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   Taggart :donor: (mttaggart@infosec.town)'s status on Thursday, 04-Jan-2024 21:00:26 JST Taggart :donor:

   Probably the most important habit of mind you can develop is aversion to simple explanations. Almost nothing is simple, even if it seems that way as an outsider.
   
   But you must work against your brain in this, because your brain wants an easy-to-tell story. Your own sense-making mechanisms are working against your understanding of a complex reality, in favor of one that is easy to recount.
   
   Embrace complexity.

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     Sexy Moon (moon@shitposter.club)'s status on Thursday, 04-Jan-2024 21:00:21 JST Sexy Moon

     in reply to
     @mttaggart why punish yourself by defaulting to more complexity than necessary before you actually need it? start simple but be willing to reject the simple explanation. don't look for hidden variables.
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     hypolite (hypolite@friendica.mrpetovan.com)'s status on Friday, 05-Jan-2024 10:52:32 JST hypolite

     in reply to

     @mttaggart Counter-point: Looking for complexity likely will get you to believe conspiracy theories. To be consistent in the face of, huh, reality, these hypotheses need to be complicated, which is easily mistook for complexity.

     Ironically, your simple call to embrace complexity defeats itself. I don't have an equally simple call to replace it with but I have a set guiding principles in order not to fall in the pitfall you described:
     - Always be curious, especially of information going against your established opinions.
     - Establish how much the information is based off of facts, rather than values. Differing on values is ok, differing on facts is not. This step is tricky because people with no scruples will not hesitate to use the language of facts to disguise propaganda.
     - Admit that not knowing everything about something is ok. But there's still a threshold of knowledge needed to get a somewhat accurate picture.
     - Always think about the people first. Systems are made out of people, so their well-being is paramount.

     There are probably more, all of these were established after the fact, I didn't follow a specific philosophy.

     clacke likes this.