this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2024
21 points (74.4% liked)

Skeptic

1265 readers
43 users here now

A community for Scientific Skepticism:

Scientific skepticism or rational skepticism, sometimes referred to as skeptical inquiry, is a position in which one questions the veracity of claims lacking empirical evidence.

Do not confuse this with General Skepticism, Philosophical Skepticism, or Denialism.

Things we like:

Things we don't like:

Other communities of interest:

"A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence." -David Hume

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Steven Pinker explains the cognitive biases we all suffer from and how they can short-circuit rational thinking and lead us into believing stupid things. Skip to 12:15 to bypass the preamble.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Most people I find (and I'm often a victim of it myself) are selfish and isolated.

Most people see the world and the universe as a place that exists for them ... they have a hard time accepting that they are just a small part of the universe. To think of yourself so humbly accepts the fact that you don't matter that much to the universe and most people don't like that idea.

It's that while modern philosophy of individualism and that you are the creator and manager of your own world.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Is there a solution to this problem?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Time ..... and I don't mean waiting a few years for some grand revolutionary way of thinking.

I mean evolutionary time scales of hundreds or even thousands of years for our species to evolve away from our cave man prehistoric mentalities.

When you graph out the age of our current species, we are closer to our prehistoric ancestors than we like to think. We are still a developing species that is built more for survival and aggression than as a modern technologically advanced society.

I have an old friend of mine who puts it more simply as "we are just monkeys driving cars"

The answer is time ..... a lot of time ..... for us to grow out of our old mentalities. Hopefully we can have that time.