Anthony Snyder's Home Page snydermind

Introduction

As I tend to treat all things as puzzles, my views come across a bit differently to most. I am very interested in feedback from anyone that agrees or disagrees with any of the things I say.

Regardless, I hope you enjoy the reading...

Figuring it all out for yourself is what's important. If you rely on others to figure it out for you then you'll likely adopt their assumptions without realizing it. Instead, when I research a topic I dig for the clues that others noticed, and I dig for the clues that others did not notice. I always take what others say as a suggestion only, and then build up my own theories from there.

Through this process I have discovered a serious psychological phenomenon that gets in the way. I call it dependent thought validation . Oftentimes people seem unable to accept the possibility that something they think through could be true without first validating it through specific trusted 3rd parties (father, teacher, friend, leader, etc.).

This psychological phenonemon results in a web that effectively blocks ideas that go against the grain, from spreading.

Of the people that come up with new break-through ideas, most do not think through their ideas rationally. They are easily discounted or discredited. Then of the ones that remain, most drop their idea for one reason or another (examples: insufficient time in their schedule, pursuit of the idea may interfere with reputation, pursuit of the idea may require dropping relationships or other things important to them, etc.).

And of those that remain, most were dropped because of dependent thought validation . You get the idea, it fits right in your mind, you talk about it with people, they shoot it down with all sorts of mainstream or cultural generalizations that sound correct, you lose your confidence, seriously reducing the possibility that you pursue the idea further. The point is that you do not know one way or another based on nonsense, even nonsense disguised as common sense. If you really want to find out whether or not you are right, you have to apply deductive reasoning to the clues. Dig and persevere until you get your answer.

It is easy to rationalize that an idea was both thought of and tested already by thousands of other people, when in all likelihood only the former was true. The point is that you can think of something that goes against the grain, and then easily write it off instead of checking it out. And this is often due to dependent thought validation .

You may go through all the rational steps of sorting through the clues and coming up with a conclusion or a sound theory, yet cannot accept it due to this phenomenon. It takes more than just the tools for rational thought to do so. You must gain the psychological quality that I call self-validated thought . It means that once you have rationally proven to yourself that something is true or plausible, that you can then accept it as true or plausible without having to first validate it through someone else.

If you are inexperienced at critical thinking then dependent thought validation makes sense for a while, to test your new found skills against those of others more experienced than yourself. However, if your thinking is solid, then you should let go of dependent thought validation just like you should let go of the training wheels on a bike.

Mainstream will tell you to never let go, under the notion that real knowledge requires a consensus of expert opinion. However, this idea is only good in theory. In practice you have all sorts of issues that get in the way: presentation, time, motivation, subconscious bias, money, hidden agenda, superiors pushing you down a different path, priorities, etc. Consensus can work if setup in such a way as to shed off all those tangents. This is not easy. So don't depend on it.

The manipulators of knowledge are at the very top of the food chain. These are the people we should actually be at war with. Not terrorists. Not other countries. (There are better ways to deal with those issues.) Knowledge manipulators are the ones responsible for most of the problems in this world (by causing them directly, indirectly, and by hiding the solutions).

The thought validation web makes possible their control of more minds automatically.

Self-validated thinking is absolutely necessary to anyone wishing to rise above a world filled with heavily biased knowledge and procedure, cultures and religions that promote irrational thinking, governments and corporations that manufacture false truths to cover hidden agendas, and legal systems that function as tools to manipulate.

Just about every motivation imaginable follows a sort of "current" along the lines of the thought validation web. Go against this current to get all the subtle details of society working against you.