Mysticism, Atheism and Reality

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There's no such thing as a mind too open, just like there's no free speech when some opinions are censored. Anything that can be defended logically should be open for consideration. Otherwise, you can't consider yourself openminded.

Some forms of mysticism may a load of crap, but many may hold truths. Never said people had to watch them but just thought i'd post them so people have the option to if they wish.

Here is a related video.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJGrZx8QzKw[/youtube]

I have to disagree with your point on open-mindedness.

Y'see, there are two considerations:

1) The inability of anybody to actually fully consider all of the evidence.
2) The need to make decisions, even just for one's own comfort, on truth claims.

The fact that I can't consider all of the evidence, but I also can't admit to omni-agnosticism means that at some point, I am going to have to start being closed-minded. Now, if I am a more open-minded closed-minded person, I will use some form of rational heuristic that is also flexible to handle these issues. But... I can't actually consider everything that can be defended logically, and that claim I make right there is a claim about logic. It is logically impossible with the cognitive and epistemic constraints that I have, to consider all things that are logically defensible.

That being said, your claim on "no such thing as a mind too open, just like there's no free speech when some opinions are censored" are not similar claims. Too open is a claim about mental efficiency and/or some claim about morality and knowledge processing. No free speech is a claim about the definition of free speech. The claims aren't really similar.

Keep your mind open and your brain will fall off.

Be open minded and think criticially. There such thing as being too open minded for your own good. I am victim to that sometimes.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T69TOuqaqXI[/youtube]

1) You can consider all the evidence available to you and prepare yourself for previously unavailable evidence when it presents itself.
2) There is no need to make decisions. There is nothing wrong with accepting that there are something you just don't know or just aren't sure about. Certainty is an illusion and demanding certaintly is a weakness.



There's no need to consider all things that are logically defensible at the same time, but being openminded does require that you consider previously unexplored or insufficiently explored possibilities when new arguments in favor thereof presents themselves... and that you are willing to change everything you believe in when that's proven to be wrong.



Both claims are similar in the sense that neither openmindedness nor free speech exist when they're complete/total. Just a little bit of censorship implies that free speech does not exist and just a single idea that can't be contemplated implies dogma and thus a lack of openmindedness.



Being critical and openminded can go hand in hand. Openmindedness does not equal accepting things at face value and being critical does not equal rejecting things at face value. IMO, what genuine scepticism is all about is precisely combining an open mind with a critical mind or accepting nothing as either true or false until you can analyse the data.

Well put dude.

No, you actually can't. "All of the evidence available to you", actually constitutes several encyclopedias, wikipedia, google, and basically everything at the library, and anything reasonably cheap at a half price book stores. Even further, if you actually get into an argument with someone of some degree of intelligence, there is a good chance that they will throw out some fact at you, that you will not likely know how to process or interpret.


The problem is that there isn't this one subject where we don't know or lack certainty on. This is EVERYTHING. Almost literally everything in fact. And just hopping from foot to foot as new evidence comes in isn't a workable strategy for gaining knowledge. One has to develop ideas and have the patience to make them as complete as possible, and this requires some commitment and thus the closing of the mind to some degree.


Right... and that's still beyond most people's capabilities.

Not only that, but "proven to be wrong" is always a difficult issue. Clear-cut notions of falsifiability don't really exist in reality, but rather, most people tinker with ideas, and only change when the opposing facts are too great to ignore.


No, you've just created a statement you never wrote. You stated "There's no such thing as a mind too open". That's a claim that can be rejected. You're the one who is promoting the idea that "open-mindedness" is an issue where more is always better. I am not, so the two claims can be entirely different to me, as it may be true that free speech is incompatible with censorship, but that does not mean more openness is always better.


The problem is that open-mindedness isn't even a clear-cut idea, as being more or less critical towards something is a matter of open-mindedness. After all, we can imagine a person who holds to the rule that they don't accept things that don't pass scrutiny also being closed-minded DUE TO that rule, as all that is needed is a person who considers an acceptable level of scrutiny to be too high. The issue is that there is no "proper level of scrutiny", especially given that verification does not really exist. And, well... the "anti-open-mindedness" folks, are really just promoting belief-conservatism, in seeing the growth of knowledge needing to be conservative for the sake of preventing too many extremely false beliefs from forming.

Nothing stops you from reading as much as possible of these sources. If you aren't willing to do that, it's better not to have an opinion at all.



The next step is to look up if they actually do have a point and move on from there. I've been doing that for years and if I can do it so can you.



Quite the oposite. Commitment implies that you do NOT close your mind.

Besides that, when there's only 0.01% chance that you're wrong it's reasonable to assume that you're right until you find evidence that contradicts you. Being openminded means that you can make assertions as long as you remain open to the idea that you just might be wrong.



Maybe. I changed belief systems on multiple occasions so it's pretty hard for me to put myself in the shoes of someone incapable of that.



When there is no rational support of your God and dozens of arguments against it, it's reasonable to accept that your God doesn't exist. This is just one extreme example, but it applies to far more situations than you imagine.



Let's agree to disagree, shall we?!



Aristotle said it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. I couldn't agree more. Openmindedness implies that you at least entertain a thought. Being critical implies requiring evidence before you accept it. How much evidence a person needs is highly subjective, but the idea is that both attitudes are compatible.

Um.... practicality and reality do. Have you memorized wikipedia yet? Have you checked out every book from your local library yet? Have you bought all of the cheaper books from Amazon? The wealth of knowledge in the world is large. In fact, more books and articles on topics are printed out each year than you could ever keep up with. Even if you have a PhD in a subject area, the wealth of information you don't have, but could have learned is still phenomenal.

Your argument almost seems as if you really aren't aware of how much information there is.


You can't do that effectively with everything. Let's say I am arguing something, and the person I argue with pulls out a point about cosmology, or bioinformatics. It may be extraordinarily difficult, inefficient, or not even reasonably doable to check up on the data. I might not be able to learn the cosmology necessary to evaluate string theory, but I might still be in a position where evaluating string theory is necessary to actually take a stand on something important to me. (which could be science funding, it could be advising a friend in what major they want to study, it could be ANYTHING)

As for what you've been doing for years? Um.... you do realize that this point you make is useless:
1) I don't know what background you have, so telling me about your practices tells me nothing.
2) Even if I were to attempt to evaluate your point, all it would be is an evaluation of your argument and argumentation style, and an evaluation of my experiences and how representative they can be for a highly educated person.


No.... commitment implies that you close your mind. In any case, if you reject a point of mind, it would make more sense for you to explain yourself. I don't understand what you mean otherwise.

I see commitment as entailing closing one's mind to some degree, as by committing to an idea, one is committing to the viability of it, despite reams of contradictory evidence that one likely cannot fully address. This does require believing something while it is still considered unproven, and to have some stubbornness in rejecting the claim. Stubbornness in rejecting a claim that one favors at the moment is very definitional for "closed-mindedness".


Oy, there is no objective way to even determine that there is a .01% chance that you are wrong. Even if you used Bayes, you would have to have prior probabilities, and these prior probabilities are not going to be everybody's prior probabilities. As it stands, each human being is irrational in evaluating evidence, to the point of overstating the probability that they are correct. If stubbornness towards one's favored claims, as opposed to picking beliefs as they become more epistemically rational, is "closed-mindedness", then each human being is going to be this by nature.

Even further though, the fact of the matter is that the most likely belief is continually in flux, but a research program that one engages in will have to have some endurance, such that you stick to it, despite the belief being epistemically unfavored.


I've done so as well. The fact that you see this as "belief systems" when my point has tended around knowledge is problematic though.


That's not a rational example though, as it does not match reality well enough to even provide a good analogy. Every religion, no matter how absurd it is, has some apologetic to it. Each apologetic has people who have good reason from where they stand to think it is true. It may really be true that these apologetics fail. It could even be that a belief is incoherent. Honestly, what you present is actually almost NEVER the case from what I see. So, to say that it applies to all of these situations that I am ignorant of just seems... silly to me. The people I know who are most likely to think this way, from my experience, are actually those who are ignorant but who don't know that they are actually ignorant. (This isn't to say that you must be one of those people either, but that is what my experience tells me about people who do see clarity)


Why? You are verifiably wrong. You presented two things as the same when the logical structures are entirely different. One was a claim about definitions, the other was an empirical claim. You can argue that free speech entails no censorship as a matter of tautology, and that's the only way you could likely argue it. The claim that open-mindedness is always better though is one that requires evaluating that strategy in people's lives. It's different in almost every way that I can think of.


The issue is that anybody can claim to "entertain a thought" even if they go back to their dogmatic mindset, and there is no objective standard for "real entertainment" for a thought. The entire matter begins to collapse into a squishy muddle, and if it does that, then while we might be able to in practice make distinctions between varying degrees of a quality, we can't talk about exemplifying a quality, or even perfect fulfillment of it, because there is no reason for us to know what that even could look like.

Well, I do have my own private library with several hundreds of books on topics like history, politics, psychology, philosophy, etc. from various eras and various perspectives, most printed some time between 1850 and 2000. Obviously I haven't had the chance to read them all but it does help when I need to look up some obscure details



I guess it's a matter of learning how to filter information. You rarely need ALL the facts. Usually, it's enough to read just a few standard works from the various perspectives and compare those.



If you're forced to make a decision, then you make the one that sounds most plausible at the time but you don't consider it a proven fact.



1) I have a background in IT, but human sciences have been an Aspie obsession of mine, to the point where I started collecting huge numbers of antiquarian books on those topics both for the sake of collecting and to be able to go through obscure information not available in libraries or websites.
2) In many discussions, argument can be verified against scientific data. When I learn about something that's totally new to me while contradicting an opinion I have, I always try to verify it when possible and adjust my position if needed.



If you're commited, you want to know the truth. In that case, you cannot consider anything as fact until you have verified.
If you're not commited, you don't care about the truth and you accept that you just don't know.

That's my position...



When there are just two sides to a certain issue (often there are), it's just a matter of comparing each argument of one side with each argument of the other side. When the arguments of one side are consistently stronger than that of the other side, then there is a very small probability that the other side is correct based on the dataset you're working with. Until you find new arguments to add to the dataset, it is then reasonable to accept the first position as correct.

Obviously it is always possible to encounter new data that changes everything and in that case a reevaluation can be required, which is the whole idea of keeping an open mind.



With regards to human sciences, scientific knowledge often has implications on moral issues and economical issues. As such, belief systems depend on the data you've aqcuired and when there's a drastic change in your dataset this can imply a change in belief systems. I'm mentioning belief systems because IMO there's no more drastic change of mind than a change in belief system.



If a belief is inconsistent it can be rejected. If a belief is coherent and consistent with the dataset you're working with, it's worth considering.



I wasn't implying that openmindedness is always better for everyone, although I do believe it's the only rational approach. I was merely stating that in my opinion not being open to everything that's rationally defendable is not being openminded.



When I'm refering to "entertaining a thought", I'm implying that one considers the possibility that the idea MIGHT be true, which is not the same as accepting that it IS true. It's a nuance, but imo a very important nuance.

You've had a chance to read more of them than you currently have though without much question.


Well, ok, but the issue is that information filtering is going to be a problem here. Information filtering is all premised upon claiming that some information is valuable, and that which is not valuable will not be pursued. This means that if someone confronts you with a conspiracy theory on XYZ, then you may be in a position where you have to dismiss their claim on practical grounds, and in effect practice a closed-mind. (You can't claim agnosticism on the matter either, because if their claim is true, it may be the case that it invalidates a lot of the information you count as knowledge)


Ok, but the problem is that if you are forced to make a decision, and it is without full information, and to press it forward, you are likely going to be in violation of standard fairness tenets, just like most people. You certainly aren't going to be evaluating all sources and claims as equal, but you will have a definite starting point, and you will favor and disfavor information as it relates to that.


Ok? Still with point 1, evaluating your claim is not an easy thing. Saying you have an "Aspie obsession", while making it more probable that you have a high degree of knowledge, does not mean that you actually do have this. Even further, I have no way of evaluating it from the hip.

As for "verified against scientific data", the issue is that outside of well-established facts, even the supposed data can be a matter of the study used. This is particularly clear with the social sciences, and I know economics has had quite a bit of debate about econometrics and the minimum wage with varying studies having different conclusions. Even further though, the "scientific data" is often times not as important as the scientific theory, and those can sometimes require a lot of mathematical background to understand. That being said though, a lot of claims require special knowledge, through reliance on a background of knowledge that one doesn't have. This includes nearly every single political discussion, as well as most philosophical discussions. To spend time to develop a personal opinion, you'll have to stick to your guns on your intuitions though, and this is not the "open-minded" way to approach discussion.


I don't care about your position. You're either right or wrong, or the entire disagreement is hot air. Your interpretation of "committed" does not make sense in the context I was applying it, as I was applying it to the choice of paradigm. One can easily be committed to a paradigm without actually caring about truth. Philosopher William Lane Craig is a very clear example in the minds of his detractors as this kind of person, as he is very committed to his models of reality, but he's left no real room for falsification or changing his mind on anything but the details to develop what he's committed to.

That being said, "verify" is not a word I believe much in. How do you verify something? (the question is rhetorical) The answers you'll give will all relate back to some process, but the problem is that a lot of verification we have today is theory-dependent, and not *really* verifying, so much as just providing statistical weight to a claim and failing to disconfirm it.


Consistently stronger does not mean that they are much stronger, so the "small probability" point doesn't really hold.

Even further though, is it actually wrong to hold to a less tenable side of the argument so long as one has intuitions that one is working to develop and which one hopes will change the score? How about this: is it wrong to hold to a less tenable side of the argument as long as one thinks that the arguments of another person will likely make that side more tenable? Finally, is it wrong to hold to the less tenable side of the argument as long as one believes that a trustworthy being with knowledge can settle this argument in one's favor?(So, you can't follow the physics, but your friend in physics assures you that they know and that their view of relativity is right)


Sure, but should this new data really be trusted if it is encountered? I mean, think about all of the personal and interpersonal disruption caused by suddenly shifting a belief because of this new evidence. Shouldn't this new data be very heavily scrutinized just because it is so new? If that's the attitude taken towards data though, isn't this a bit of closed-mindedness in some sense as well?


Right, but a problem in your model is that changes in data and changes in belief don't really go that hand in hand anyway. (this is a digression) Often attitude and framework plays a role in terms of evaluating truth-claims, and the idea that data isn't fully determining in beliefs.

I mean, let's put it this way: Isn't there a large list of things you take for granted? While you might be able to spew out some detail that you've heard recited to you, do you really know the details well enough to actually really establish the claim? For instance, if you were to argue against all variations of Idealism, what argument could you use? Or can you really settle the issue on whether oneself is unified or really kludged together? Most people hadn't even thought of some of these issues, or if they have, only vaguely, but they go around blindly picking one side over the other non-arbitrarily due to details in the background that don't really count much as data.


There are two problems:
1) Proving inconsistency is not always easy.
2) Most people have very significant inconsistencies in their sets of beliefs.
3) Coherent and consistent are too limited to really consider these things worth considering. That's why other heuristics, such as Occam's razor exist. And Occam's razor is not likely the only heuristic that human beings are going to use. Belief conservatism is also very common as well, and if a belief that is coherent and consistent challenges a lot of my other beliefs that I consider well grounded, I might not consider it at any length or depth seeing it as already known as false.


You were stating that openmindedness is always better though. The only way to salvage your position is to admit that you made a misstatement.

That being said, can you actually show it is the "only rational approach"? Even further, wouldn't that claim, that it is the "only rational approach" bring up consistency issues if you also believe in evolution and psychological biases as a result of evolution? After all, a psychological bias caused by evolution is a sign that it is "rational" in the sense of promoting well-being that human beings are biased in a particular manner towards claims, thus not open-minded. Even further, if openmindedness is the only rational approach, then wouldn't this mean that it is always the rational approach, and if this is the case, then wouldn't the existence of ANY logically conceivable case in which openmindedness is not rational cause problems for your belief?

One example where this might be an issue is in something like the "AI Box Experiment" http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/aibox In which a malicious AI is to attempt to get free from a box through manipulating a person only through words. Now, an open-minded person will be easily manipulated. A closed-minded person could easily just not listen. The issue is that if there are a few of these kinds of situations, where open-mindedness means manipulation, then your claim would seem to be false. Are there these cases? Sure, all sorts of people go around trying to scam, and flim flam their way past all filters with enough quick talking and clever half-truths, and being open to these claims results in losses. Saying people should "be critical" doesn't really solve the problem either, as we often have these situations in areas where all of the information presented is new to a degree where external confirmation is difficult.


That's still going to be a difficult issue, especially since human beings don't handle probabilities well, while open-mindedness will rely on this likely working a lot better than we know it does.

I look at it this way : if the evidence for a particular claim is conclusive, I stop researching on that particular claim. If it is not, I seek more evidence and try to look at different perspectives to avoid a onesides view. I repeat the process until the evidence for a particular claim is conclusive or I no longer care about it. When confronted with evidence that contradicts a claim I previously accepted, I reopen my research and start the process all over.



When presented with such a theory I try to look into the arguments in favor and the arguments against it. I will then compare the arguments from both sides with what I already know. If there evidence is weak I generally reject the theory due to lack of credible evidence. If the evidence is strong but inconclusive I leave it as a possibility until I find further evidence.



The kind of issues I'm talking about usually don't force me to make a particular decision, however if for one particular reason it is necessary to make a decision then that's something one just has to accept. I see no way out.



True. I don't really see the necessity, though, since how much I know is imo irrelevant for this discussion. This is a discussion on an approach towards gaining knowledge, not the amount of knowledge either of us use... At least that's how I see it.



My approach is more or less that of trial-and-error. I look at many different perspectives and try to fit in the dataset I have. When the dataset fits multiple options, I repeat the process with the next dataset for the remaining options over and over until there's only one option left. When that option matches all datasets I'm working with, I consider that option to be verified and matching the data available to me at that point in time.

Whenever I require expert knowledge of some kind, I to try at least understand it at a basic level by reading more about it or have someone explain it to me. For example, a friend of mine is a psychology student, another one is an economics student, another one is a civil engineer and my girlfriend is a bio-engineer. It's always useful to have them around to explain some of the more esoteric details of their particular fields.



I don't get it. If your paradigm is based on falsehood, why continue to pursue it?



There are different ways to verify something. One is to seek for inconsistencies within, another is to seek for inconsistencies with other data, another is to seek for causal relations, another is to look at probability, etc. Obviously, in many cases there isn't 100% certainty but when there's a very high probability something can be accepted conditionally.



Let me rephrase myself : when one side is consistently supported by other data and the other side is not or it contains contradictions.



As long as there aren't any contradictions, no.



I don't consider relying on someone else a very good idea, as this implies trust and you can't know if the other person can be trusted. Often, experts contradict one another and how can you objectively choose which expert is correct without looking into their arguments yourself? If you really can't judge the arguments yourself, at least check with different experts to see if there is a consensus or not.



Obviously, the first step is to try to verify the new data itself.



I always start with trying to fit in new verified data into existing frameworks and when that's impossible, I seek ways to modify or replace the framework until there's a fit with the new data and the previously aqcuired data.



Not unconditionally. I accept things as truth only until they're proven wrong.



Sometimes. Otherwise, I do some research to refresh my memory.



1) Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.
2) I'm aware of cognitive dissonance. It's something I avoid at all costs because my Aspie brain can't handle it.
3) Occam's razor is often very difficult to apply because it requires a sufficiently large dataset. Without sufficient data, it's nearly impossible to determine the simplest explanation for any given phenomenon. Belief conservatism is acceptable only when the explanation you go for matches the data available to you. It belief conservatism leads to inconsistencies, then your currently held beliefs must be challenged.



I'm a rationalist. While I acknowlegde that the rational approach may not always be the most useful approach to some, I reject taking another path myself. From a rationalist perspective, I stand by my claim that openmindedness is always better.



Rejecting a perspective without verification is dogmatic and I don't see how that's rational. IMO, that's a matter of faith or irrational assumption.



I don't see how evolution implies psychological bias.



I'm not sure how being openminded implies being easily manipulated. I think you're confusing being openminded with being gullable.



How is this different for closedminded people? In my opinion and experience, closedminded people are actually far more easily manipulated when they're fed lies and distortions that are in line with their prejudices because they see no reason to doubt it. In fact, that's the very reason why the media and "education" system can indoctrinate the masses so easily. After establishing a framework, most (closedminded) people tend to take anything for granted that fits within those frameworks, regardless of how groundless they are.



Imo it's the only rational approach. However, I'll admit that purely rational thought and avoiding cognitive dissonance is something most people have a lot of issues with.

The issue is that "conclusive" is not really very clear, and the number of possible claims to research are enormous. This is made worse by the existence of a large number of claims that undercut other beliefs. For instance, if someone puts forward the idea "conspiracy theory X is true", well, the problem is that potentially all of your knowledge on economics and politics will be based upon principles incompatible with the truth of X. Well, are you now going to be agnostic towards your beliefs because someone put forward a conspiracy claim you have not researched yet, or are you just going to stick to your guns regardless?

These issues come up relatively often, as there are a lot of conspiracy claims, there are also a lot of weird religious doctrines, weird political ideas and other things. Debunking all of these absurdities is really not doable, but, not doing so while taking definite stands on other issues requires that one have excluded these logical possibilities from the table.


You do this with EVERY conspiracy theory? So, you are an expert on conspiracy theories? Are you an expert in economic and political theories as well? Are you an expert in religion and philosophy as well?

I do a lot of studying on a lot of different topics, but I know that I come across more claims that I have not conclusively debunked than I have time or interest in studying. I have not studied every religion, and certainly not every religion in history. I have not studied every political ideology that seems wrong to me at the moment. I have not studied abstract metaphysics to an extent that would allow me to debunk the idea that this is all a dream, and in fact, I am not sure if I could, but I am not agnostic on the possibility. I have not investigated every mysterious event throughout history, despite all of the groups claiming that these events prove them right, and this from mysterious disasters to haunted houses.

And well... to be honest, I don't know of any single person who has studied all of these things with the necessary depth to really be an expert on the claim with the depth to make these claims on the issue. However, I, and so many others, do take opinions on these issues, and take them without being able to create a disproof, even though a SINGLE instance of one of these claims being true would overthrow everything we say. I think that this position is justifiable.


Eh, I am a person who holds to the idea of massively coherent systems. The vast majority of beliefs I have are in some way connected to other beliefs I have. This means that in order to make a decision anywhere else, the rest of the system has to make sense.


I don't really care how you see it.

That being said, I see this discussion as entirely about the amount of knowledge. My point is focused on human beings having epistemic limits that force use to pre-emptively make decisions on claims without full data. When it comes down to what I personally know, it is really kind of pathetic, and most people I know consider me very very knowledgeable on a lot of issues.


That rarely happens. In academia, there are usually LARGE SETS of different possible ideas that have not really been excluded yet, but sometimes the differences can be somewhat large. For instance in using language, we take a stand on what view of language is truest, BUT, do you really know enough about the radical pragmatics view to really argue that strongly for or against? I don't, even though I try to read up on the issue somewhat.


Undergraduates don't usually have the information needed. You practically need grad students to have real knowledge here.


He doesn't believe it is false. He just hasn't left open any moves to change his mind.


Not really. If one does not really know the subject, than any opinion will either be a matter of bias, or just a matter of the shifting of the winds. Scholars disagree on most subjects. If one does not know the area well enough to debate with a scholar, then one's opinion is really only going to be the product of one's bias, or the current set of scholars that one has accepted at the moment. Neither is gratifying.

As such, I still will hold that verification does not really exist. The failures of verification are known in philosophy, as any claim about the world we have will really just be statistical through a fallible method. We only fail to reject the null hypothesis. We don't verify.


Often these issues don't exist in real academic discussion.


The question was rhetorical. It was combined with the other questions as a unit.


Consensus usually doesn't exist. There are usually detractors, however small the group is, to any paradigm.

Picking the status quo over the non-status quo though, and holding to it, in spite of a person who you can't answer the objections of, is going to be some degree of closed-mindedness though. Let's say that you want evolution to be taught in schools. Well, let's just say that you run into an ID or YEC who puts forward all sorts of objections that you can't answer. Will you change your mind on whether evolution should be taught in schools? If yes, then your program is worse than the more closed-minded view. If no, then you already are closed-minded to some degree.


And this can't always be done.


That's understandable. But, probably not even how you actually work.


But you might not even be able to understand the disproof, or even the ideas that you are implicitly taking as true.


Actually probably not. You might do a good sight better than the average politically interested citizen, but, unless you are massively more educated than everybody else I know of, you have to have some closed-mindedness in order to make ongoing commitments to ideas.


No, I understand the issue of cognitive dissonance, but I've been finding that every effort I make towards constructing a world that I attempt has resulted in large inconsistencies across the board. A few situations I find easier, but a lot of them I find to be very difficult.

Actually, Occam's razor requires nothing other than two possible explanations. That being said, I am not even sure that belief-conservatism and inconsistency is even a problem. Most people currently hold onto inconsistent beliefs to a degree that they don't know how it is even possible to debunk one, (especially not while remaining human) while at the same time they also can't rectify the inconsistency. I mean, in my case, it started getting so bad, that I tried to create a tiered system of understanding so that way inconsistencies really occupied another tier of understanding and thus had no conflict, BUT, this isn't a very strong case.


It seems to me that every time I challenge you, you actually backtrack your claim to be unlike what was actually stated. You didn't make a personal and subjective claim there. Going further, your use of "rationalist" really tends to suggest a dogma. I don't care what perspective you claim to come from, I believe your claim is wrong. I believe your claim is "socially approved" and fits into the memes that many people have within our society, which means that your dogmatism can hide more easily, but I still believe that you are being dogmatic, and that if you were actually open-minded, you would be open-minded to the idea that open-mindedness could actually not be the best thing, and it could lead to worse outcomes for people.


And this is an outright failure to engage in any of the real issues of personal limitations that I have been trying to bring up throughout.

You took a strawman and knocked it down. That's not open-mindedness.


Psychological biases exist as a product of evolution. I don't see how you failed to grasp that point. If evolution seeks efficiency and evolution has found it to be efficient that people have psychological biases, (which in many cases it actually has, and we can see that bias increases in ways to improve certain outcomes) then the claim that seeking an unbiased understanding(you can also read "open-minded) is best seems radically undercut.


No, I am actually not. The idea behind the AI box experiment wasn't that "people are gullible" it was that human minds are limited and these limitations can be manipulated if access is given. You created a strawman to debunk it, again.


Actually, I want you to expand on your point of indoctrination.

That being said, holding to a set of good prejudices can be more efficient than being open-minded. However, I think to make this point, I'd have to hear how you think that the masses are indoctrinated.


Well, right, but people are not fundamentally rational. If open-mindedness relies on an optimal degree of entertainment, then nobody can practice it. If sub-optimal degrees are allowed, then a LOT of people practice it, even the crazies.

My take on mysticism is that were like organelles in an integrated, universal organism and that greater knowledge of the interconnectedness we share with everyone and everything in the constantly evolving super-system makes us more enlightened beings. I think consciousness is built up in layers, from atomic structures, to molecules, to cellular structures, to cells, to organs, to the organism, to the species, to the planet, to the entire universe. The way I understand atomic theories is that they're mainly just models. They're pretty clever ones but don't really account for everything and are most likely leaving important elements out of the equation, like consciousness. Mysticism is heavily concerned with finding the relation between mind and matter. Really, red, blue, green, happy, sad, all the different components and facets of conscious experience, is probably what the universe is really made of. ...and our subjective experience of viewing our external world in terms of object is like a reflection of other subjective awarenesses in all the conscious systems and subsystems funneled, filtered, and focused through our own psyches.