10 ms·

Mental Liquidity

221 points by bkohlmann 3y ago

skilled 3y ago
I think this article is a little too overzealous with trying to simplify a topic like beliefs and ideas. A lot of it also sounds like common sense to me, the people capable of grasping this: > Be careful what beliefs you let become part of your identity. Are quite capable of adjusting themselves. Everything else falls into either Ego, or people being self-(un)aware, and for the latter - you can only change "their" belief system if they themselves are willing to change.
mo_42 3y ago
I like this nice little text. Einstein is a perfect example for mental liquidity. I think we should be very forgiving about this for two reasons: first, Einstein was one of the people establishing quantum mechanics. He also got the Nobel Price for his work on the photoelectric effect. Second, even the brightest minds have only a narrow time frame until mental ability starts to decline. So we cannot expect a brain to dig deep into general relativity and at the same time something completely different like QM. Surprisingly, Einstein even contributed to QM in old age by trying to poke holes into the theory that later proved to be true (e.g., spooky effects at a distance).
willtemperley 3y ago
Be a goldfish: Ted Lasso, 2020.
- Etrnl_President 3y ago
  [dead]
tartakovsky 3y ago
Related: https://medium.com/@ameet/strong-opinions-weakly-held-a-framework-for-thinking-6530d417e364 https://medium.com/@ameet/strong-opinions-weakly-held-a-fram...
conradev 3y ago
> Most fields have lots of rules, theories, ideas, and hunches. But laws – things that are unimpeachable and cannot ever change – are extremely rare. This sounds like a rehash of Popperian epistemology. We should look forward to disproving existing theories (finding new problems), because it leads to new, better theories.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
robg 3y ago
It’s easy to forget how difficult learning is, for us as individuals and as flocks in formation. Pick any topic and it’s likely it took you years to learn well. So simply switching out beliefs embedded in that topic requires overwriting years of patterns and synapses in sync. Where Kuhn is so helpful in understanding that even scientists have immense difficulty, if not vigorous myopia, stuck with wrong beliefs. Paradigm shifts with funerals is easier over decades than getting scientists to evolve their models.
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  It's so much so that I would almost define intelligence as the ability to "switch out beliefs".
  - lanstin 3y ago
    The geologists that died disbelieving in plate tectonics weren’t free of intelligence. The very systems that allow us to find patterns are also liable to get stuck with seeing certain patterns. Not only is it impossible with current human knowledge to construct an infallible theory that predicts everything we encounter, it is also impossible with current human physiology never to cling to wrong ideas in the face of counter evidence. When examining our rationality, we must not only admit our data are incomplete and our theories flawed, but we ourselves might be thinking foolishly.
lcuff 3y ago
This article matches my own life experience: Rather than what have you changed your mind about in the past decade, I use 'in your whole life'. Speaking personally, there are only two big things I've changed my mind about. I'm working on a third... I wish the article had included something in the vein expressed by Charlie Munger, which is a 'how-to' for intellectual integrity. "I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don't know the other side's argument better than they do.”
krm01 3y ago
One of the biggest beliefs I keep struggling with is the need to be perfect. I've been jamming away for many many weekends on a side project that literally was done. I just kept adding tiny tweaks left and right, until I literally just now launched it (https://amee.la https://amee.la). Nothing ground breaking, and in the end nothing that needed to have so much perfectionism around. The belief of having to need something perfect is one of the strongest I see among founders here on HN and elsewhere. It's almost always bad. I have zero examples where that ended up being good. Yet, even though the facts are clear, it's extremely hard to overcome.
- 2h 3y ago
  FYI the whole "lets type out some text" style is really, REALLY annoying. please just give the plain, non animated text on the screen. use whatever fonts or colors you want, BUT DON'T make the text type itself or jump around the screen.
- nicbou 3y ago
  There's no kill like overkill. I've been overdoing a project for the last 5 years and I thoroughly enjoy it. The site is live and pays my bills so why not? That being said, this comment feels more like self-promotion than conversation. Don't do that.
- ben_vueJS 3y ago
  This has been a mental barrier for me as well. I’m not sure if it’s in the realm of belief or rather fear of failure. Personally more inclined to say it’s the latter.
  - haswell 3y ago
    I’d argue that the fear of failure still boils down to underlying beliefs about: - What it actually means to fail - That failure is inherently bad - What will happen next after failure occurs - What it says about me when fail - What others will think about me when I fail - That I can’t recover from failure etc. If you grow up hearing that failure is bad/wrong/implies something about you as a person, it might never occur to you that another framing is that life is a series of experiments, and failure can be one of the best ways to zero in on success (in some cases, this may be the only possible way). As far as I can tell, it’s beliefs all the way down, and adjusting certain beliefs can fundamentally transform experience relative to all downstream implications of that belief.
SnowHill9902 3y ago
Stay humble.
Invictus0 3y ago
Mental flexibility would be a better term but of course finance people rarely perceive much outside their own bubble.
- davidthewatson 3y ago
  I disagree. Liquidity implies the frame of fluid dynamics, just like data liquidity. Bringing physics to science is as useful in the mind as it is in software.
  - Invictus0 3y ago
    The author has a degree in economics and you think he's talking about fluid dynamics? lol
xyzelement 3y ago
Perhaps unexpectedly, I find that thoughtful engagement with religion (Judaism in my case) has helped me become much more liquid on other topics. When you accept on faith a handful of principles that deal with an unknowable domain, it becomes much easier to be less attached to the other stuff.
- haswell 3y ago
  I grew up under a toxic form of fundamentalist Christianity that left deep scars and made me pretty allergic to religion. For me, I’ve found success and deep value in exploring non-sectarian Buddhist philosophy, which points directly at the problems caused by attachment to ideas and things, and does a good job of deconstructing thought processes that most of us engage in without realizing. To me, this is less about choosing to accept certain principles on faith as much as it is about recognizing/acknowledging that this is what we already do in most aspects of our lives. To anyone who can find value in traditional religious contemplation while avoiding the downsides, more power to you. The point of my comment isn’t to say there’s nothing to be found there, but if the version of religiosity you’re familiar with is the toxic kind, there are other paths to follow that get at some arguably important insights without some of the baggage that can be difficult to avoid. (I realize Buddhism has religious roots, but there is a long history of exploring the underlying insights in a non-religious context e.g. Zen, and the analytical framework associated with traditions like Dzogchen and Vipassana are applicable without any of the metaphysical underpinnings).
  - xyzelement 3y ago
    (I am the person you are responding to) I grew up completely ignorant of religion and my first foray into that was the study of yogic tradition. Once I got a taste of what exists, I was very lucky to realize my ancestral faith has incredible depth, beyond that which is even understood by those say they are kinda religious (ie, many people who say they are religion X don't know how much there is to X) On the toxic part, sorry to hear that. I think anything can be toxic originally to the value of the concept. (ie someone may have a horrible experience with a coach but that doesn't take away from the value of fitness in general) but it sounds like you have a pattern that works well for you.
zone411 3y ago
"Mental fluidity," "mental flexibility," or "cognitive flexibility" seem like better terms.
- layer8 3y ago
  Creedoplasticity? Pisteuoplasticity?
- gms7777 3y ago
  or "mental/cognitive plasticity"
  - nmstoker 3y ago
    My thoughts exactly: this is generally referred to in the literature as mental/brain plasticity. Coining a new term when a perfectly good one exists is unfortunate but happens, as see with the author here. Edit: here's a link to neuroplasticity (aka brain plasticity): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity
javajosh 3y ago
The prerequisite for "mental liquidity" is articulated by Aristotle: "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." If you entertain the thought, this gives you the chance to try out a new belief network. If you find your belief network would be strengthened by its inclusion, then you adopt it. Otherwise, you reject it. In this way, ones interconnected set of beliefs grows monotonically stronger. And this is right and good. EDIT: got downvoted! I would love love love to know why! Not offended, just curious.
- byteware 3y ago
  I am curious how one would measure if their "belief network would be strengthened"
- rgrieselhuber 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - javajosh 3y ago
    That seems a bit trite. I was thinking it was a misclick, but hopefully whoever did it will chime in, and they will NOT themselves get down-voted, whatever their reason.
  - dang 3y ago
    Your experiment has a confounding variable—it broke the penultimate guideline. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Etrnl_President 3y ago
  “One can not learn what one thinks one already knows” —Epictetus
- kubanczyk 3y ago
  You cannot say belief. Say hypothesis while leaving rest of your argument intact. If you value that kind of score in your life.
trentnix 3y ago
I've heard it also said "strong opinions, weakly held". Unlike "mental liquidity", it doesn't require explanation.
- zug_zug 3y ago
  I disagree, I just heard this phrase from you the first time just now, and I don't think it's self-explanatory. It's unclear to me in what respect the opinions are "strong" if not one's conviction in them. To my mind a strong opinion is an opinion one is confident in. Also it's unclear to me if/how/why this is better than "less opinions". Like is it better to have a "strong opinion weakly held" on topic X versus "My opinion is pending scientific research will answer this"? A nitpick -- I actually have a pretty big distaste for maxims that have some cutesy rhyming/wordplay to them (in this case it's X y, !X z, X = strong).
  - chefandy 3y ago
    I'm not interested in delving into pedantry, so I'll stop after this. My intuitive understanding of this phrase is that strong or weak opinions are generally a measure of magnitude more than stability, while strongly or weakly held opinions are a matter of stability rather than magnitude. Someone might have a milder opinion of something, like "Pepperoni pizza is fine" vs. a stronger stance, such as "Pepperoni pizza is the BEST pizza." How easily that opinion is changed does not necessarily correlate. Perhaps the person who thinks pepperoni pizza is the best has never tried salami pizza and will be an instant convert. Maybe they're the worlds BIGGEST pepperoni fan. Maybe the person with the weaker opinion on pepperoni might be very very unlikely to change it because they don't care enough about pizza in general to consider it much. Maybe they love pizza, but are one bite of pepperoni pizza away from saying "bleh, hand me a slice of mushroom."
  - dasil003 3y ago
    I agree it's not self-explanatory. All such pithy statements are only insightful based on hard-won experience behind them—the map is not the territory, after all ;) As far as "strong opinions, weakly held", this is one of my favorites at work in a large scale product engineering environment. It goes beyond "mental liquidity" as described in the OA (which is really just about the "weakly held" part). The "strong opinions" part is that often times groups will succumb to analysis paralysis or unwillingness to make a decision due to group dynamics. Having a strong opinion (ideally backed by knowledge and expertise) is a way to push through and bring clarity. The risk is there is a personality type prone to blustering overconfidence that will push a group in a certain direction without reasonable justification. Ideally what you want is a critical mass of smart, decisive, but open-minded people who are quick to assimilate new evidence into their viewpoint.
wwweston 3y ago
> A question I love to ask people is, “What have you changed your mind about in the last decade?” I use “decade” because it pushes you into thinking about big things, not who you think will win the Super Bowl. This is a great question. And "decade" is a good time frame not only because of size but because it's a long enough time frame there's a better chance people will have good answers. The Dee Hock quotes (“A belief is not dangerous until it turns absolute” and “We are built with an almost infinite capacity to believe things because the beliefs are advantageous for us to hold, rather than because they are even remotely related to the truth”) are great too.
cubefox 3y ago
The best way to test your "mental liquidity" is to think about some hypotheses that are outside the "Overton window" or even outright taboo. "What if ***** were true? Surely it can't be true. If it were, that would be terrible." That's motivated reasoning. Remember that the truth of any hypothesis is not influenced by how much you want it to be true, or false. Some hypotheses are deeply uncomfortable, but you should nonetheless strive to believe the truth. Or rather, what is best supported by the evidence. Even if it hurts.
- noduerme 3y ago
  Actually, most people shouldn't do that in most cases, because they aren't qualified to understand the evidence presented to them. Nor are the hypotheses they're testing their own. Valuable hypotheses arise from evidence - not vice versa. This is why juries in complex cases need so much time to be walked through subject matter by expert witnesses, and why standards of evidence are applied to what they are and aren't allowed to hear, and why the conclusions they may or may not draw are circumscribed to the cases being made by lawyers as allowed by judges. When people search the internet for evidence to support their most uncomfortable hypotheses, they'll always find it. That's how we get masses of people who believe in conspiracy theories and satanic panics, with the certainty of those who incorrectly believe they've done their own "research". Taking up the most uncomfortable (i.e. "forbidden") hypothesis and giving it the weight required to attempt to prove it to yourself is not a systematic way of finding truth; it's a way of deceiving yourself into believing in the simplistic frameworks of other people's paranoid conspiracy theories.
  - cubefox 3y ago
    The above was only a case against wishful thinking and rationalization. Of course expert testimony is still some form of evidence. The point is not to willfully ignore or reinterpret the evidence because you don't like the direction it is pointing at. It is worth citing the Litany of Gendlin: What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn't make it worse. Not being open about it doesn't make it go away. And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with. Anything untrue isn't there to be lived. People can stand what is true, for they are already enduring it.
moneywoes 3y ago
AI taking away jobs is one. Previously though more jobs would be created but now my beliefs have fundamentally shifted
hcarvalhoalves 3y ago
> Changing your mind is hard because it’s easier to fool yourself into believing a falsehood than admit a mistake. Different angle: it's not simply "fooling" oneself, but it's because ideas are one way or another built on top of an ideological foundation. Einstein rejecting quantum theory on the basis the universe shouldn't have a random component to it is also rejecting the idea of having to re-examine all philosophy past Descartes and Newton, which aligned so well with society's viewpoint at the time - a deterministic, cause-consequence universe, where things have logical explanations and where hard work is rewarded.
hammock 3y ago
Of course we must reference Berlins fable the Fox and the Hedgehog here. A great essay in this area is Venk’s Cactus and the Weasel. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2014/02/20/the-cactus-and-the-weasel/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2014/02/20/the-cactus-and-the-wea...
turnsout 3y ago
Mental Liquidity is another way of thinking about "Psychological Flexibility," which is the subject of a huge amount of clinical research. There's an entire therapeutic framework called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) which came out of this research. Check out this article [0] for a description of ACT from a founder's perspective. [0] https://every.to/no-small-plans/how-to-do-hard-things https://every.to/no-small-plans/how-to-do-hard-things
Borrible 3y ago
Take a die with six to twenty sides and assign a belief system/worldview to each number. Roll the dice twice, first for the belief system/worldview, the other for the number of months you live by it. Of course, you can vary the parameter according to your taste and courage. But it is important to persevere, so you better start small. I call it Rhinehartian chaotic paradigm shift. Dice Man goes chaos magic.
HellDunkel 3y ago
I just finished the Einstein biography by Walter I. and found Einsteins stubbornness quite entertaining. He knew about this trait, accepted it as an effect of ageing and even was making jokes about it. He simply disliked some facts about quantum m. and allowed himself to pursue a rather fruitless endeavour for many years. He knew that this kind of stubbornness would kill the career of a younger scientist but he could afford to do so. In that sense he contributed to science.
- neerajsi 3y ago
  You're quite right. Science requires the skepticism to apply the stress to theories needed to make them strong. I'm assuming Einstein tried to raise objections using evidence to the contrary and alternative explanations.
  - n4r9 3y ago
    Along with Podolsky and Rosen he formulated one of the original quantum thought experiments to challenge the accepted conventions: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Podolsky%E2%80%93Rosen_paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Podolsky%E2... This in turn inspired Bell's theorem, and eventually quantum information theory.
- edanm 3y ago
  A bit tangential, but, is the biography worth reading? I've enjoyed other Walter I books in the past, fwiw.
  - HellDunkel 3y ago
    Absolutely- it's exceptionally well written and a pleasure to read.
sedivy94 3y ago
A term I’ve come to like more is “cognitive flexibility”.
yowlingcat 3y ago
In my experience, This attribute is an absolutely critical part of successfully building culture at an early stage startup, and you have to be ruthless about culling those who are not willing to give it a try nevermind master it.
lostdog 3y ago
What kind of deliberate practice can help if morove your mental liquidity?
jrflowers 3y ago
> Be careful what beliefs you let become part of your identity. “I have a tight enough knowledge and grasp of my beliefs to intentionally control my sense of identity” is a fascinating belief to turn into an identity.
- neerajsi 3y ago
  This might be relevant: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-authorship https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-authorship According to the Kegan theory, it's possible. I'd be fascinated to see it if anyone knows of a study that demonstrates self authorship in a population of real people.
  - jrflowers 3y ago
    I’ve yet to hear anything akin to self authorship from someone that didn’t have a book/seminar/consultancy to sell. It’s a somewhat amusing thought that there is this human phenomenon wherein we can transcend nature, nurture, the id, the ego, the superego, biology and chemistry — and overwhelmingly those that achieve this enlightened state coincidentally tend to end up as self-help bloggers and motivational speakers.
technological 3y ago
I think it is hard to change your beliefs is because of the discomfort that is associated with that change.
jonasenordin 3y ago
Brings to mind Robert Pirsig's 'value rigidity' concept: 'an inability to revalue what one sees because of commitment to previous values.' I don't remember if there was a term for the opposite, but 'flexibility' seems to be right.
golemotron 3y ago
It seems like this is a term for the ability to avoid sunk cost fallacy ( https://www.scribbr.com/fallacies/sunk-cost-fallacy/ https://www.scribbr.com/fallacies/sunk-cost-fallacy/ ) The link contains a number of reasons why people get trapped in sunk cost fallacy.
photochemsyn 3y ago
One approach to preserving mental fluidity is to not get emotionally attached to ideas. This was expressed by Richard Feynman in his 1979 lectures on quantum electrodynamics, available here: http://www.vega.org.uk/video/subseries/8 http://www.vega.org.uk/video/subseries/8 > Q: "Do you like the idea that our picture of the world has to be based on a calculation which involves probability?" > A: "...if I get right down to it, I don't say I like it and I don't say I don't like it. I got very highly trained over the years to be a scientist and there's a certain way you have to look at things. When I give a talk I simplify a little bit, I cheat a little bit to make it sound like I don't like it. What I mean is it's peculiar. But I never think, this is what I like and this is what I don't like, I think this is what it is and this is what it isn't. And whether I like it or I don't like it is really irrelevant and believe it or not I have extracted it out of my mind. I do not even ask myself whether I like it or I don't like it because it's a complete irrelevance." I think that's critical, because if you become emotionally involved with promoting an abstract idea, it becomes part of your personal identity or self-image, and then changing your mind about it in the face of new evidence becomes very difficult if not impossible. In another lecture, Feynman also said something about not telling Nature how it should behave, as that would be an act of hubris or words to that effect, you just have to accept what the evidence points to, like it or not. (Changing your mind about what's morally acceptable, socially taboo, aesthetically pleasing etc. is an entirely different subject, science can't really help much with such questions.)
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
I have had to have an open mind. Long story. Lots of tears. Get your hanky. It's served me well, in my technical work. I now do a lot of stuff that I used to scoff at.
wayeq 3y ago
> Albert Einstein hated the idea of quantum physics. Einstein came up with most of what physicists now recognize as the essential features of quantum physics. He was not anti quantum, he just believed randomness could not be a fundamental feature of nature.
- lo_zamoyski 3y ago
  N.b.. Rob Koon's book[0] may be of interest to some of the more philosophically inclined. He argues that the proper interpretation of QM is in light of hylomorphic dualism. [0] https://a.co/d/6eq227u https://a.co/d/6eq227u
- bsder 3y ago
  Einstein also had a bunch of real, substantial objections. One of the big ones had to do with whether the "fields" formulation was valid and primary. One of the issues is that if you follow the fields formulations that Einstein believed in out to conclusion you get things like "atomic oribtals never decay". Which, of course, is obviously wrong. And an example of one of the reasons why Bohr is considered to have won his debates with Einstein. Except Einstein was right! We now know that when you isolate an atom, it's atomic orbital decay gets slower and slower the more you isolate it. The problem at the time was that all of the experiments that could be run were statistical aggregations and obscured the nature of single state quantum systems.
cortesoft 3y ago
> It might sound crazy, but I think a good rule of thumb is that your strongest convictions have the highest chance of being wrong or incomplete, if only because they are the hardest beliefs to challenge, update, and abandon when necessary. I strongly disagree with this, unless we are only talking about beliefs that are about facts of the universe. For example, my strongest belief is that all people have an equal right to exist and pursue their own purpose... this is not a belief about the facts of the universe, but about my own morality. I don't think it has a chance to be 'wrong'
- JakkTrent 3y ago
  I believe that knowing and believe are two different things ;) Belief is far stronger - that's why people do things all the time they themselves at one point "knew" they couldn't do. If you start with a flawed belief - things won't improve from there. You'll ending "knowing" a whole lot of stuff that reinforces your flawed belief - simply glossing/ignoring/downplaying the facts that don't support... this becomes a bit of feedback loop after awhile. So either learn to let go of your beliefs and adapt or at least don't firmly establish beliefs until after you know enough stuff to decide for yourself what to believe. I reevaluate mine all the time and I'm not wrong on of my strong convictions - albeit from my point of view, which I've made as broad as possible but I'm still human. My highest beliefs today are built upon a foundation of information, learning and mistakes - I may state a belief with a single sentence but I can write books about why I've arrived at that belief. I don't that's morality - I sometimes do things I "know" to be immoral, when the justification warrants it, I've never knowingly decided to believe something I know is wrong - even if I was forced, I'd only pretend to believe at best. In college I'd cheat on a test tho if I thought it the only way I'd pass - bc I believed passing was more important than the test... maybe it's a bad example of immorality. Anyways, I completely agree with Cortesoft - I'm settling on the understanding that all people everywhere are fundamentally important, collectively and individually. Allowing and empowering all people to live their best lives is in all of our best interest. I've gone further even than equal right to existence and yet I'm supremely confident. I think this rant also rather effectively demonstrates exactly what the OP was saying about our strongest convictions. An incorrect fundamental belief - like say I believed the earth was flat, that belief would be implicit in all that I believe after that, just part of my world view and muddling up everything I think about anything - I wouldn't even be aware of that. Mental liquidity. Fantastic. Otherwise knowledge can be an immovable trap that becomes harder to avoid/escape the more stuff you know. Scientists are great examples of this - if it can't be scientifically methoidized it doesn't exist and therefore must be explainable within the framework they already know, bc that's always right ;)
DiscourseFan 3y ago
I think about these questions very often, but I don't feel like going on a long rant about it from a philosophical perspective. I will instead give an anecdote: I think from my teens to my early 20s my political stance changed dramatically, and at any one point in time I would think that whatever I held to be true I would continue to in the future. But what always changed my belief system was not encountering some new piece of information that changed my idea or made me "update my priors" (in the crude Bayesian system, a most despicable philosophy of our era). It was always something that radically changed how it was that I understood the world around me, something that made my way of thinking about things shift so dramatically that I had to abandon my old ideas. I think everyone should read Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud for that reason, even if you think they are heinous and evil, because they radically question the logic and order of society and knowledge, and their writings are deeply disturbing to many for that reason. What changes people's perspectives is generally what people want to avoid (to the author's point). And the more you want to avoid something or "prove it wrong," oftentimes the more it changes the way you think about the world.
- gestatingAI 3y ago
  Interesting. May I ask why you consider Bayesian updates a “despicable philosophy” ? > It was always something that radically changed how it was that I understood the world around me, something that made my way of thinking about things shift so dramatically that I had to abandon my old ideas. If you have examples, I would much appreciate it, although I do not mean to pry.
  - DiscourseFan 3y ago
    >May I ask why you consider Bayesian updates a “despicable philosophy”? For the reason I said in that quote: Bayesian updates require upholding the same structure and considering things in networks of pre-established probabilities. This is very useful for say sportsbetting, or the weather, but in ones day to day life, especially in political circumstances, things often happen that are completely unpredictable because the socially normative prediction algorithms are always set to re-enforce the normative operations of society, making any radical change inconceivably impossible. >If you have examples, I would much appreciate it, although I do not mean to pry. I moved towards the Left because it seemed to me that the basis of so called "reasonable" ideologies like libertarianism and general laissez-fare market conditions always held within them notions of "fairness" and that people would "get what they deserved." It seemed to me that this is language more appropriate for disciplining a child, than ordering our society. In a sense, what was conceived of as "rational" by those who supported the systems of power was revealed to me to be nothing more than ideology which justified that power.

221 points by bkohlmann 3y ago

I think this article is a little too overzealous with trying to simplify a topic like beliefs and ideas. A lot of it also sounds like common sense to me, the people capable of grasping this: > Be careful what beliefs you let become part of your identity. Are quite capable of adjusting themselves. Everything else falls into either Ego, or people being self-(un)aware, and for the latter - you can only change "their" belief system if they themselves are willing to change.

mo_42 3y ago

I like this nice little text. Einstein is a perfect example for mental liquidity. I think we should be very forgiving about this for two reasons: first, Einstein was one of the people establishing quantum mechanics. He also got the Nobel Price for his work on the photoelectric effect. Second, even the brightest minds have only a narrow time frame until mental ability starts to decline. So we cannot expect a brain to dig deep into general relativity and at the same time something completely different like QM. Surprisingly, Einstein even contributed to QM in old age by trying to poke holes into the theory that later proved to be true (e.g., spooky effects at a distance).

willtemperley 3y ago

Be a goldfish: Ted Lasso, 2020.

Etrnl_President 3y ago
[dead]

tartakovsky 3y ago

Related: https://medium.com/@ameet/strong-opinions-weakly-held-a-framework-for-thinking-6530d417e364 https://medium.com/@ameet/strong-opinions-weakly-held-a-fram...

conradev 3y ago

> Most fields have lots of rules, theories, ideas, and hunches. But laws – things that are unimpeachable and cannot ever change – are extremely rare. This sounds like a rehash of Popperian epistemology. We should look forward to disproving existing theories (finding new problems), because it leads to new, better theories.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

robg 3y ago

It’s easy to forget how difficult learning is, for us as individuals and as flocks in formation. Pick any topic and it’s likely it took you years to learn well. So simply switching out beliefs embedded in that topic requires overwriting years of patterns and synapses in sync. Where Kuhn is so helpful in understanding that even scientists have immense difficulty, if not vigorous myopia, stuck with wrong beliefs. Paradigm shifts with funerals is easier over decades than getting scientists to evolve their models.

MichaelZuo 3y ago
It's so much so that I would almost define intelligence as the ability to "switch out beliefs".
- lanstin 3y ago
  The geologists that died disbelieving in plate tectonics weren’t free of intelligence. The very systems that allow us to find patterns are also liable to get stuck with seeing certain patterns. Not only is it impossible with current human knowledge to construct an infallible theory that predicts everything we encounter, it is also impossible with current human physiology never to cling to wrong ideas in the face of counter evidence. When examining our rationality, we must not only admit our data are incomplete and our theories flawed, but we ourselves might be thinking foolishly.

lcuff 3y ago

This article matches my own life experience: Rather than what have you changed your mind about in the past decade, I use 'in your whole life'. Speaking personally, there are only two big things I've changed my mind about. I'm working on a third... I wish the article had included something in the vein expressed by Charlie Munger, which is a 'how-to' for intellectual integrity. "I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don't know the other side's argument better than they do.”

krm01 3y ago

One of the biggest beliefs I keep struggling with is the need to be perfect. I've been jamming away for many many weekends on a side project that literally was done. I just kept adding tiny tweaks left and right, until I literally just now launched it (https://amee.la https://amee.la). Nothing ground breaking, and in the end nothing that needed to have so much perfectionism around. The belief of having to need something perfect is one of the strongest I see among founders here on HN and elsewhere. It's almost always bad. I have zero examples where that ended up being good. Yet, even though the facts are clear, it's extremely hard to overcome.

2h 3y ago
FYI the whole "lets type out some text" style is really, REALLY annoying. please just give the plain, non animated text on the screen. use whatever fonts or colors you want, BUT DON'T make the text type itself or jump around the screen.
nicbou 3y ago
There's no kill like overkill. I've been overdoing a project for the last 5 years and I thoroughly enjoy it. The site is live and pays my bills so why not? That being said, this comment feels more like self-promotion than conversation. Don't do that.
ben_vueJS 3y ago
This has been a mental barrier for me as well. I’m not sure if it’s in the realm of belief or rather fear of failure. Personally more inclined to say it’s the latter.
- haswell 3y ago
  I’d argue that the fear of failure still boils down to underlying beliefs about: - What it actually means to fail - That failure is inherently bad - What will happen next after failure occurs - What it says about me when fail - What others will think about me when I fail - That I can’t recover from failure etc. If you grow up hearing that failure is bad/wrong/implies something about you as a person, it might never occur to you that another framing is that life is a series of experiments, and failure can be one of the best ways to zero in on success (in some cases, this may be the only possible way). As far as I can tell, it’s beliefs all the way down, and adjusting certain beliefs can fundamentally transform experience relative to all downstream implications of that belief.

SnowHill9902 3y ago

Stay humble.

Invictus0 3y ago

Mental flexibility would be a better term but of course finance people rarely perceive much outside their own bubble.

davidthewatson 3y ago
I disagree. Liquidity implies the frame of fluid dynamics, just like data liquidity. Bringing physics to science is as useful in the mind as it is in software.
- Invictus0 3y ago
  The author has a degree in economics and you think he's talking about fluid dynamics? lol

xyzelement 3y ago

Perhaps unexpectedly, I find that thoughtful engagement with religion (Judaism in my case) has helped me become much more liquid on other topics. When you accept on faith a handful of principles that deal with an unknowable domain, it becomes much easier to be less attached to the other stuff.

haswell 3y ago
I grew up under a toxic form of fundamentalist Christianity that left deep scars and made me pretty allergic to religion. For me, I’ve found success and deep value in exploring non-sectarian Buddhist philosophy, which points directly at the problems caused by attachment to ideas and things, and does a good job of deconstructing thought processes that most of us engage in without realizing. To me, this is less about choosing to accept certain principles on faith as much as it is about recognizing/acknowledging that this is what we already do in most aspects of our lives. To anyone who can find value in traditional religious contemplation while avoiding the downsides, more power to you. The point of my comment isn’t to say there’s nothing to be found there, but if the version of religiosity you’re familiar with is the toxic kind, there are other paths to follow that get at some arguably important insights without some of the baggage that can be difficult to avoid. (I realize Buddhism has religious roots, but there is a long history of exploring the underlying insights in a non-religious context e.g. Zen, and the analytical framework associated with traditions like Dzogchen and Vipassana are applicable without any of the metaphysical underpinnings).
- xyzelement 3y ago
  (I am the person you are responding to) I grew up completely ignorant of religion and my first foray into that was the study of yogic tradition. Once I got a taste of what exists, I was very lucky to realize my ancestral faith has incredible depth, beyond that which is even understood by those say they are kinda religious (ie, many people who say they are religion X don't know how much there is to X) On the toxic part, sorry to hear that. I think anything can be toxic originally to the value of the concept. (ie someone may have a horrible experience with a coach but that doesn't take away from the value of fitness in general) but it sounds like you have a pattern that works well for you.

zone411 3y ago

"Mental fluidity," "mental flexibility," or "cognitive flexibility" seem like better terms.

layer8 3y ago
Creedoplasticity? Pisteuoplasticity?
gms7777 3y ago
or "mental/cognitive plasticity"
- nmstoker 3y ago
  My thoughts exactly: this is generally referred to in the literature as mental/brain plasticity. Coining a new term when a perfectly good one exists is unfortunate but happens, as see with the author here. Edit: here's a link to neuroplasticity (aka brain plasticity): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity

javajosh 3y ago

The prerequisite for "mental liquidity" is articulated by Aristotle: "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." If you entertain the thought, this gives you the chance to try out a new belief network. If you find your belief network would be strengthened by its inclusion, then you adopt it. Otherwise, you reject it. In this way, ones interconnected set of beliefs grows monotonically stronger. And this is right and good. EDIT: got downvoted! I would love love love to know why! Not offended, just curious.

byteware 3y ago
I am curious how one would measure if their "belief network would be strengthened"
rgrieselhuber 3y ago
[flagged]
- javajosh 3y ago
  That seems a bit trite. I was thinking it was a misclick, but hopefully whoever did it will chime in, and they will NOT themselves get down-voted, whatever their reason.
- dang 3y ago
  Your experiment has a confounding variable—it broke the penultimate guideline. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Etrnl_President 3y ago
“One can not learn what one thinks one already knows” —Epictetus
kubanczyk 3y ago
You cannot say belief. Say hypothesis while leaving rest of your argument intact. If you value that kind of score in your life.

trentnix 3y ago

I've heard it also said "strong opinions, weakly held". Unlike "mental liquidity", it doesn't require explanation.

zug_zug 3y ago
I disagree, I just heard this phrase from you the first time just now, and I don't think it's self-explanatory. It's unclear to me in what respect the opinions are "strong" if not one's conviction in them. To my mind a strong opinion is an opinion one is confident in. Also it's unclear to me if/how/why this is better than "less opinions". Like is it better to have a "strong opinion weakly held" on topic X versus "My opinion is pending scientific research will answer this"? A nitpick -- I actually have a pretty big distaste for maxims that have some cutesy rhyming/wordplay to them (in this case it's X y, !X z, X = strong).
- chefandy 3y ago
  I'm not interested in delving into pedantry, so I'll stop after this. My intuitive understanding of this phrase is that strong or weak opinions are generally a measure of magnitude more than stability, while strongly or weakly held opinions are a matter of stability rather than magnitude. Someone might have a milder opinion of something, like "Pepperoni pizza is fine" vs. a stronger stance, such as "Pepperoni pizza is the BEST pizza." How easily that opinion is changed does not necessarily correlate. Perhaps the person who thinks pepperoni pizza is the best has never tried salami pizza and will be an instant convert. Maybe they're the worlds BIGGEST pepperoni fan. Maybe the person with the weaker opinion on pepperoni might be very very unlikely to change it because they don't care enough about pizza in general to consider it much. Maybe they love pizza, but are one bite of pepperoni pizza away from saying "bleh, hand me a slice of mushroom."
- dasil003 3y ago
  I agree it's not self-explanatory. All such pithy statements are only insightful based on hard-won experience behind them—the map is not the territory, after all ;) As far as "strong opinions, weakly held", this is one of my favorites at work in a large scale product engineering environment. It goes beyond "mental liquidity" as described in the OA (which is really just about the "weakly held" part). The "strong opinions" part is that often times groups will succumb to analysis paralysis or unwillingness to make a decision due to group dynamics. Having a strong opinion (ideally backed by knowledge and expertise) is a way to push through and bring clarity. The risk is there is a personality type prone to blustering overconfidence that will push a group in a certain direction without reasonable justification. Ideally what you want is a critical mass of smart, decisive, but open-minded people who are quick to assimilate new evidence into their viewpoint.

wwweston 3y ago

> A question I love to ask people is, “What have you changed your mind about in the last decade?” I use “decade” because it pushes you into thinking about big things, not who you think will win the Super Bowl. This is a great question. And "decade" is a good time frame not only because of size but because it's a long enough time frame there's a better chance people will have good answers. The Dee Hock quotes (“A belief is not dangerous until it turns absolute” and “We are built with an almost infinite capacity to believe things because the beliefs are advantageous for us to hold, rather than because they are even remotely related to the truth”) are great too.

cubefox 3y ago

The best way to test your "mental liquidity" is to think about some hypotheses that are outside the "Overton window" or even outright taboo. "What if ***** were true? Surely it can't be true. If it were, that would be terrible." That's motivated reasoning. Remember that the truth of any hypothesis is not influenced by how much you want it to be true, or false. Some hypotheses are deeply uncomfortable, but you should nonetheless strive to believe the truth. Or rather, what is best supported by the evidence. Even if it hurts.

noduerme 3y ago
Actually, most people shouldn't do that in most cases, because they aren't qualified to understand the evidence presented to them. Nor are the hypotheses they're testing their own. Valuable hypotheses arise from evidence - not vice versa. This is why juries in complex cases need so much time to be walked through subject matter by expert witnesses, and why standards of evidence are applied to what they are and aren't allowed to hear, and why the conclusions they may or may not draw are circumscribed to the cases being made by lawyers as allowed by judges. When people search the internet for evidence to support their most uncomfortable hypotheses, they'll always find it. That's how we get masses of people who believe in conspiracy theories and satanic panics, with the certainty of those who incorrectly believe they've done their own "research". Taking up the most uncomfortable (i.e. "forbidden") hypothesis and giving it the weight required to attempt to prove it to yourself is not a systematic way of finding truth; it's a way of deceiving yourself into believing in the simplistic frameworks of other people's paranoid conspiracy theories.
- cubefox 3y ago
  The above was only a case against wishful thinking and rationalization. Of course expert testimony is still some form of evidence. The point is not to willfully ignore or reinterpret the evidence because you don't like the direction it is pointing at. It is worth citing the Litany of Gendlin: What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn't make it worse. Not being open about it doesn't make it go away. And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with. Anything untrue isn't there to be lived. People can stand what is true, for they are already enduring it.

moneywoes 3y ago

AI taking away jobs is one. Previously though more jobs would be created but now my beliefs have fundamentally shifted

hcarvalhoalves 3y ago

> Changing your mind is hard because it’s easier to fool yourself into believing a falsehood than admit a mistake. Different angle: it's not simply "fooling" oneself, but it's because ideas are one way or another built on top of an ideological foundation. Einstein rejecting quantum theory on the basis the universe shouldn't have a random component to it is also rejecting the idea of having to re-examine all philosophy past Descartes and Newton, which aligned so well with society's viewpoint at the time - a deterministic, cause-consequence universe, where things have logical explanations and where hard work is rewarded.

hammock 3y ago

Of course we must reference Berlins fable the Fox and the Hedgehog here. A great essay in this area is Venk’s Cactus and the Weasel. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2014/02/20/the-cactus-and-the-weasel/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2014/02/20/the-cactus-and-the-wea...

turnsout 3y ago

Mental Liquidity is another way of thinking about "Psychological Flexibility," which is the subject of a huge amount of clinical research. There's an entire therapeutic framework called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) which came out of this research. Check out this article [0] for a description of ACT from a founder's perspective. [0] https://every.to/no-small-plans/how-to-do-hard-things https://every.to/no-small-plans/how-to-do-hard-things

Borrible 3y ago

Take a die with six to twenty sides and assign a belief system/worldview to each number. Roll the dice twice, first for the belief system/worldview, the other for the number of months you live by it. Of course, you can vary the parameter according to your taste and courage. But it is important to persevere, so you better start small. I call it Rhinehartian chaotic paradigm shift. Dice Man goes chaos magic.

HellDunkel 3y ago

I just finished the Einstein biography by Walter I. and found Einsteins stubbornness quite entertaining. He knew about this trait, accepted it as an effect of ageing and even was making jokes about it. He simply disliked some facts about quantum m. and allowed himself to pursue a rather fruitless endeavour for many years. He knew that this kind of stubbornness would kill the career of a younger scientist but he could afford to do so. In that sense he contributed to science.

neerajsi 3y ago
You're quite right. Science requires the skepticism to apply the stress to theories needed to make them strong. I'm assuming Einstein tried to raise objections using evidence to the contrary and alternative explanations.
- n4r9 3y ago
  Along with Podolsky and Rosen he formulated one of the original quantum thought experiments to challenge the accepted conventions: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Podolsky%E2%80%93Rosen_paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Podolsky%E2... This in turn inspired Bell's theorem, and eventually quantum information theory.
edanm 3y ago
A bit tangential, but, is the biography worth reading? I've enjoyed other Walter I books in the past, fwiw.
- HellDunkel 3y ago
  Absolutely- it's exceptionally well written and a pleasure to read.

sedivy94 3y ago

A term I’ve come to like more is “cognitive flexibility”.

yowlingcat 3y ago

In my experience, This attribute is an absolutely critical part of successfully building culture at an early stage startup, and you have to be ruthless about culling those who are not willing to give it a try nevermind master it.

lostdog 3y ago

What kind of deliberate practice can help if morove your mental liquidity?

jrflowers 3y ago

> Be careful what beliefs you let become part of your identity. “I have a tight enough knowledge and grasp of my beliefs to intentionally control my sense of identity” is a fascinating belief to turn into an identity.

neerajsi 3y ago
This might be relevant: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-authorship https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-authorship According to the Kegan theory, it's possible. I'd be fascinated to see it if anyone knows of a study that demonstrates self authorship in a population of real people.
- jrflowers 3y ago
  I’ve yet to hear anything akin to self authorship from someone that didn’t have a book/seminar/consultancy to sell. It’s a somewhat amusing thought that there is this human phenomenon wherein we can transcend nature, nurture, the id, the ego, the superego, biology and chemistry — and overwhelmingly those that achieve this enlightened state coincidentally tend to end up as self-help bloggers and motivational speakers.

technological 3y ago

I think it is hard to change your beliefs is because of the discomfort that is associated with that change.

jonasenordin 3y ago

Brings to mind Robert Pirsig's 'value rigidity' concept: 'an inability to revalue what one sees because of commitment to previous values.' I don't remember if there was a term for the opposite, but 'flexibility' seems to be right.

golemotron 3y ago

It seems like this is a term for the ability to avoid sunk cost fallacy ( https://www.scribbr.com/fallacies/sunk-cost-fallacy/ https://www.scribbr.com/fallacies/sunk-cost-fallacy/ ) The link contains a number of reasons why people get trapped in sunk cost fallacy.

photochemsyn 3y ago

One approach to preserving mental fluidity is to not get emotionally attached to ideas. This was expressed by Richard Feynman in his 1979 lectures on quantum electrodynamics, available here: http://www.vega.org.uk/video/subseries/8 http://www.vega.org.uk/video/subseries/8 > Q: "Do you like the idea that our picture of the world has to be based on a calculation which involves probability?" > A: "...if I get right down to it, I don't say I like it and I don't say I don't like it. I got very highly trained over the years to be a scientist and there's a certain way you have to look at things. When I give a talk I simplify a little bit, I cheat a little bit to make it sound like I don't like it. What I mean is it's peculiar. But I never think, this is what I like and this is what I don't like, I think this is what it is and this is what it isn't. And whether I like it or I don't like it is really irrelevant and believe it or not I have extracted it out of my mind. I do not even ask myself whether I like it or I don't like it because it's a complete irrelevance." I think that's critical, because if you become emotionally involved with promoting an abstract idea, it becomes part of your personal identity or self-image, and then changing your mind about it in the face of new evidence becomes very difficult if not impossible. In another lecture, Feynman also said something about not telling Nature how it should behave, as that would be an act of hubris or words to that effect, you just have to accept what the evidence points to, like it or not. (Changing your mind about what's morally acceptable, socially taboo, aesthetically pleasing etc. is an entirely different subject, science can't really help much with such questions.)

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago

I have had to have an open mind. Long story. Lots of tears. Get your hanky. It's served me well, in my technical work. I now do a lot of stuff that I used to scoff at.

wayeq 3y ago

> Albert Einstein hated the idea of quantum physics. Einstein came up with most of what physicists now recognize as the essential features of quantum physics. He was not anti quantum, he just believed randomness could not be a fundamental feature of nature.

lo_zamoyski 3y ago
N.b.. Rob Koon's book[0] may be of interest to some of the more philosophically inclined. He argues that the proper interpretation of QM is in light of hylomorphic dualism. [0] https://a.co/d/6eq227u https://a.co/d/6eq227u
bsder 3y ago
Einstein also had a bunch of real, substantial objections. One of the big ones had to do with whether the "fields" formulation was valid and primary. One of the issues is that if you follow the fields formulations that Einstein believed in out to conclusion you get things like "atomic oribtals never decay". Which, of course, is obviously wrong. And an example of one of the reasons why Bohr is considered to have won his debates with Einstein. Except Einstein was right! We now know that when you isolate an atom, it's atomic orbital decay gets slower and slower the more you isolate it. The problem at the time was that all of the experiments that could be run were statistical aggregations and obscured the nature of single state quantum systems.

cortesoft 3y ago

> It might sound crazy, but I think a good rule of thumb is that your strongest convictions have the highest chance of being wrong or incomplete, if only because they are the hardest beliefs to challenge, update, and abandon when necessary. I strongly disagree with this, unless we are only talking about beliefs that are about facts of the universe. For example, my strongest belief is that all people have an equal right to exist and pursue their own purpose... this is not a belief about the facts of the universe, but about my own morality. I don't think it has a chance to be 'wrong'

JakkTrent 3y ago
I believe that knowing and believe are two different things ;) Belief is far stronger - that's why people do things all the time they themselves at one point "knew" they couldn't do. If you start with a flawed belief - things won't improve from there. You'll ending "knowing" a whole lot of stuff that reinforces your flawed belief - simply glossing/ignoring/downplaying the facts that don't support... this becomes a bit of feedback loop after awhile. So either learn to let go of your beliefs and adapt or at least don't firmly establish beliefs until after you know enough stuff to decide for yourself what to believe. I reevaluate mine all the time and I'm not wrong on of my strong convictions - albeit from my point of view, which I've made as broad as possible but I'm still human. My highest beliefs today are built upon a foundation of information, learning and mistakes - I may state a belief with a single sentence but I can write books about why I've arrived at that belief. I don't that's morality - I sometimes do things I "know" to be immoral, when the justification warrants it, I've never knowingly decided to believe something I know is wrong - even if I was forced, I'd only pretend to believe at best. In college I'd cheat on a test tho if I thought it the only way I'd pass - bc I believed passing was more important than the test... maybe it's a bad example of immorality. Anyways, I completely agree with Cortesoft - I'm settling on the understanding that all people everywhere are fundamentally important, collectively and individually. Allowing and empowering all people to live their best lives is in all of our best interest. I've gone further even than equal right to existence and yet I'm supremely confident. I think this rant also rather effectively demonstrates exactly what the OP was saying about our strongest convictions. An incorrect fundamental belief - like say I believed the earth was flat, that belief would be implicit in all that I believe after that, just part of my world view and muddling up everything I think about anything - I wouldn't even be aware of that. Mental liquidity. Fantastic. Otherwise knowledge can be an immovable trap that becomes harder to avoid/escape the more stuff you know. Scientists are great examples of this - if it can't be scientifically methoidized it doesn't exist and therefore must be explainable within the framework they already know, bc that's always right ;)

DiscourseFan 3y ago

I think about these questions very often, but I don't feel like going on a long rant about it from a philosophical perspective. I will instead give an anecdote: I think from my teens to my early 20s my political stance changed dramatically, and at any one point in time I would think that whatever I held to be true I would continue to in the future. But what always changed my belief system was not encountering some new piece of information that changed my idea or made me "update my priors" (in the crude Bayesian system, a most despicable philosophy of our era). It was always something that radically changed how it was that I understood the world around me, something that made my way of thinking about things shift so dramatically that I had to abandon my old ideas. I think everyone should read Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud for that reason, even if you think they are heinous and evil, because they radically question the logic and order of society and knowledge, and their writings are deeply disturbing to many for that reason. What changes people's perspectives is generally what people want to avoid (to the author's point). And the more you want to avoid something or "prove it wrong," oftentimes the more it changes the way you think about the world.

gestatingAI 3y ago
Interesting. May I ask why you consider Bayesian updates a “despicable philosophy” ? > It was always something that radically changed how it was that I understood the world around me, something that made my way of thinking about things shift so dramatically that I had to abandon my old ideas. If you have examples, I would much appreciate it, although I do not mean to pry.
- DiscourseFan 3y ago
  >May I ask why you consider Bayesian updates a “despicable philosophy”? For the reason I said in that quote: Bayesian updates require upholding the same structure and considering things in networks of pre-established probabilities. This is very useful for say sportsbetting, or the weather, but in ones day to day life, especially in political circumstances, things often happen that are completely unpredictable because the socially normative prediction algorithms are always set to re-enforce the normative operations of society, making any radical change inconceivably impossible. >If you have examples, I would much appreciate it, although I do not mean to pry. I moved towards the Left because it seemed to me that the basis of so called "reasonable" ideologies like libertarianism and general laissez-fare market conditions always held within them notions of "fairness" and that people would "get what they deserved." It seemed to me that this is language more appropriate for disciplining a child, than ordering our society. In a sense, what was conceived of as "rational" by those who supported the systems of power was revealed to me to be nothing more than ideology which justified that power.