Yet,humility without boldness of thought can be laziness, an
excuse for caving in to the cynical argument of the Sophists that we
cannot know anything so there is no reason to inquire. It is possible
to have new insights, broader insights, that can help us both to solve
old problems and to see new problems waiting round the corner

Process-Relational Philosophy