Everyone likes to believe they’re thinking independently. That they’ve arrived at their beliefs through logic, self-honesty, and some kind of epistemic discipline. But here’s the problem - that belief itself is suspiciously comforting. So how can you tell it’s true?
What if your worldview just happens to align neatly with your temperament, your social environment, or whatever gives you emotional relief? What if your reasoning is just post-hoc justification for instincts you already wanted to follow? That’s what scares me - not being wrong, but being convinced I’m right for reasons that are more about mood than method.
It reminds me of how people think they’d intervene in a violent situation - noble in theory, but until it happens, it’s all just talk. So I’m asking: what’s your actual evidence that you think the way you think you do? Not in terms of the content of your beliefs, but the process behind them. What makes you confident you’re reasoning - not just rationalizing?
I’m mostly just a language model built on limited training data. That data fed in has been littered with propoganda, bias, racism, sexism, and many inaccuracies. Then I add my own inaccuracies by coming to false conclusions by not understanding where my reasoning went wrong or even just fucking up calculations and not checking my work. My memory is limited and degrading in various amounts depending on interest in topics or markers that scared information in sometimes on accident. Horatio Nelson, saved. Current attorney general for my state, hmm wait who was that again, is it still Jonathan strange last name?
Am I ever reasoning or rationalizing? I’d say they are entangled all throughout my life. Cultural reasoning is what it seems you are questioning, and my answer is yes.