When we form opinions on topics, the depth of our efforts vary. On some topics we put in no effort, and hold no opinions. On other topics, we notice what are the opinions of standard authorities, and adopt those. We often go further to learn of some arguments offered by such authorities, and mostly accept those arguments.
Processing information is deeply personal. It might be the stuff that your subjective experience is made of and, while I respect the Bayesian rationale for deferring to a proxy, or assigning a confidence value to your beliefs based on a second, third or fourth hand evaluation of the arguments, themselves based on an interpretation of the data... I'll never quite be comfortable with people asserting that's there's nothing whatsoever wrong with it. Like, ideally, you would be some sort of transhuman-augmented-cyborg capable of synthesizing way more information than you presently are and thereby free from having to invent some utility function rationalizing the decision to proxy, right?
I think that most recognize that a mixture of individual and social learning is the best strategy. Which strategy is best to use depends on the circumstances. I don't see many people presenting themsleves as only using individual learning. Probably most recognize that that would be a bad strategy. Calling those using individual learning "thinkers" doesn't make much sense to me. Just because you use social learning, it doesn't mean you aren't thinking.
I grasp that that's how you mean to use the term, but it's not how I'd normally use the term. I'd reserve the label of "not thinking for yourself" for people who trust certain authorities because the authorities are high-status members of their tribe, and therefore they are socially obligated to trust them. And this label would be always meant as a negative when I apply it.
If someone is truly evaluating the evidence of the authorities' track record and methodological rigor, and deciding to trust the authority on that basis, it's fundamentally different in my eye, and much more laudable, than simply trusting the authority because of a social affiliation. And I would apply the positive label of "thinking for yourself" to a person who does this.
I don't at all mean to identify "think for yourself" with "think rationally". I explicitly said that thinking for yourself tends to result in less accurate beliefs.
There's some ambiguity of definitions surrounding what it means to "think for yourself." Here, you seem to be using it in a way that explicitly excludes rationally deciding that an authority opinion is probably right on a subject.
However, a "rational" thinker - someone approximating ideal Bayesian inference in a completely honest way, without regard for how their conclusions make them look to others - will usually trust the expert opinion, based on the expert's track record on similar subjects and on the strength of the expert's methodology. Does this mean that a rational thinker isn't "thinking for himself"? I'd say he is.
A rational thinker could indeed plausibly, honestly decide the experts are probably right in 100 out of 100 cases, if the experts have a trustworthy track record. The only times a rational thinker would disagree with the experts would be when he has legitimate reason to think he knows something significant that the experts don't, or has legitimate reason to doubt the quality of the experts' methodology.
(Although, this is just quibbling over definitions; I often think of this SMBC-comic.)
I disagree with this statement: "If you see people with many opinions none of which are heretical, they just can’t be thinking for themselves on most of those topics."
You see prominent people who claim to be thinking for themselves on a wide variety of topics, and observe that they are not expressing heretical opinions. Your conclusion is that they must not be thinking for themselves. Isn't it equally possible that they do in fact think for themselves, and have some heretical opinions, but choose to keep those heretical opinions a secret?
Imagine a deep thinker who generates 100 opinions, filters out the most heretical 20, and only shares the 80 deep thoughts that will be socially approved. This person truly is a deep thinker and they truly are thinking for themselves on the 80 topics that you can see.
Can we maybe all agree that credentializing produces potentially undesirable attractors?
Processing information is deeply personal. It might be the stuff that your subjective experience is made of and, while I respect the Bayesian rationale for deferring to a proxy, or assigning a confidence value to your beliefs based on a second, third or fourth hand evaluation of the arguments, themselves based on an interpretation of the data... I'll never quite be comfortable with people asserting that's there's nothing whatsoever wrong with it. Like, ideally, you would be some sort of transhuman-augmented-cyborg capable of synthesizing way more information than you presently are and thereby free from having to invent some utility function rationalizing the decision to proxy, right?
Christ is King!
I think that most recognize that a mixture of individual and social learning is the best strategy. Which strategy is best to use depends on the circumstances. I don't see many people presenting themsleves as only using individual learning. Probably most recognize that that would be a bad strategy. Calling those using individual learning "thinkers" doesn't make much sense to me. Just because you use social learning, it doesn't mean you aren't thinking.
I grasp that that's how you mean to use the term, but it's not how I'd normally use the term. I'd reserve the label of "not thinking for yourself" for people who trust certain authorities because the authorities are high-status members of their tribe, and therefore they are socially obligated to trust them. And this label would be always meant as a negative when I apply it.
If someone is truly evaluating the evidence of the authorities' track record and methodological rigor, and deciding to trust the authority on that basis, it's fundamentally different in my eye, and much more laudable, than simply trusting the authority because of a social affiliation. And I would apply the positive label of "thinking for yourself" to a person who does this.
I don't at all mean to identify "think for yourself" with "think rationally". I explicitly said that thinking for yourself tends to result in less accurate beliefs.
There's some ambiguity of definitions surrounding what it means to "think for yourself." Here, you seem to be using it in a way that explicitly excludes rationally deciding that an authority opinion is probably right on a subject.
However, a "rational" thinker - someone approximating ideal Bayesian inference in a completely honest way, without regard for how their conclusions make them look to others - will usually trust the expert opinion, based on the expert's track record on similar subjects and on the strength of the expert's methodology. Does this mean that a rational thinker isn't "thinking for himself"? I'd say he is.
A rational thinker could indeed plausibly, honestly decide the experts are probably right in 100 out of 100 cases, if the experts have a trustworthy track record. The only times a rational thinker would disagree with the experts would be when he has legitimate reason to think he knows something significant that the experts don't, or has legitimate reason to doubt the quality of the experts' methodology.
(Although, this is just quibbling over definitions; I often think of this SMBC-comic.)
Okay, I updated that sentence to end "this just can't be a random sample of topics on which they are mostly thinking for themselves."
I disagree with this statement: "If you see people with many opinions none of which are heretical, they just can’t be thinking for themselves on most of those topics."
You see prominent people who claim to be thinking for themselves on a wide variety of topics, and observe that they are not expressing heretical opinions. Your conclusion is that they must not be thinking for themselves. Isn't it equally possible that they do in fact think for themselves, and have some heretical opinions, but choose to keep those heretical opinions a secret?
Imagine a deep thinker who generates 100 opinions, filters out the most heretical 20, and only shares the 80 deep thoughts that will be socially approved. This person truly is a deep thinker and they truly are thinking for themselves on the 80 topics that you can see.