Fear of thinking

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

- You will fail the exam.

He stood up and handed her the tray.

- Well, think about it. Maybe I'll quit my studies altogether, marry a millionaire and travel around the world on my own yacht.

G. Garrison, M. Minsky "Turing Choice"

However, before exposing people of unreasonableness, let's start with the most important thing. Paradoxically, people whose biological species is called "Homo Sapiens", that is, "Homo sapiens", do not want to think at all! These people do not recognize the value of thinking, they do not recognize the importance of seeking truth, they do not see the point in logic. And this is their principled position. It is enough to actually talk to any emotionally minded person for him to voice this position himself. Trying to justify his unreasonableness and his disregard for thinking, this person will certainly begin to come up with excuses, the meaning of which will be as follows: "In fact, it does not matter at all how it is right, but what matters is what people want. Good relations between people are more important than truth. If you want people what you want. -to explain, you should pick up a tambourine and dance in front of them, hoping to attract them, because as long as you do not deserve a good attitude towards yourself / authority / popularity, no one will listen to you. " Well, and so on. In 99 cases out of 100, when a person will have a choice - whether to make a logically correct and reasonable conclusion or a conclusion, the whole basis for which is expressed only in "I want it to be so," the person chooses the latter.

In fact, in modern society, reason does not have the status of a thing characterized by an independent value; reason, in a typical representation of modern society, is just an instrument. Well, since this is only a tool for solving some problems, then, in fact, you need to take it out only when we want to solve these problems. And if we don’t want to, then, in principle, we don’t need to take it out. "I don’t want to solve this problem! So I don’t need to think!" - a person who has been caught unwilling or unable to find the right solutions grabs the saving stick. The idea of the secondary, non-obligation of reason, deeply rooted in the worldview of people of modern society, the conviction that a reasonable decision, in which case, you can always sacrifice, refuse it, if you don’t like it, makes it almost impossible to prove something to them with the help of reasonable arguments and logical arguments, as they immediately throw themselves into the arms of the salutary argument "We don't need this!" Here one could, of course, speculate about how much mythical advantages these people acquire by abandoning a reasonable view of things, but here we will not talk about the slop of those meanings and values that an emotionally thinking person worships (this has already been discussed, in particular, in the first article "Criticism of the value system of modern society"), here we will talk about something else. Paradoxically, a lot of contradictions coexist in the thinking of emotionally minded people. One of the most paradoxical contradictions is that these emotionally minded people, while actually expressing openly their disregard for reason and logical thinking, at the same time continuously claim the correctness and validity of their arguments, constantly making choices motivated not by reason, but by desire. they call this choice reasonable, they constantly attribute any doubts about the correctness of their conclusions to a lack of understanding and stupidity of the opponent and, tearing open the shirt on his chest, shouting "Yes, throw me a thunder if this is not so!". There is no doubt that any person who tries to think rationally will have to face both blackmail from emotionally minded people trying to link their consent to listen to his arguments with the acceptance of their desires and emotional assessments, and with a huge mass of opinions that stand out for truly correct, objective, reasonable, etc., but on closer examination, frankly stupid. And what is the motivation of these people who want to convince you of the correctness of their arguments? "How, how, BSN, do you dare to criticize their arguments, because they wish you well!" Both laughter and sin … So, we should separate the criterion of "rationality", professed by emotionally thinking people, and the criterion of true rationality.

Moreover, the frivolity and inconsistency of people are best seen from the fact that, until some fact turns out to be accomplished, they are surprised that this is possible at all; when this does happen, they are again surprised that this did not happen before. Francis Bacon "The Great Restoration of the Sciences"

Actually, emotionally minded people are not that stupid. Sometimes they have doubts about the correctness of their favorite views, sometimes they realize that they were wrong, sometimes they manage to explain what they previously denied. However, despite these particular manifestations of reason, this does not change the essence in any way. Emotionally thinking people are like a person who is afraid to walk, who can sometimes be lifted off the ground and helped to step a couple of steps, but who after that will land again and will not be any closer to learning how to move on their own. This sporadic and random nature of their thinking leads to the fact that emotionally-minded people each time refuse to understand the ultimate goal of any reasoning, they are unable to formulate a clear and unambiguous conclusion or opinion on any issue, these people, as a rule, are sure that it is normal thinking is to take a random clue and give it an arbitrary interpretation. Often, acting in a similar way, and as a result, having received a certain random conclusion, people then (if they do not throw it away, not understanding what to do with it), grab onto this conclusion and try to look for this conclusion to use, as some unnecessary thing that they found it by accident, but it's a pity to throw it away. If a rational person thinks in such a way that he composes his arguments one to one, moving with each new conclusion to a more general result, if he consistently clarifies and builds up his idea of the world, then an emotionally thinking person thinks chaotically, accidentally, his sporadic conclusions remain unapplied to nothing, do not take a natural place in his own worldview and do not find a place and do not receive understanding from others. As a result, an emotionally thinking person comes to approximately the following conclusions:

a) all people are natural fools and do not understand anything (because they do not understand his arguments)

b) it is impossible to solve a significant number of problems by thinking

c) you can rationally prove (and prove) anything at all, and this is normal

The second characteristic feature of the thinking of emotionally minded people, associated with the first, is dogmatism. If a reasonable person understands the relative value of any judgment, then an emotionally thinking person does not understand this. For an emotionally thinking person who is not able to understand at least some complex system of logical arguments, the main mover of his random, sporadic thinking, directing him in one direction or another, is his emotional preferences and subjective assessments. As a result, the collection of ideas formed by him as a result of his sporadic thinking and randomly found and borrowed somewhere arguments begins to play the function of confirming these most subjective assessments and emotional preferences. A person is imbued with an awareness of the absolute value and absolute correctness of these favorite dogmas, which he worships, which he defends and follows, because by worshiping them, he worships his explicit or hidden desires, emotional assessments, pleasant memories or illusions, etc. dogma data fetish. An emotionally-minded person always perceives criticism of his dogmas painfully, and, since, in fact, he is offended not by the fact that his beliefs are criticized and errors are discovered, but by the things that disturb his emotional sphere, he almost always begins to blame his opponent in this direction, trying to convict him of impoliteness, disrespect for the interlocutor, a tendency to unreasonable attacks and other things that have nothing to do with the essence of the issue in question.

From the dogmatic nature of thinking, an emotionally thinking person develops a very specific idea of correctness. These people practically never use the concept of correctness in the sense of "correctly made conclusions, correctly solved a problem", etc., these people, rejecting correctness as the correspondence of a solution to specific conditions, as a solution that contributes to the achievement of a goal, rejecting rationality as the ability to draw logical conclusions, build adequate mental models of phenomena, the ability to understand and understand different things, the ability to think IN GENERAL, stick these labels of correctness and rationality on their favorite dogmas. From their point of view, a person is reasonable if he "understands" that their dogma is correct. If he “does not understand” this, then he is not intelligent, and his ability to come to the correct solution to a specific problem or give an exact answer to a specific question does not bother them. Let's move on to the "proofs" with the help of which emotionally minded people "prove" the correctness of their favorite dogma.

Almost always, this favorite dogma hangs in the air and has no arguments. However, an emotionally thinking person is not at all embarrassed by this. Actually, due to the sporadic and mystical nature of his thinking, an emotionally-minded person actually has no idea where most of the conclusions came from, which he personally adheres to, and which mankind adheres to. If a reasonable person always tries to correlate new things with what he already knows, and will never be sure of the correctness of his ideas, if he discovers a contradiction in them, then emotionally thinking people behave completely differently. Even while studying physics and mathematics, sciences in which the ability to think and reason is extremely important, these people replace their own reasoning and logical conclusion with a chain of dogmas, each of which is a fixed object, they do not follow the logic of the authors of textbooks, etc., but simply remember that "so right", and that's it. Accordingly, not knowing where the dogmas came from, an emotionally thinking person cannot prove anything. If you ask questions about a topic about which a person has formed an idea with the help of a system of dogmas, then the answers are always simply striking in their naivety and absurdity. That is why, by the way, students who try to study physics and mathematics with the help of cramming have no chances to pass the exam by more than "three", since any questions on comprehension are completely misunderstood.

Proof of dogma, undertaken by an emotionally minded person, always comes down to gimmicks. The point of the ruse is to plant evidence at the base of your dogma that has no probative value. Variants of such tricks can be: a) particular examples b) conjectures c) false generalizations. The essence of a particular example is that two different wholes possessing one particular feature common to both are equated with each other. An example of a trick: "Fascist Hitler ate semolina. You eat semolina. You are also a fascist." The essence of the conjecture is that a certain hypothesis is put forward, taken from the ceiling, provided that it is correct, the thesis defended by an emotionally thinking person receives justification. An example of a trick: "You criticize the Communist Party because you are an accomplice of Putin."The essence of the false generalization is that two particular cases are declared identical on the grounds that they are subsumed under the definition of some more general case. Example of a catch: "Genetically modified foods are safe because genotype manipulation has been practiced since the Neolithic."

Actually, "proving", an emotionally thinking person does not try to prove anything. The purpose of his efforts is not to present others with an understanding of what he himself understands, the purpose is to induce them to agree with the judgment that he himself shares. The hidden goal is always to get some kind of gain in terms of realizing their desires or expressing their emotional assessments. It is surprising that, while ardently proving dogmas to each other and broadcasting their emotional assessments, emotionally-minded people in the overwhelming majority of cases do not know why they are doing this. Well, let's say you proved to me that this is good, and this is byaka. Well, what should I do with this knowledge? Nothing. Sit back and know. Treat it well and treat this badly. Since the dogmas defended by emotionally minded people, they do not correlate with the solution of specific issues, then, in fact, it is difficult to derive any practical benefit from them. Moreover, for emotionally minded people it seems quite normal if the project they are nurturing is fantastic, utopian, and has no chance of being implemented in the near future. Reality doesn't matter to them. The current conditions do not matter to them. Only illusions matter, only considerations of what they consider acceptable and what they are ready for (regardless of what actually needs to be done) matter. "Do you know," some say, "that as soon as we introduce a moneyless society, how everyone will live happily, the fools will become smart and engage in self-realization?" “Do you know,” others say, “that as soon as we change a person through genetic modification and the use of neurostimulants, all people will immediately become superhumans, as capable of selection, monstrously brilliant and in five minutes they will make a thousand times more discoveries than they were has been done for the entire period of human existence? " "Do you know," some say, "that all of humanity's problems will be immediately solved as soon as we implement the artificial intelligence project, but for this you just need to build a computer the size of the Earth?" Although from the point of view of a reasonable person, at least a bit of a person, the absurdity of the theses defended by emotionally-minded people and the absolute fallacy of their arguments are completely obvious, emotionally-minded people never want to admit that they are wrong. As a matter of fact, these people, presenting their evidence, as a rule, are absolutely sure that their dogma is absolutely correct, that their mystical intuitive impression that it is correct does not deceive them, that a person who wants the best for everyone can count only in this way. how they, and in general, that they are doing a favor, trying to explain to all the stupid people who do not understand the correctness of their dogma, why it is correct.

So, a reasonable person, as opposed to emotionally minded:

1) knows how to think consistently, systematically, highlight specific questions and give clear and precise answers to them; 2) is able to think flexibly, without the help of dogmas, is able to substantiate and explain his position in different ways, to indicate the pros and cons of various phenomena, to explain under what conditions a certain judgment is true and under what conditions it is wrong;

3) does not make logical mistakes in his reasoning;

4) speaks about what is being discussed, and not about what he is fixated on.

Yet, what prevents emotionally minded people from starting to think rationally? Nothing but their own psychological and value problems. Their persistence and consistency in evading the search for correct answers and reasonable decisions, even when they are very close, is simply amazing. The main reason for this, which makes them twist and always stop a step away from the correct answers, is fear. This fear is the fear of realizing the true understanding of things, the fear of realizing the truth. This mechanism is similar to how people who have certain internal complexes based on cases displaced into the subconscious, the stories of which formed the basis of the observations of Freud and his psychoanalytic doctrine, were in every possible way afraid and avoided that hidden information got into consciousness. In the same way, people who are emotionally thinking, obsessed with troubles, constantly repeat about some things, but like people in the stories of Freud, they do not really strive to solve the questions about which they repeat, hiding and refracting in the most incredible way their original motives, they replace these motives with symbolic actions that have no meaning. Self-deception and substitution of nonsense for reasonable decisions and searches is the norm for these people. The essence of their reasoning and actions is like a game, avoiding reasonable answers, they defend their right to play pretend, talk about the same topics, shout that they wish good for humanity and propose all sorts of fantastic projects to solve the stated problems, but in fact, so by doing so, they avoid a real decision, since a real decision, a real understanding of things would lead them out of this game, out of this constant meaningless symbolic action, it would put them before a choice - either to stop playing and admit their inability and their ignorance, to admit the utopian nature of their decisions, or to take real responsibility for their words and actually start looking for solutions, which, as a rule, are much more complicated and not at all as unambiguous as their initial fantastic and symbolic calls.

Fear of thinking is a significant problem that plagues humanity. During their dialogues with various people, many of whom presented themselves as the authors of large-scale projects to save humanity, I almost always came across the fact that they tried to leave the discussion as soon as it came to issues related to the specific implementation of their own projects. 99% of people on Earth are afraid to think and prefer to live in illusions rather than reality, fleeing freedom and the realization of their own motives. People who are afraid to think cause double harm - in addition to the fact that, in fact, they themselves are constantly fighting against any progressive and reasonable ideas that threaten to reveal their ignorance, they constantly introduce confusion, create illusory projects and deceive people who really would like to find the true solution of these problems, buying into their hypocritical slogans and appeals. However, despite the complexity of the struggle with people who are afraid to think, they cannot be left alone. It should be remembered that, nevertheless, every emotionally thinking person is potentially intelligent. One should constantly expose his mystical constructions, illusory conclusions, awaken his mind when he is mired in blind worship and fetishism. We need to save these people from the fear of thinking and the false values of the emotional worldview. There is no other way, how to learn to think, for humanity in the future.