thomas

I try to have no opinion and to only care about what is true.

The challenge is to keep it that way as I age. To not lose that North Star through mental ossification or intellectual laziness.

Continuing on the theme of intellectual humility from last week’s cast.

I warmly recommend this 20’ video about Bonhoeffer’s theory of functional stupidity, which is *not* the opposite of intelligence, but rather the surrender of intellectual independence under peer pressure, stress, or urgency. It’s a sociological (rather than individual) phenomenon by which even intelligent people end up suspending critical thinking and espousing group beliefs.

Bonhoeffer observed functional stupidity taking hold around him in the 1930s when even the intelligent German elites surrendered to the superficially enticing, but deeply flawed tenets of nazism.

The parallel with contemporary trends is unmistakable, and only exacerbated by the firehose of social media through which seductive falsehoods propagate faster than they can be critically examined. 1/2

https://youtu.be/Sfekgjfh1Rk

https://farcaster.xyz/aviationdoctor.eth/0x67091196

Aviator, diver, Etherean, nexialist, PhD in aviation ∩ climate science | Host of /diving /ethfinance /eth-staker /geopolitics /science /singapore /thomas

Questioning our axioms is really hard work so we mostly avoid doing it. Much easier to just follow the crowd.

Complexity explorer. Residing in the liminal.

And I don’t blame anyone for not doing it. Life is hard as it is without self-inflicted intellectual discomfort