I would disagree, hard! Most people seem to think that children are incapable of reason, unable to make good decisions for themselves, and need to be molded and disciplined in order to be turned into good people. In fact if you ever get to know children, and I mean really get to know them, you may find that the opposites hold much more water.
To the OP:
I would be more specific: always do the opposite of what the lowest common denominator or the crowd says / does, which can mean mainstream & non-mainstream.
I see no reason to extend a pass to people not of the mainstream, simply because they are not of the mainstream.
A better rule is: “Think with your own head.” Question everything, including the competence (and especially the motives) of experts (authority) in ANY field.
There’s no such thing as “opposite of mainstream”. If the mainstream wisdom is: “Brush your teeth at least ONCE a day”, would the “opposite” be: “Never brush your teeth”, “Brush them sometimes”, “Brush them at least 10 times a day”, or something different?
Personally, I give more weight (and attention) to results of my own thinking that differ from widely accepted norms. One does not rise to the top five percentile of anything by following the thinking of the bottom 95%.
Z.
Yeah, and nevertheless too, there is a huge incentive to be ahead of the curve. Who knows how much influence outliers could have too on average opinion?
Maybe a better rule is always consider and look into ideas that are not mainstream even if you end up rejecting them .You can surprise yourself.
The mainstream are often wrong but then again the non mainstream can be wrong too.It’s just as bad to follow the crowd like a sheep as it is to dissent from convention just for the sheer sake of it.Just question things and think for yourself.If it’s political and it smells fishy then it probably is.In any case I always try to look at alternatives even if I end up rejecting them-an example I could give is I’m an atheist yet I do quite a lot of reading into religion just to see if it can prove me wrong.
In medicine I think the mainstream is generally right but not always.Same goes for science.The only reason I doubt mainstream science is when the state is involved or the conclusions are political or vague an example being global warming.
In politics/ economics the mainstream is always wrong unless they take a almost libertarian position on an issue
In terms of history the more I read and listen to people like Ralph Raico,the more I think the mainstream is wrong alot.There’s very good (for them) political reasons to distort historical events.As Raico and others say/have said, our political beliefs are influenced by our view of history.No wonder state schools are so desperate to teach you their version.
In philosophy I think the mainstream is often wrong too.Many don’t buy the idea of objective morality.Most people think an act is only wrong if you get caught or they hold to some kind of positivist utilitarianism .Worse is when they’re a moral relativist,skeptic or nihilist.Postmodernism seems to dominate everywhere in modern society and thought.We have people nowadays doubting that reality exists or that we can know anything.So yeah,I think most mainstream philosophy is wrong especially since it rarely mentions Natural Law/Natural rights.
On the mainstream kids thing,I think they often have it wrong.Some but not all think smacking/spanking is good or works.The evidence says otherwise and morally I can’t agree with it.NAP applies here too.
This is an interesting point. This is one reason (and I hope this doesn’t de-rail the thread) that I don’t mind telling people that I am an Anarchist. I think there is more benefit to being the outlier than there is to watering down principles so as not to shock or offend people.
They were likely educated in public schools. On that note, until public schools are nothing but a bad memory, every assumption made by anyone should probably be questioned.
Most people who would claim to use your rule of thumb are duped by a common sophist fallacy. A person who has studied the more specific ceteris of a topic will often argue that a person with only basic principles has insufficient specific knowledge to argue his theory. However, his specific knowledge of a topic can’t contradict its basic principles. The instant you find that happening no further knowledge is necessary to ignore his theory. You only need to know the basic definition of science to invalidate AGW as a scientific theory. Anything not verifiable is not science. The broad AGW panoply is not even close to qualifying. That is “a very strong reason to do otherwise”, to put it mildly.
There is another very strong reason to almost always do otherwise that throws a big wrench in your rule. The people who have the strongest impetus to go into a discipline are the people who have the strongest crony agenda that depends on a belief in that discipline. So, the distribution of “nutjobs” is clearly far from “random”. Between pre-meditated interest and profit interest, simply put, you should not trust anything traceable to political interest or profit interest. In summary, you can’t outsource a working brain.
And you don’t think it is possible that the opposite could happen? That wealthy special interests with incentive to cast doubt on this or that theory might recruit intellectuals to their opinions the veil of legitimacy? I think it is certainly a possibility that has played out in global warming:
Actually, that is an extremely ignorant and arrogant notion. A 14 year old can get more in a year mowing a few lawns than people could for 99.9% of history. So, according to this hypothesis, every human that procreated prior to about the middle ages was stupid, abusive, self-loathing, irresponsible (and whatever other rigamarole you would like to add) to the power of umpteen. In other words, the entire species prior to our present manifest magnificence was pure scum.
This can be good and bad. I think it is good to start out questioning everything, but not necessarily to jump to alternative explanations and ideas just because they are alternative. Don’t accept anything without careful inquiry and consideration.
I think a big problem that many people have is that they don’t understand where their opinions come from. They are usually for/against something based on whatever their pet authority thinks (The NYT, Democratic Party, Fox News, Oprah, NPR, O’Reilly, etc.). The people who disagree with them are “on the other side.” They have only a superficial understanding of the issues based on what talking points and buzz words they have heard. They fight with people who argue using their own buzz words. Nobody knows anything, nobody learns anything.
Unfortunately, this isn’t limited only to “mainstream” types. This is a problem everyone has to guard against, because it is so easy to assume the news sources/authority we choose to get our information from are correct and to be lazy when it comes to independent thought and analysis. And that is true whether your information comes from the New York Times, Ron Paul, or Mises himself. It is really easy, I think, for people who distrust authority to automatically assume that anything contrarian to popular thought is probably correct. Maybe it is more probably correct, but that doesn’t absolve us of our responsibility to learn as much as we can about the subject from all angles and to come to our own independent conclusions.
Exactly.
In the “Seinfeld” clip below, Jerry plays Devil’s Advocate by supporting George’s conclusions when he says , with a sly grin: " if every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right".
Regards, onebornfree.
Heh. See the NYT’s here : " What if It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie?"
This seems a more accurate / well stated line of reasoning. I think it sums up much clearer what I think people try to state when talking about the “mainstream”. Well said.
Heh, yeah, very happy to see that after all the garbage links that lewrockwell.com has put up over the years telling us to eat more plants. I think Taubes is MOSTLY right on the macro-nutrient issue, though I do think he de-emphasizes calories in/out a bit too much. Bodybuilders have known that it’s excess carbs that increase bodyfat for decades, which is why they all use low-carb diets to cut up for shows. But it works in large part because eschewing carbs means eating more protein and fat, leading to fewer calories taken in. But no need to split hairs, making the switch to such a diet would be greatly beneficial to most (not everyone, as a minority of people do fine on plants, i.e. the skinny folks that people are so envious of).
No, its absurd. The middle point is not the right answer its just the middle point. There is examples all over history where mainstream opinion was stupid.