Almost every sunscreen on the market accelerates cancer, the public learned last week. What, you didn’t know?
Guess what? Saturated fat is also not the culprit for heart-disease. Yet every article we see about health still calls it “artery-clogging saturated fat,” as if it were one word that can’t be separated.
Did you know either of these things? Most people don’t, and they never will. The strength of their assumptions is too solid. Unfortunately, they are also wrong, and either one may seriously endanger your health.
How many assumptions do you have that are also wrong? You don’t know, of course. No one ever does.
Do we know the stuff we’re repeating? Or are we just parroting stuff that’s been said to us in a convincing way?
Always be testing. Never stop questioning things you think are true, no matter how solid they may seem.
The danger with this is that everything seems solid. What we believe has to seem true or we wouldn’t be able to go about our daily lives. We’d be paralyzed, so we choose a frame and stick to it. This wouldn’t be so bad if our ideas were self-contained, but instead we listen to our friends and media (including social media) as if it were holy writ.
Any meme’s believability in the arena of ideas is not based on supporting facts, but on its emotional resonance and how many people believe it. Kind of dangerous.
The strength of the most robust thinkers is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in their mind at once. Can you do that?
The world is too nuanced for you not to be able to. If you can’t think for yourself on many levels, what you take for granted will keep you running through other people’s mazes instead of making progress on your goals, such as, you know, living longer.
Are you willing to give up 5 years of your life to the mazes and falsehoods that others have set up for you? Learning about the two things above may just give you those 5 years back. But the real question is: How many more of these are there that we don’t know about?
What do you think?
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