Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2019)

After spending many years studying philosophy I think that the right approach is that you don’t need to come to any conclusions about anything. Aristotle often started with common peoples’ viewpoints on any given topic, along with looking at what experts thought and built his own ideas from there, and of course was very successful with his methodology. Arguments are interesting and obviously some are more correct than others but everyone has good reasons for what they argue for and…

Happy to see this here again. I suspect that argument from authority, like "goto considered harmful" and Moore's Law, have entered the public consciousness in a warped popular form that barely resembles the original. In topics in which I am not a subject matter expert, I can and should defer to the actual subject matter experts, absent very compelling evidence to the contrary. I'm not perfect at this, but I first read Epistemic Learned Helplessness at about the right time…

Nutritional science is a great example of this. There are “thought leaders” spearheading different nutritional belief systems (ideologies?) that completely disagree with each other and all back up their claims with what seems to be recognised well-done science. And they all have a long list of real world success cases showing that what they are promoting works for some people. I have moved from one extreme to another, from vegan to keto, finally realising that there is no one-size-fits-all solution…