4 Comments

This is an easy dare- but impossible without cognitive bias. I think a good example by listening to others opinion could be compared to Plato’s allegory of the cave. If one shared a ‘true form’ with another who believed in ‘shadow forms’, they would likely be hated and called a liar. "Have I become your enemy by telling you the truth?" – Galatians 4:16

Whichever news station someone believes in as truth, has built their house on sand. There are no full truths in politics, opinions, or entities who want to sell you something. At the root, we all have a mental condition called virtual enslavement of the mind, or our inability to perceive whole truths, which can be further explained by the four idols of the mind, written by Francis Bacon.

1) Idols of the Tribe are deceptive beliefs inherent in the mind of man, and therefore belonging to the whole of the human race. They are abstractions in error arising from common tendencies to exaggeration, distortion, and disproportion.

2) Idols of the Cave are those which arise within the mind of the individual. This mind is symbolically a cavern. The thoughts of the individual roam about in this dark cave and are variously modified by temperament, education, habit, environment, and accident.

3) Idols of the Marketplace are errors arising from the false significance bestowed upon words. Thus an individual who dedicates his mind to some particular branch of learning becomes possessed by his own peculiar interest, and interprets all other learning according to the colors of his own devotion.

4) Idols of the Theater are those which are due to sophistry and false learning. These idols are built up in the field of theology, philosophy, and science, and because they are defended by learned groups are accepted without question by the masses. When false philosophies have been cultivated and have attained a wide sphere of dominion in the world of the intellect they are no longer questioned.

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Jul 17Liked by Classical Wisdom

I don't know if we NEED to hear opinions we don't like. But I think it helps with our ability to understand things that we don't have direct control upon.

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Jul 16Liked by Classical Wisdom

Who said we should listen to our enemies, they know all our faults?

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There is a big difference between “listening to opinions we don’t like“ versus “listening to opinions that aren’t based in fact or reality.“ And that’s what everybody who writes about the subject seems to get wrong – many of us who read and write on the Internet extensively – and off the Internet as well – are able to form our own opinions, think critically, make rational decisions on empirical evidence, blah, blah blah. I don’t want to hear a rational person trying to explain to me what the right is trying to do or say. I don’t need them to explain why JD Vance was picked by Trump. Who cares? If I did, I would read all the bullshit coming from the right. But my time is precious, as is most of yours, so I prefer to read things that I know are true, honest, rational, and have had some investigative work being put together.

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