[lhorie]

Knowing about them is supposed to be an introspection tool to help you make better arguments/philosophies. For example, I've seen some ex-christians who decided to turn atheists by learning more about cognitive biases, and then realizing that some of their former religious arguments were circular reasoning or appeal to authority or whatever.

There is a bit of a dunning-kruger effect to be sure: accusing other of cognitive biases that one just stumbled into on wikipedia is itself going off-topic. It takes a bit more effort to actually internalize it.

On a semi-related topic, I find it a bit weird the way people think about "winning an argument". People usually prize being "right", but if you think about it from a strictly selfish perspective, you don't really gain anything from that outcome, whereas learning seems like a better outcome.

[mistermann]

> For example, I've seen some ex-christians who decided to turn atheists by learning more about cognitive biases, and then realizing that some of their former religious arguments were circular reasoning or appeal to authority or whatever.

Similarly, there are some people (a much smaller number I would expect) that have moved from atheism to "spirituality", for the same reasons.

[lhorie]

Yeah, I'm one of those, though I'm not sure my belief system qualifies as spirituality. The gist in these cases is realizing that atheism is not the opposite of christianity (in the sense that there ought to be a conflict between two incompatible ideologies) and that there's quite a bit more depth and breadth to theism, moral frameworks and philosophy in general than the who-is-more-right crowd might think.

[mistermann]

Totally agree - my general take on it is that standard Atheism and Christianity/etc (as understood & practiced by the average person) are incredibly simplistic, but most people in either ideological camp are fairly oblivious to it.

[throwaway98797]

I’ve become disillusioned with knowledge in general.

A lot of what i know turns out to be wrong or disproven. I do just as well acting emotionally and impulsively as i do when i think logically.

Not to mention following what everyone is doing is fine most of the time. Starting to feel that knowledge is a trap. Only way out is to not play.

Only exception is for basic math/physica that I can grok.

[lhorie]

The mantra I follow is "strong opinions held weakly" (meaning, strive to be as well-informed as I can, but be willing to change my mind to even the polar opposite of my current view in light of new evidence)

IMHO, the key is in realizing that your ego has a tendency to gets tangled with the notion of being right. It's a lot easier to "let go" if you internalize the idea that your worth/identity is not the same thing as your beliefs and that a lot of what you think you "know" is actually not factual knowledge, but merely interpretation or inference of previous experiences.