On the surface conclusions of the sofa thinker

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The inability to think independently is sometimes amazing. The superficial logic of most people makes them think in extremes and draw conclusions based on very private and sometimes even unverified facts. Take, for example, this famous picture that is gaining popularity on the Internet:

Even without understanding the composition of the charges, one can immediately catch the author of a violation of logic. To clarify this idea, consider an artificial example. Imagine, a person devoted his life to studying the harm from cigarettes, but at the same time he smoked himself. Maybe he even studied the effect of tobacco on health on himself, who knows. Now imagine that this person came to the conclusion that smoking is harmful, began to talk about it to everyone, convince, give evidence … but no one listened to him, everyone waved them off and said: "Yes, you yourself smoke!" However, the fact that a person smokes himself does not mean that his research is false. For some reason, he cannot quit, but this fact does NOT affect the truth or falsity of his research. So here, in this picture: individual failures of people (we are not always given to understand their reasons) DO NOT affect the degree of quality of their thoughts. Let me clarify the situation a little with the example of Dr. Benjamin Spock.

One must very well understand the situation in which he finds himself. At that time - this is the middle of the last century - there was no serious method of working with children at all, the main rules were: swaddle tightly, make them follow strict discipline, do not pamper (do not approach when crying, especially at night) and, in general, the general nature of the relationship was not just like a person, but rather like a thing. Spock first proposed to treat the child as a person at once, this was at that time a new, one might say, revolutionary idea. Of course, due to the lack of statistically representative results, Spock also gave the wrong advice among everything he wrote about in his book The Child and Caring for Him. The form of presentation of the material was also wrong, many people (as stupid as the author of the picture above), very superficially and literally took everything that was written. For example, the phrase "… give him freedom, respect his personality" people perceived as a call to pamper the child, give him everything he wants, etc. The phrase, of course, is taken out of context, there are still many thoughts, explaining the essence of what was said. Spock, of course, was mistaken in giving the child so much freedom, but this advice was further distorted by misinterpretation by the book's own readers, resulting in a whole generation of spoiled people whose parents complained about Spock.

Now imagine: a person, a scientist, cuts through a new direction in pediatrics, wants to rid the world of the absurd standards of upbringing at that time, he pays for his mistakes by not turning out his children the way he might want them to be. Does this mean that his advice is false? No, it doesn't. The general meaning of Spock's technique - to consider a child a person, not a thing - remains relevant to this day, some (I emphasize some) his advice really turned out to be stupidity, he paid for it. Does this override helpful tips? No.

Further, about a nursing home, about which the author of the picture above is indignant: the overwhelming majority of Americans of that time considered it normal to take their parents to such homes, because there they could at least take good care of the elderly. What's so unusual about that? Such was the culture of an entire nation at that time.

When you see someone's failures in the issues to which they devote their work, this can mean two things: either the person really does not understand what he is doing and his advice is bullshit, or the person made a mistake, for which he pays. And, perhaps, it was thanks to this mistake that he made a discovery that is important for people. That is, a person can give important advice AFTER everything in his life went upside down and he finally understood how not to do it. He is now giving this advice to the world, and the man in the street, sitting on the couch, says: "Look, you first raise your children normally, and then tambourine." The layman has no time to think, he sees only general superficial particulars. The essence can be hidden much deeper than it seems to him, the layman.

By the way, in fairness, it must be said that in most cases a person pays for his mistakes with the very place in relation to which he committed the wrong act. It's true. But this truth may be hiding something important. Yes, a person made a mistake, yes, he paid off, but before putting him on a shelf with losers, one should study the person's experience, understand his mistake and take note of it. Maybe he was able to fix it, then I wonder how he did it. To do this, of course, you need to have your head on your shoulders … of course, this is not necessary for sofa analysts who have no time to analyze what they read, see and hear. They looked at the picture, nodded and went to leaf through further, lying on their couch … losers.

I briefly showed you where to start thinking when you see pictures like this on the Internet. I did not at all intend to completely expose the author of the picture; the thinking reader will do this himself if he wants to. Of course, you can do a deeper analysis, but this is more difficult, you need to read some of Spock's books, and I'm not sure that readers will want to do this … and I will agree, now Spock is not the pediatrician whose books should be read in the first turn, here the interest is rather historical and historical-methodological. It is interesting to know how pediatric thought developed in the direction of raising a child.

The reader can conduct a similar investigation for all the other characters in the picture.

Learn to think for yourself, gentlemen. This skill can save you from dementia and prevent you from accidentally creating such pictures on the Internet.

And in general, one line is missing in this picture: “the author of the famous picture, boldly exposing famous figures in the field of psychology, lay all his life on the couch or sat in the office, having achieved nothing, except perhaps only the successful popularization of a good example of a classic logical error"