Common sense is a rarity in people nowadays. This has created many problems, one of which is that people tend to listen to others’ opinions and accept them as their own thoughts, rather than trusting their own common sense and intuition. For example, they often rely on AI, doctors, celebrities, politicians, or other authority figures more than on themselves, who yes given plenty of incorrect information, allot of times intentionally. They might know something is a lie but ignore their skepticism because “Celebrity A” said it’s true. Sometimes, they even listen to their uninformed neighbors more than to themselves or to people on social media, who, ironically, also don’t listen to their own judgment. It’s a clown world.

  • squaresinger@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    Research is listening to other people, unless you decide to bootstrap science from scratch, which puts you back into the crazy category.

    To be able to do somewhat decent research, you first need to have a lot of education (=listening to people). Then you need to gather research that was already done in the field (=listening to people) to figure out what’s the scientific consensus (=listening to a lot of people). Only when you really understand what came before you do you have a chance to do meaningful research.

    Without listening to people, you are just one of these lunatics who still think the earth is flat because they listen to themselves instead of building on the things we learned over the last few millenia.

    The main reason why research has advanced like crazy over the last few centuries while it was mostly stagnant for the 10 millenia before that is because we figured out how to pool knowledge and research globally. If you invented something 10 000 years ago, your invention would likely just stay in your village, maybe die out, maybe spread super slowly over hundreds of years to the areas around and likely never make it off the continent.

    With the advent of cheap permanent records and fast global communication, a discarded research idea from an american oil company can make it into the hands of an UK scientist and a japanese researcher, who together with some helpful ideas from a german chemist manage to create the Lithium Ion battery.

    Without listening to other people, this battery would have never happened. None of them would have been able to create it on their own.

    There’s a reason every somewhat decent scientific paper has dozens of references. It’s because proper research is, to a large extent, listening to other people.

    • Unpopular Truth@lemmy.worldOP
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      6 hours ago

      People who think the Earth is flat listen to others; that’s why it’s regaining popularity as a theory. Even though it’s already disproven. I’m not saying it’s bad to listen to people ever, but they do not listen to themselves most of the time. Because they tune out their own intuition, ideas, and judgment. So those abilities are weak and lacking in them for never using them. If some of you don’t grasp this, you aren’t seeing reality in person. People are mimics, replaying the ideas of others. No original thoughts. I was trying to keep my post shorter, but next time I will go into maximum detail. Also, my emphasis was on people listening to incorrect people. Someone said there’s a difference between authorities and experts. A NASA scientist would be an “expert,” and they (governments, corporations, and universities) use experts as authorities in the field to push the idea or message, but that NASA expert is usually a lying shill for their masters or just incorrect.

      • squaresinger@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        People who listen to noone but themselves (ergo have no education and no outside resources to rely upon) will come to the conclusion that the earth is flat, because the concept of a round earth needs quite a bit of understanding to even come up with that idea.

        But you are shifting your point now. Now it’s not about whether listening to people is good or bad, but about which people to listen to. You are not acknowledging that you are shifting your point but claim that this was your point all along.

        That argumentative tactic is called the motte-and-bailey fallacy:

        • You start with a sexy, controverisal, but hard to defend position (the “bailey”): Listening to people is bad. People should listen to themselves.
        • When you see that you can’t defend that point, you switch to a more easy to defend position (the “motte”), but claim that it’s the same argument: Well, people should actually listen to the right people, and sometimes use intuition, especially to discern who to listen to.

        These two points are wildly different. The first one is plain nonsense, the second one is close to a tautology.

        And that’s the point of this strategy: If people agree to the second position, you claim that this is just a rephrase of your original position, even though that’s really not true.

        It’s a commonly used strategy (Jordan Peterson has practically built his whole career on that strategy), but that doesn’t make the style of argumentation valid.

        • Unpopular Truth@lemmy.worldOP
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          5 hours ago

          You fake intellectuals are stupid beyond belief, I’m not switching anything I always thought it was bad to listen to people. I was saying from the beginning people listen to others more than themselves. Also I never said listen to NOONE. You are just taking it to the extreme because you missed the first point in the first place. Also this isn’t an argument this is you all not getting that you can be a free thinker while primarily listening to your own instincts, intuition, and utilizing common sesne. Which was my complaint (people seldom do it) but that doesn’t mean listen to no one in the whole world. That’s why in my original post I never mentioned that extreme position.