You shouldn't get the idea that I'm picking on my fellow humans. I'm not. I'm merely pointing out that I'm of the opinion that we think we're better than we are. Maybe a bit of humility would serve us well.
It's OK not to know things. None of us can know everything. Some people are good at history, others at math, others in biology, science or physics, others know a lot about how we think the mind works, but nobody knows everything. That's OK. Since we can communicate as easily as we can, we can always get insights, knowledge, and information from others, be it personally or in written or recorded form. Things are always better with a little help from our friends.
The difficulties start appearing immediately, however. How do we know if what we're being told is correct? Most often we don't, because, well, we're not experts in that field, that's why we turned to someone who knows more about than we do. To accept what we given, we have to trust the source. That's a rather large problem these days, isn't it? Trust, that is. Who can and do we trust? And why?
The closer we are to the source, the easier it is. We can see how they act, how they treat us and others, what they do in their spare time, how others see them. The farther away they are -- physically, socially, psychologically, etc. -- the greater the challenge. In these cases we have to resort to other means: reputation, personal history, evaluations by others, on the external side; and coherency and consistency of argumentation and presentation, supporting data and evidence, and the like on the internal side. It's pretty obvious that most of us aren't very well prepared for the latter, at any rate. Those items belong to the realm of critical thinking, which we all like to claim we do, but hardly ever do in reality. In fact -- and I find this especially mind-boggling -- it is actively discouraged in school these days, and some states, like Texas, have active movements to have it officially eliminated from the school curriculum. How sad is that? But how did we get to such a place?
It's pretty simple, really: like I've mentioned before -- just last time, in fact -- what we accept as true and right and proper and correct depends more than anything else on what we believe to be true and right and proper and correct. We all go into the evaluation from a biased position. Some folks are aware of this and try to adjust for it; others have no idea that they do it, so they tend to come across rather arrogant, know-it-all, or dogmatic. If you ask me, any of these last three characteristics is a dead give-away. People who really know stuff tend to be just slightlyl humble about their knowledge. They try, in any number of ways, to take the edge off their own authority. A lot of things we think we know a lot about turn out to be quite incorrect a bit farther down the road. The entire course of human history and knowledge is littered with wrecked and abandoned things-we-knew-for-sure. In my mind, the mark of a truly intelligent person lies not in how right s/he thinks s/he is, but rather is how open they are for the possibility that they might be wrong and willing they are to adapt what they think to accommodate the new data and information.
The observant reader will recognize that there is more involved here than initially met the eye. We're not talking only about knowledge, but apparently belief and attitudes need to and do play a role in what is said, and in what we are willing to accept. It's worth stopping to think about.
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