Everyone likes to believe they’re thinking independently. That they’ve arrived at their beliefs through logic, self-honesty, and some kind of epistemic discipline. But here’s the problem - that belief itself is suspiciously comforting. So how can you tell it’s true?
What if your worldview just happens to align neatly with your temperament, your social environment, or whatever gives you emotional relief? What if your reasoning is just post-hoc justification for instincts you already wanted to follow? That’s what scares me - not being wrong, but being convinced I’m right for reasons that are more about mood than method.
It reminds me of how people think they’d intervene in a violent situation - noble in theory, but until it happens, it’s all just talk. So I’m asking: what’s your actual evidence that you think the way you think you do? Not in terms of the content of your beliefs, but the process behind them. What makes you confident you’re reasoning - not just rationalizing?
Can you elaborate on that claim?
I exercise some critical analysis, but for the most part I just have trust in human ambition. For example: the reason I believe human CO2 emissions are driving climate change is not because I’ve looked at the evidence and evaluated it for myself.
The reason I believe that human CO2 emissions are driving climate change is: that seems to be the consensus of people that have worked hard to impartially develop expertise and gather data to understand climate science.
There are two important systems at play
1: Scientific research, which harnesses human ambition by rewarding impartial research and discoveries which overturn old assumptions/paradigms.
2: Journalism, which harnesses human ambition by rewarding impartial reporting on various fields of human interest. (Reporting is why it seems to be the consensus of the scientific community)
The impartiality of these systems is (has always been) under assault by capitalism (which also derives its power by harnessing human ambition) and so one must, to an increasing degree, evaluate the appropriate level of personal mental effort to allocate to identifying biases in the reporting.