Our task in this mortal life includes that of understanding; meaning that we understand by working things out and think things through For Ourselves.
If we look at the way the world is, life is not clear and easy, it is not straightforward, there are many external obstacles and we ourselves are usually poorly constituted to do that which ought to be done.
We don't clearly know what ought to be done, and insofar as we decide what ought to be done we are not made such that doing what ought to be is easy. Quite the contrary! The world is confusing and we are confused; our will is easily misled, vacillating, and pretty feeble!
If we assume that this is not an accident but instead part of the basic design; then we may infer that the way that things have been set-up by God in this divine creation.
We are not good at doing what ought to be done and really needs to be done, even when we are able to discover what that is.
I therefore assume that the first-line, the main and preferred method by which we are supposed to navigate through life; is for people to work out for themselves what they ought to do, and how to do it.
And insofar as we can do this appointed task of understanding in any domain of existence; I think the experience improves us as people - improves both temporarily in a mortal context, and potentially in an eternally resurrected future.
That, at least, has been my experience. I spent a great deal of my childhood and early adult life learning what other people said and wrote about academic matters, science, medicine; but I did not do what I was supposed to do and really think for myself, really understand, until my early 30s.
I was a lecturer in epidemiology when one of the first things I worked-out was what is happening when we randomize and take an average; as happens in a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT).
Lots of people were saying that an RCT was the best form of evidence for effectiveness of a medical intervention, and the larger the RCT the better. But in all my reading and questioning, it became evident that nobody (literally nobody I could find, and I looked hard) had actually thought out what randomization was doing in this context, why large numbers were supposed to be better, and what happened whne results were averaged and the averages applied to the treatment of individual patients.
I had to work this out for myself, from my experience as a scientist and doctor, and by thinking hard about things.
Once I had understood, for myself, it soon became obvious that nearly-everybody had misunderstood what was going on in RCTs, did not grasp the intrinsic and unavoidable problems of averaging, and the effect of striving for ever larger numbers in trials.
Most of what people "know" about most things is merely obedient parroting of authorities, and there is zero understanding.
High intelligence and encylopaedic knowledge do not help at all, of themselves - because without genuinely personal understanding rooted in an individual act of working-out; expertise merely leads to more convincing wrongness, elaborate pseudo-justifications, and armour-plated error.
Of course, this was only a tiny but of understanding I developed; but even so, it was enough to change me fundamentally.
I would say that (when I have done this, which is only a few times) it has been one of the few life-experiences that I am sure were fundamentally Good For Me.
It was enough to let me see the difference between real understanding and parroting.
It was a generally applicable skill of discernment; that revealed that nearly-all of "expert" discourse is nothing more than mosaic work; the assembling of secondhand assertions.
I could not recommend highly enough the long-term spiritual value of thinking things through for yourself, to attain a personal understanding of whatever is most important to you.
4 comments:
Thinking for yourself is surely taking the Royal Society's motto *nullius in verba* to its ultimate conclusion. Thinking is supposed to be hard but it's a slightly more vigorous form of daydreaming, nothing more. You just have to keep coming gently back to whatever the topic is until you're satisfied. Which you will naturally do anyway if it's interesting or connected to a problem you have (if you're brave enough to face it!)
It's hard to understand other people, to communicate with them and think in their terms. One's own mental images and personal representations, however dim, are preferable to pages of equations or knitting patterns in a foreign language. Thinking makes things simpler and easier.
It is Irene's invisible thread, Harry Potter's felix felicis, Feynman's hairy green ball.
“More convincing wrongness” is a great way of putting it.
@Ron - It's ironic that the Royal Society was actually about establishing a trust group who did take each other's word; and thereby science as a group activity was begun.
It's significant that every group in the public space wants individuals to obey some external authority and Not to use individual thinking and discernment - their only disagreement is over the choice which external group that individuals should regard as authoritative, and obey.
It occurred to me after commenting that thinking for yourself can also take you to places you never could have got to otherwise. By analogy, and linking to a recent post of yours, I bet Benny Andersson and Paul McCartney, neither of whom learnt to read music, could have written their songs if they had.
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