Note: This post is partly inspired by McGilchrist’s book, The Matter With Things, which I’m currently reading and highly recommend. Once you have seen it, you probably will never unsee it. It’s perhaps the most common and most damaging fallacy out there. And it’s particularly attractive to those of us who like abstract thought.
This mind chopping also happens with religious types.
It's not just a materialistic thing, but its more apparent now because science is the current state religion.
Jumping to conclusions- heuristics that seek patterns and ignore other patterns. Pretty efficient, you need less brain power if you can predict the "right answer" that ensures your survival in the situation.
In effect this left brained thing was an adaptation to writing
A lot of what you're describing here - simplistic binary, all-or-nothing thinking, in which relevant data are discarded to save a theory, or useful theories rejected due to some trivial defect in relevant data - is consistent with the left brain's characteristic cognitive architecture. I'm drawing on Ian McGilchrist's work here, which is rather different from and far more compelling than the usual (wrong) understanding that the left brain does logic and the right brain does creativity. It's more that the left brain analyzes things down into parts and prefers simple models of reality to reality, whereas the right brain comprehends the whole and prefers an accurate picture of reality to an incorrect model.
Mind Matters had an interesting episode on it recently:
I just found your Substack and I like your content on philosophical topics. I'm part of a group called the Online Synthesizers and it's led by a Youtuber by the name of Andrew Kirby. Reach out to him on Youtube or Twitter, and he could showcase your content via his newsletter. He could find your content interesting.
This mind chopping also happens with religious types.
It's not just a materialistic thing, but its more apparent now because science is the current state religion.
Jumping to conclusions- heuristics that seek patterns and ignore other patterns. Pretty efficient, you need less brain power if you can predict the "right answer" that ensures your survival in the situation.
In effect this left brained thing was an adaptation to writing
https://robnitro.substack.com/p/alphabet-vs-the-goddess?s=w
A lot of what you're describing here - simplistic binary, all-or-nothing thinking, in which relevant data are discarded to save a theory, or useful theories rejected due to some trivial defect in relevant data - is consistent with the left brain's characteristic cognitive architecture. I'm drawing on Ian McGilchrist's work here, which is rather different from and far more compelling than the usual (wrong) understanding that the left brain does logic and the right brain does creativity. It's more that the left brain analyzes things down into parts and prefers simple models of reality to reality, whereas the right brain comprehends the whole and prefers an accurate picture of reality to an incorrect model.
Mind Matters had an interesting episode on it recently:
https://www.sott.net/article/465656-MindMatters-Beyond-the-Schizo-Autistic-Worldview-Introducing-the-Matter-with-Things
I also riffed on McGilchrist's ideas here, with an eye to contemporary political divisions:
https://barsoom.substack.com/p/left-and-right-brains-and-politics
Thanks Luc, a nice refreshing look at things which can get a bit hard to entangle in one's mind.
I just found your Substack and I like your content on philosophical topics. I'm part of a group called the Online Synthesizers and it's led by a Youtuber by the name of Andrew Kirby. Reach out to him on Youtube or Twitter, and he could showcase your content via his newsletter. He could find your content interesting.