An allergic reaction is a preemptive one. The pollen is not Ebola, but your throat doesn’t know that for sure, so it closes up. All it knows is that a powdery substance with a reactive exterior shell is getting everywhere. I’ve learned to preempt certain types of thought, because though I don’t recognize that they’re wrong yet, they’re shaped like wrong thoughts. Incidentally, one of the thoughts I’ve learned to preempt is the idea that I can become educated or wise enough to always identify these thoughts correctly. But here are the big ones. I don’t have the intuition to know why this general class of thought is wrong, and I don’t have the encyclopedic knowledge and grand perspective to see how obviously wrong each instance of it is. But I know that I try to protect myself from becoming terrible, ridiculous, or deluded, by looking for thoughts like these, and rejecting them.
my friend wrote a good article about intellectual allergies, and how to be an ethical person, and i highly recommend this for basically everyone to read
spooprunner likes this
sorcyress likes this
tired-violence likes this
galacticwiseguy reblogged this from ada-adorable and added:
"it’s striking how much the overcoming of cognitive biases generally makes people believe what they already believed,...
queen-bedlam likes this
ada-adorable posted this