We don’t know what we don’t know. Maybe 5 minutes is all it takes to understand the essence of a problem. Maybe several lifetimes. There are examples of people who have studied something for a long time yet have come to more incorrect conclusions than someone who reads a single paper on the subject might. (There are physicists who believe consciousness is “real” but “unphysical”, biologists who think life must has been created and nurtured by a god, and healthcare specialists who think vaccines are bad.)
That doesn’t justify being arrogant and naive or dismissive of people more knowledgeable in a subject matter, but it enables someone to decide that a person they’re arguing with is one such example because “the truth is bloody obvious”.
It’s painful to read people’s takes on things you know something about. At the same time, most of us do the exact same thing whenever we share our take on something we don’t know as much about because we think we don’t need to.
Honestly I don’t think it’s that hard to approach topics with the assumption that there’s a lot you don’t know, and I like to think that’s the way most people behave in most cases.
It’s fun to make assertions about things we don’t know much about, provided we acknowledge that we’re probably wrong.
I think reddit and now lemmy kind of supported a “never concede that you’re wrong” learned behaviour, both because they’re anonymous and because there’s no cost to being an idiot.
I find it hard. I really try to check my assumptions and state my reasoning where I think it’s relevant but if I am to draw a conclusion about anything then I have to make a lot of necessary assumptions first. Some I am more confident about, others less so, but they are almost always given the same status in a statement in the interest of brevity.
I make an unthinkable number of implicit assumptions every time I communicate any information to anyone, and considering the problem of infinite regress I don’t even know where or if ever the assumptions end.
Some people are better at not coming across as assertive or arrogant (my partner, for one), and I admire that. I’m more the kind to throw a statement out there after thinking about it for a while and error correct if my assumptions are being challenged. The downsides to that method are many; unintentionally spreading misinformation being a major one, but also that people are frustratingly bad at criticising premises and instead often attack the conclusion itself and assume ill intent, or at best just disagree without further explanation.
Oh and a big problem is also that, in the process of making weakly founded assumptions and working with those, the more you work with them, the more they blend in with all the other heuristics you’ve accumulated in your life until you no longer remember they’re even there - much less questionable.
We don’t know what we don’t know. Maybe 5 minutes is all it takes to understand the essence of a problem. Maybe several lifetimes. There are examples of people who have studied something for a long time yet have come to more incorrect conclusions than someone who reads a single paper on the subject might. (There are physicists who believe consciousness is “real” but “unphysical”, biologists who think life must has been created and nurtured by a god, and healthcare specialists who think vaccines are bad.)
That doesn’t justify being arrogant and naive or dismissive of people more knowledgeable in a subject matter, but it enables someone to decide that a person they’re arguing with is one such example because “the truth is bloody obvious”.
It’s painful to read people’s takes on things you know something about. At the same time, most of us do the exact same thing whenever we share our take on something we don’t know as much about because we think we don’t need to.
Honestly I don’t think it’s that hard to approach topics with the assumption that there’s a lot you don’t know, and I like to think that’s the way most people behave in most cases.
It’s fun to make assertions about things we don’t know much about, provided we acknowledge that we’re probably wrong.
I think reddit and now lemmy kind of supported a “never concede that you’re wrong” learned behaviour, both because they’re anonymous and because there’s no cost to being an idiot.
I find it hard. I really try to check my assumptions and state my reasoning where I think it’s relevant but if I am to draw a conclusion about anything then I have to make a lot of necessary assumptions first. Some I am more confident about, others less so, but they are almost always given the same status in a statement in the interest of brevity.
I make an unthinkable number of implicit assumptions every time I communicate any information to anyone, and considering the problem of infinite regress I don’t even know where or if ever the assumptions end.
Some people are better at not coming across as assertive or arrogant (my partner, for one), and I admire that. I’m more the kind to throw a statement out there after thinking about it for a while and error correct if my assumptions are being challenged. The downsides to that method are many; unintentionally spreading misinformation being a major one, but also that people are frustratingly bad at criticising premises and instead often attack the conclusion itself and assume ill intent, or at best just disagree without further explanation.
Oh and a big problem is also that, in the process of making weakly founded assumptions and working with those, the more you work with them, the more they blend in with all the other heuristics you’ve accumulated in your life until you no longer remember they’re even there - much less questionable.