Fear of being too Rational

by phil on Thursday Dec 4, 2003 11:39 PM
rational thinking

Dah, again, on the same stream. I'm afraid of becoming too rational. My fear, of being too neutral, or too inhibited in what I can say. Already, learning about logical fallacies has created a new little voice in my head censoring many of the things I would normally would say.

My intuition tells me that it's at least worth a shot, but still, I have that fear.

Comments

teedeepee said on December 5, 2003 4:30 AM:

Gee... That fear seized me at about the same age and has not left me since (I'll turn 25 next week). Although I wouldn't have used the word "fear" if asked about my feelings - more a creeping nihilism, a somewhat sad and slow understanding that whatever you say is perfectible in so many ways that the best you can do is probably just shut up and listen, even when the person in front of you makes claims that are further still from perfection. Like those eternal debates we could have as newborn philosophers - classroom topics like the death penalty, the meaning of beauty, the essence of consciousness - people say white, others say black, and it dawns on you that taking part in the discussion will not bring it any closer to the truth. Much like adding x to y again and again will not really bring you any closer to the infinity... You start censoring yourself, for fear of being co-responsible for filling up the silence with void, pointless ideas that you have no way to double-check for not being a divinity.

I keep in mind the saying that goes "better remain silent and seem foolish, than talk and give no doubt about it".

I'm taking on a new hobby right now - a slow, rational, minute study of the fundamentals of quantum physics - and it digs the hole even deeper when the foundation of what I thought was tangible crumbles in entanglement, correlation and indistinguishability.

So I talk less, listen more, and study harder - for my curiosity will not be deterred by the prospect that logical fallacies doom the horizon of human knowledge.