Speakpigeon
Contributor
- Joined
- Feb 4, 2009
- Messages
- 6,317
- Location
- Paris, France, EU
- Basic Beliefs
- Rationality (i.e. facts + logic), Scepticism (not just about God but also everything beyond my subjective experience)
I have to amend my piece here. The intuitions we have aren’t ideas as such. They are only the conscious results of the unconscious assessments produced by our brain on whatever conscious ideas we’re having on the moment. And we will have intuitions only about what we have in mind on the moment, including what we perceive and also in particular the ideas we care to think about, as if indeed to submit these ideas to our unconscious brain for assessment.
If we don’t trust our intuitions, we won’t take advantage of this assessment and we become dependent on the collective wisdom and ideas received from other people, and therefore more likely subject to manipulation. Think for yourself means just that. Think up ideas to see what your intuition is about them. Give time to the process. Sometimes it will be almost instantaneous, other time it may take months and why not years. The result will depend on what you've learnt before and what you care to spend time learning now.
Another aspect which seems particularly relevant to many of this forum's posters, there's a different between an inchoate ideas and articulated ideas. The more articulated the better. Consciously analysing an idea will be in effect asking for an intuitive assessment. Articulating an idea will help you analyse the idea. The more you analyse it, the more likely your intuition will be triggered to tell you there's something wrong.
Within reason. Don't stop living your life to do it. But it seems to me, it would be a good thing if more people did it, for themselves, because individuals are the creative force of humanity and we really need new ideas all the time, and ultimately, individuals can't keep the good ideas for themselves and they become public and can be taken up by other people and developed.
Well, sometimes. Less ideology and more logic would help. The Sun does move in the sky. This is a fact. What most people call the Sun is something that moves in the sky. We can all look up and see it for ourselves. So, the truth is most likely that the Sun moves in the sky. Then again, why? Well, it may be because the Sun is orbiting the Earth... Sounds a good idea but we can't actually verify it from our vantage point given our limited perception powers. Still, it was a logical possibility. Yet, another logical possibility is that it is the Earth rotating on itself. It would produce the same result, i.e. the Sun moves in the sky. This is the example we should keep in mind. Your ideology may sound fine to you from your vantage point, but, there are other logical possibilities and different people will see these other possibilities whereas you don't. So, please show a little respect for other people's ideas. Most of them are perfectly respectable and you would benefit paying a bit more attention to them. And you can perfectly insult people at the same time if you feel like it. Within reason.
The production of new ideas is probably the difficult bit for us human and indeed for any cognitive system. It's a question of too many combinations. For even a very simple problem, there may be initially millions of logical possibilities and working out what are the ones that are interesting has to be a massive task. So, the more people who do it and do it efficiently, and share their ideas, the better. That's how humanity works anyway. We discuss ideas with our family, then perhaps with our friend, and from one to the other, some ideas will bubble up to produce the good stuff: The Earth does rotates on itself, and therefore, well, possibly the Sun doesn't move after all even if it does move in the sky. It's all relative, anyway.
EB
If we don’t trust our intuitions, we won’t take advantage of this assessment and we become dependent on the collective wisdom and ideas received from other people, and therefore more likely subject to manipulation. Think for yourself means just that. Think up ideas to see what your intuition is about them. Give time to the process. Sometimes it will be almost instantaneous, other time it may take months and why not years. The result will depend on what you've learnt before and what you care to spend time learning now.
Another aspect which seems particularly relevant to many of this forum's posters, there's a different between an inchoate ideas and articulated ideas. The more articulated the better. Consciously analysing an idea will be in effect asking for an intuitive assessment. Articulating an idea will help you analyse the idea. The more you analyse it, the more likely your intuition will be triggered to tell you there's something wrong.
Within reason. Don't stop living your life to do it. But it seems to me, it would be a good thing if more people did it, for themselves, because individuals are the creative force of humanity and we really need new ideas all the time, and ultimately, individuals can't keep the good ideas for themselves and they become public and can be taken up by other people and developed.
Well, sometimes. Less ideology and more logic would help. The Sun does move in the sky. This is a fact. What most people call the Sun is something that moves in the sky. We can all look up and see it for ourselves. So, the truth is most likely that the Sun moves in the sky. Then again, why? Well, it may be because the Sun is orbiting the Earth... Sounds a good idea but we can't actually verify it from our vantage point given our limited perception powers. Still, it was a logical possibility. Yet, another logical possibility is that it is the Earth rotating on itself. It would produce the same result, i.e. the Sun moves in the sky. This is the example we should keep in mind. Your ideology may sound fine to you from your vantage point, but, there are other logical possibilities and different people will see these other possibilities whereas you don't. So, please show a little respect for other people's ideas. Most of them are perfectly respectable and you would benefit paying a bit more attention to them. And you can perfectly insult people at the same time if you feel like it. Within reason.
The production of new ideas is probably the difficult bit for us human and indeed for any cognitive system. It's a question of too many combinations. For even a very simple problem, there may be initially millions of logical possibilities and working out what are the ones that are interesting has to be a massive task. So, the more people who do it and do it efficiently, and share their ideas, the better. That's how humanity works anyway. We discuss ideas with our family, then perhaps with our friend, and from one to the other, some ideas will bubble up to produce the good stuff: The Earth does rotates on itself, and therefore, well, possibly the Sun doesn't move after all even if it does move in the sky. It's all relative, anyway.
EB
