A lot of bad thinking involves:
- creating arbitrary mental categories, then addressing each small category with its only parochial answer
- arbitrarily separating things with shared attributes into separate categories
- selective attention
- impatience, intolerance, deciding right away some other idea or person is dumb, unreasonable, or "crazy"
- authority, prestige, and generally judging the speaker instead of the speech
- low standards for what is considered good or succesful
Messages (11)
What's an example of selective attention?
Can you give examples for point one and point two in your list?
#6653
philosophy of science vs epistemology in general
different types of writing (essay, blog post, book chapter that's an essay, impressive paper that's an essay someone created a postscript file of)
school education vs. stuff you didn't learn at a school
#6649
looking at the upside of something and not the downside. or vice versa.
paying lots of attention to one thing someone mentioned (e.g. a video game) instead of to a bunch of others that are better but you aren't thinking about.
> paying lots of attention to one thing someone mentioned (e.g. a video game) instead of to a bunch of others that are better but you aren't thinking about.
Isn't it impossible to not do this? What you pay attention to depends on what you already know.
lots of times people know a ton of other video games and could remember them and prioritize if they stopped and tried to. but they don't. they selectively focus on what's in front of them in stead of other stuff they DO know about.
>>> paying lots of attention to one thing someone mentioned (e.g. a video game) instead of to a bunch of others that are better but you aren't thinking about.
>>
>> Isn't it impossible to not do this? What you pay attention to depends on what you already know.
>
> lots of times people know a ton of other video games and could remember them and prioritize if they stopped and tried to. but they don't. they selectively focus on what's in front of them in stead of other stuff they DO know about.
I don't think we are thinking of the same thing. Can you give an example where that happens and why it's bad?
Joe loves 5 computer games. CS, LoL, dota2, war3, sc2.
Billy says "hey wanna play overwatch?"
Joe thinks "hey overwatch sounds fun, ok" and plays a bunch of overwatch with billy.
Joe actually likes those other 5 games more and would have had a better time. but he wasn't thinking about them. he didn't compare how good overwatch is to them. he just compared overwatch to doing nothing in order to determine it's fun. and yeah overwatch is totally fun for Joe compared to doing nothing but that's a dumb comparison. Joe is selectively paying attention to some options (overwatch and the bad default of doing nothing) and not to others (CS, LoL, dota2, war3, sc2)
a big categorization thing people do is they categorize disagreements. one they think of as the other guy being stupid, rather than as a disagreement. another is the other guy being ignorant, not a disagreement, in their mind. another is their kid "not listening", rather than a disagreement. another is their kid "being a troublemaker", rather than a disagreement. another is "schizophrenia", rather than a disagreement. and on and on. people have a million special categories for denying disagreements are disagreements.
> a big categorization thing people do is they categorize disagreements. one they think of as the other guy being stupid, rather than as a disagreement. another is the other guy being ignorant, not a disagreement, in their mind. another is their kid "not listening", rather than a disagreement. another is their kid "being a troublemaker", rather than a disagreement. another is "schizophrenia", rather than a disagreement. and on and on. people have a million special categories for denying disagreements are disagreements.
how is this different than you thinking that the person disagreeing with you is overreaching? aren't you also categorizing?
not being hostile, i genuinely want to know.
sometimes people are stupid, ignorant, overreaching, etc. sometimes i notice, though i also sometimes don't think about it. a lot of problems i have in conversations are because i forget people are stupid, ignorant, irrational, have low standards, etc. then when i treat people like they are better than they are, the gap causes problems.
stupidity, ignorance, overreaching, etc, doesn't stop stuff from being a disagreement which can be approached in the standard truth-seeking manner.
some people are trying to understand the world, others are seeking socially acceptable justifications not to think about criticisms, arguments, etc
what's bad is to use these categories as excuses to dodge discussion, not reply to criticisms, and otherwise not act like you normally would in a disagreement.
they are bad as *reinterpretations* of disagreement. they can be ok as additional concepts that in no way remove, or *delegitimize* the disagreement.
what NOT to do: "yes he said i was wrong and wrote an essay, but what he says doesn't count/matter because he's stupid/ignorant/overreaching".
also pointing out overreaching is an *actionable* tip which people can find helpful and use to discuss better.
pointing out ignorance and stupidity and theoretically actionable tips that people could benefit from, but in practice that doesn't happen. it's much harder to use them in a practical, constructive way than the overreaching tip. overreaching has content explaining what to do differently.
it's also bad if you don't recognize that disagreement-you-attribute-to-stupidity and disagreement-you-attribute-to-ignorance have a lot in common. if they are just disconnected, separate things in your mind that's bad. they have a lot in common (the disagreement part).