Category: Commentary, Critique, and Response

THIS IS WHY – SOME IDEAS ARE CATASTROPHICALLY HARMFUL – BECAUSE THEY ARE SOURCES OF IGNORANCE.

by Daniel Roland Anderson

In my teens, and as late as my early 20s, I was into the conspiracy theories.

I think I was jumping from noticing patterns to imputing conscious intent and organization to the (malignant) patterns because my Mormon upbringing taught me to look for The Plan of Salvation in everything.

Pattern recognition may get hijacked, or something, at a critical stage of development.

Not everyone who fails to grow out of this way of seeing the world is incapable, or lacks agency.

I’m only just now being able to guess with hindsight at what was going on with me.

If I tagged the people I’m thinking of in this comment, they’d possibly/probably be offended because I said when I used to think like this, and used terms like “grow out of” to describe a process that they might want to take a look at.

I think this category may be a big one.

By Francis Zhou

I share a similar experience, having spent my formative years in a protestant church. I have to admit, running with the herd was comforting, however similar to you, I “grew out of it”, after realizing the constrains Christian teachings placed on my growth.

By Curt Doolittle

Well, when I say ‘some ideas are sources of ignorance’ (which I got from popper) this is what I mean.

Some ideas are catastrophic because they prevent better ideas.

Hence need for truth.