Hello!
Here's the weekly "Amazing Things & Ideas Newsletter" which aims at making the reader a more rational thinker. As always, find one original idea from my side followed by the List.
And if you like reading this edition, let the world hear it!
Dogma
Any idea that is ultimately true and not open to any question leads to dogma.
Dogma is said to be a certain principle laid down by some authority which is not open to any criticisms and is undeniably true. It can also be backed by no genuine evidence and still be believed as the truth.
Dogma comes in many forms and isn't restricted to religion or some other established authority. Any idea that is said to be the final truth leads to dogma.
Certain dogmas can be instantiated into children's heads by their parents, teachers, and communal environment. And others through the general circumstances around that child—unknowingly to them of course—which carve a fixed worldview.
"Dogma doesn’t know you or care about you and is often completely wrong for you—it’ll have a would-be happy painter spending their life as a lawyer and a would-be happy lawyer spending their life as a painter." — Tim Urban
A better choice which seems outlandish at first is understanding there is no final truth. And that knowledge is created through conjecture (a legitimate guess) and criticism.
We don't stick with an idea or theory and call it ultimately true with this method. We rather look for criticisms to our existing ideas and always stay on the lookout for them. Never accepting dogma, but progressing through correcting our misconceptions.
Looking to eliminate error should be our perspective. Not following the supposed ultimate truth (which doesn't accept any ideas against it and is often based on ridiculous or no evidence or reason).
Dogmatism is like being blinded, muted, and deafened to all other ideas except that of who's dogmatic path the dogmatist follows.
If you have differing ideas about this message, reply to this email and let me know, I'd love to hear them.
The Amazing Things & Ideas List
Charles Darwin's Golden Rule:
“I had, also, during many years followed a golden rule, namely, that whenever a published fact, a new observation or thought came across me, which was opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of it without fail and at once; for I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from memory than favorable ones.
Owing to this habit, very few objections were raised against my views which I had not at least noticed and attempted to answer.”
Richard Dawkins' book on his favorite books:
Books Do Furnish A Life by Richard Dawkins
This book is divided by theme, including celebrating nature, exploring humanity, and interrogating faith (the most interesting of them all for me).
It brings together Dawkins' forewords, afterwords and introductions to the work of some of the leading thinkers of our age with a selection of his book reviews.
It also includes conversations with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Steven Pinker, Matt Ridley and more (I liked the audiobook version on which I could listen to the original conversations).
Just FYI, yesterday was Dawkin's 81st birthday.
Richard Feynman on not questioning:
"The problem is not people being uneducated.
The problem is that people are educated just enough to believe what they have been taught, and not educated enough to question anything from what they have been taught."
All articles posted on my blog this week:
Learnings to Unlearn (#149):
This post delves into my criticism of the general view of happiness, certainty, linearity, education and, authority. And more importantly into why the perspective of unlearning is probably more important than that of learning.
Read full post here.
Nullius in verba (#148):
It’s easy to accept the most irrational ideas when one doesn’t give them any thought and blindly accepts them because they’re the most obvious ones. This post is about taking nobody's word for it. Not even your own.
Read full post here.
p.s. if you want a nice laugh, read this tweet.
Thank you for reading.
Onward,
Arjun
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