Philosophy to some becomes more of a faith. They believe their way is correct, despite anything. They cement their ideas because people in the past have thought that way too. Once someone finds a philosophy that makes sense to them, they often dive very deep into it.

The point of philosophy, imo, is to become more open-minded and to question the nature of things out of curiosity. And this post says ‘toolkit’ because there’s more than one tool.

Taking stoicism as one branch of philosophy, it teaches you that you are the only one you can control. Accepting that can help someone cope with stress. However, someone who is always stoic and makes it the center of their opinions and identity are doing themselves a disservice. Because it closes their mind to the many tools and ideas other philosophies can give you to cope with life. One major downside to stoic philosophy is it promotes an individual mindset and discourages being vulnerable with others.

One needs to draw inspiration and thought from different sources, in order to create well-rounded critical thinking. Your friend probably found that corner of philosophy that made them feel understood and justified in the way they live. Sadly, that’s all they used it for. But the tools of philosophy remain there for anyone to find and use in many different ways.

To be Stoic on demand has saved my ass more than once.

It also can do the exact opposite, so who cares?

Studying philosophy is literary version of playing with fire. You'll either conclude your life has value, or that it has absolutely none, and all kinds of anarchy in between.

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Im not sure how ur testosterone levels remove credit from a statement, that doesn't quite logically follow, but ok. I haven't checked in a while but i was high T last time as well. So... Nice? maybe that gives me credit back?

Sure you can ignore that word, it's well defined, but it is pretty unimportant to my point.

Tbh, i'm a centrist, and i didn't intend to get caught up on political bs, but its not a bold statement to say the evangelical far right and conspiracy go together like white and rice.

Counter hypothesis:

Engaging with philosophy gives you a toolkit that can help you lead a worse and less meaningful life.

Can you give a hint as to what your philosophy is, or should I private message you?

Lol u again

I, too, appreciate the thoughtful response. However, as someone with above average levels of testosterone (within the reference range provided by my primary care doc) any credibility your argument may have had goes out the window when you use buzzwords like “christofascist”… using bullshit jargon is masturbatory. Explain it to me in a way that doesn’t make you sound like an edgy leftist atheist that just discovered Richard Dawkins or not at all.

the use of this frame argument has been remarkably consistent over the last ~60 years.

I'll make a few assertions:

goverments lie, conspiracies exist.

people look at an event, form a hypothesis of what happened, make statement to others.

government use agents to discredit hypothesis AND the persons making the statement.

this is a game of persuasion and deception to achieve an end. using considerable resources to create an illusion; "the means justify the end". the worst that can be said about conspiracy theories is that they are counter actions, operating on the same moral/ethical level. more often they are a guess at the truth, and therefore morally/ethically superior to the lie itself, an attempt to heal the damage done.

the real problem for a control system is that people don't believe everything they are told, and have valid reasons for doing so.

What caused so many people to have essentially identical forms of interpretation though? Is it purely organic, or might journalism have played some role in this outcome?

I agree,

As Jeremy Bentham says: "Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to de"

But i think cognitive biases perform those psychological functions you mentioned. They help people feel vindicated or superior, or good or belonging to a tribe, and they help us avoid the pain of things like cognitive dissonance, even if short sighted. That is exactly why we have biases, the same reason you mentioned

I think we are actually saying almost the exact same thing.

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> In this way otherwise thoughtful, intelligent people can cling to conspiracy theories. Educating them on critical thinking is therefore not always effective because the critical thinking strategies can be employed with a desired goal (to maintain those core beliefs).

I think i mean the same thing by biases and you do by core beliefs. I refer to them as biases because just that word implies an irrational stickiness to the belief. But really i think we are saying close to the same thing.

I think that generally if people are more knowledgeable, have a sound epistemology, and are strong critical thinking they will generally need an even higher level of bias(or unwillingness to let go of core beliefs) to maintain extremely irrational beliefs like conspiracy theories.

I also think a core aspect of critical thinking is not letting your biases inform your beliefs. Unlike intelligence, which is basically horsepower. You can have lots lot of horsepower, but its more about getting the power down in the right direction. People who are smart but lack critical think are just spinning tires.

The definition from google: "The subject is complex; several different definitions exist, which generally include the rational, skeptical, and unbiased analysis or evaluation of factual evidence."

I kinda of agree with this definition

While ide say Oz is intelligent, i wouldn't say he has great critical thinking skills, and i wouldn't say his biases inform his critical thinking. An irrational intelligent person is definitely more difficult to debate and can be stubborn but i wouldn't call that person a critical thinker, as I think part of critical thinking requires deep introspection of biases, and consistent application of sound epistemology.

The conspiracy equation:

h = intelligence

c = critical thinking skills

b = bias

y = rationality

Y = B - HC^(2)

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lol

good chat

>1. Jan 6th conspiracies among Republicans allow the holder to avoid unpleasant facts about Trump or some of his supporters. These would be difficult to reconcile with their worldview but conspiracy theories provide a way out. Claims about voting help them too.

This is true of the other side as well, but to differing degrees and in differing ways, and the interest levels in the truth seem very similar.

Not to worry though, pre-planted memes (subconscious heuristics that control reality perception) to the rescue: "both sides", "false equivalency", etc.

Humans are a very interesting species - so much potential, but trapped in a self-reinforcing cycle of wilfull delusion and silliness.

At the time that you composed this message, did you realize that you are projecting your heuristic based beliefs onto millions of people that you've never met, and did you notice that there are a variety of other cognitive errors in your text?

Conspiracy theorists are surely dumb, but all people are, and are unable to realize it. And if anti-conspiracy theorists refuse to improve, why should conspiracy theorists improve?

... philosopher says.

Having structure in thinking or a process truly helped me keep sane in these troubled times.

The if then format, basic as it is, is my go to in case of any emergency or difficult decisions.

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Hi, thanks for the response. Sorry it's taken me a week to read it, I've found a lot of these replies to be someone who's read the first paragraph and rushed back to tell me I'm a moron, which may be true, but still. Anyway, thanks yours is actually helpful and maybe I threw that abortion bit in without enough context.

You're perhaps right abortion isn't the best example, but the point is to reflect that it is a debate between an absurd dichotomy of a person deciding arbitrarily if a life is a life, and a person insisting a life is objectively a life at a point of conception because of a religious 'fact', and that this mirrors say, the gender squabble between the "I feel like a woman on the inside therefore I am a woman and it's morally wrong to say otherwise" and "woman is a female nothing else matters". Unfortunately, these debates really are that absurd. All the points you've raised illustrate that its a broad ethical issue with both outcomes and "values" that might not be agreed on, but it's literally framed in the public sphere as black/white subjective/objective.

So my point in saying the problem is that we don't read enough poetry is perhaps the other way around, we don't read poetry because we can't deal with metaphorical language without a facile insistence on reducing it to objective claims. 'Gender', however you look at it, is a metaphor. A literal man cannot literally be a woman, but masculinity and femininity are metaphors and abstractions, and if you accept that both have kinds of truth, but not the same kinds of truth, you can actually have a discussion. The point is that it's akin to Dawkins arguing about evolution with a seven day creationist. They're trying to argue the same things but putting together two language systems that aren't accessing truth in the same way, genesis one might be 'true', but it isn't an objective scientific theory.

If that makes any sense.

Heidegger has given me a lifelong appreciation of ontological analysis of ontologies and the dialectic there in.

Philosophy can really mess you up.

This is basically what I used to tell my intro classes. All things being equal, those who study philosophy will be better prepared for whatever they choose to pursue.

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Idk why you’re being downvoted bc this is honestly true hahahahhaa

Was a good watch btw! Cool presenter

Yeah, same here.