The Rationality of Not Thinking, or Cognitive Opponent-Process Theory
The Rationality of Not Thinking, or Cognitive Opponent-Process Theory
If you spend all day reading random ideas on the Internet, what will happen is you will question literally everything. To a point it’s rational to question everything, but once something has been reasonably established, you should stop. It’s true there are lots of things that are “common knowledge” that are wrong, sometimes even dangerously so. This is why we have academic papers and primary sources of various stripes. However, if you literally just sit around reading articles on Substack all day, I guarantee you you will fill your mind with garbage, and garbage in is garbage out. That’s right, I told you to read Substack less.
Luckily, if you want someone to read, most of my articles are short and I’m not sitting around going like “But what about the other side? What if calling for the genocide of Jews is actually OK as long as it doesn’t lead to the genocide of Jews?” If you are thinking that you have been reading social media or blogs or whatever too long.
Have you heard of the opponent process theory? When you stare at one color of light for long enough, the cells in your retina become fatigued and you see the opposite color! Opponent processes have since been shown to apply to many other topics. Don’t fall victim to cognitive opponent processes by fatiguing your brain reading about things that really aren’t up for debate at all. I like questioning things as much as anyone, but if you like that, why don’t you, say, go sign up for a STEM program at university so you have a framework in which to question ideas and report your findings, or even just teach yourself some programming and make some money at home?
It’s especially true when you have all these Substack authors who write like they’re getting paid by the word, but instead they’re getting paid by the controversial opinion, so they amp up the controversy. It’s good not to be scared of controversy when something matters and you know (really, acutally know) you’re right, but don’t become “counterphobic,” that’s just another manifestation of what I wrote.