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Re:Why Are There So Many Rationalist Cults? by ctoth on Tuesday August 12, 2025 @11:53AM (#44877996)
> I immediately become suspicious of anyone who is very certain of something, especially if they derived it on their own.

Are you certain about this?

Re:Why Are There So Many Rationalist Cults? by JohnMakin on Tuesday August 12, 2025 @12:28PM (#44878582)
no
Re:Why Are There So Many Rationalist Cults? by idontwantthis on Tuesday August 12, 2025 @01:20PM (#44879314)
Suspicious implies uncertain. It’s not immediate rejection.
Re:Why Are There So Many Rationalist Cults? by teddyh on Tuesday August 12, 2025 @01:37PM (#44879495)
All I know is that I know nothing.
Re:Why Are There So Many Rationalist Cults? by p1esk on Tuesday August 12, 2025 @06:13PM (#44882397)
How do you know?
Re:Why Are There So Many Rationalist Cults? by teddyh on Wednesday August 13, 2025 @12:10PM (#44890330)
Socrates told me.
Re:Why Are There So Many Rationalist Cults? by adrianN on Tuesday August 12, 2025 @01:37PM (#44879496)
Your own state of mind is one of the easiest things to be fairly certain about.
Re:Why Are There So Many Rationalist Cults? by ants_everywhere on Tuesday August 12, 2025 @01:41PM (#44879540)
The fact that this is false is one of the oldest findings of research psychology
Re:Why Are There So Many Rationalist Cults? by PaulHoule on Tuesday August 12, 2025 @03:41PM (#44880982)
Marvin Minsky wrote forcefully [1] about this in The Society of Mind and went so far to say that trying to observe yourself (e.g. meditation) might be harmful.

Freud of course discovered a certain world of the unconscious but untrained [2] you would certainly struggle to explain how you know sentence S is grammatical and S' is not, or what it is you do when you walk.

If you did meditation or psychoanalysis or some other practice to understand yourself better it would take years.

[1] whether or not it is true.

[2] the "scientific" explanation you'd have if you're trained may or may not be true since it can't be used to program a computer to do it

Re:Why Are There So Many Rationalist Cults? by lazide on Tuesday August 12, 2025 @01:45PM (#44879585)
said no one familiar with their own mind, ever!
Re:Why Are There So Many Rationalist Cults? by tshaddox on Tuesday August 12, 2025 @04:15PM (#44881290)
Well you could be a critical rationalist and do away with the notion of "certainty" or any sort of justification or privileged source of knowledge (including "rationality").
Re:Why Are There So Many Rationalist Cults? by at-fates-hands on Tuesday August 12, 2025 @06:41PM (#44882614)
Isaac Newton would like to have a word.
Re:Why Are There So Many Rationalist Cults? by elictronic on Tuesday August 12, 2025 @06:44PM (#44882641)
I am not a big fan of alchemy, thank you though.