This is probably annoyingly tangential, but I've discussed with a philosophy major recently, and he brought up the concept of "Rational Quotient" or RQ; I looked into it, because I am generally skeptical of methods to categorize intelligence. But while reading on it, I found a lot of interesting ideas of how to conceive of intelligence (specifically, as independent of IQ). The specific researchers on RQ talked specifically of conspiracy theorists that formed groups of UFO researchers by specifically selecting them for their high IQ, which then leads to the question; why would these researchers spend so much effort in something which leads so little discernible result, especially if they are so "intelligent".
The wikipedia article puts it in a way I found fascinating; it's not meant as a criticism of those people in the sense that they are "clearly wrong"; the existence of UFOs or extra-terrestrial life interacting with mankind is essentially unfalsifiable, so calling it "wrong" would be technically incorrect. The curiosity is more about how these kinds of people come to select what they want to investigate, despite the lack of "concrete" evidence in favor of their hypothesis.
The RQ theory doesn't appear to be very elaborated (there are tests for it, although they are only accessible via academic platforms), but two concepts caught my attention, which I understood as essentially the same thing: Mindware, and the Algorithmic Mind. Mindware is described specifically in the context of people with irrational ways of perceiving logic, for instance devout religious people who associate all negative experiences (including disproving evidence) as coming from The Devil (or something). The researchers call this "Infected Mindware", which I've (at a high-level) understood as "improper 'algorithms,' installed within the algorithmic mind" and the algorithmic mind is conceived as a subset of Type-2 systems of cognition (being the effortful, conscious mode of critical thinking).
The idea is appealing to me, because it seems like people rationalize things in very specific ways sometimes, and I like the idea that some people learn "logic" in a specific way, and the "Mindware" installed in people's minds provide logical tools (or sometimes, pitfalls), and the hope of the researchers is to be able to uninstall the infected mindware somehow, whereas we can install useful philosophical logic tools to aid general thinking.
If it feels like I'm going on a limb to talk about Rationality, it's because I am! I love talking about it. BUT it's ALSO because I wanted to go on ANOTHER limb (lots of limbs! True body horror!) about a psychiatrist I've taken notice of recently, who seems to specialize in CBT with Buddhist/Hinduist aspects of Spirituality and meditation. It might be your thing; there's even a long video where he talks to a female streamer about her history of debilitating social anxiety [LINK] . Seeing applied psychology (and I presume many aspects of CBT) - even though this is explicitly not therapy and is clearly disclaimed as being equivalent to therapy - I really like how DrK traces the history of how to process emotions, and our emotional instincts (and sometimes our emotional instincts on how to suppress our emotions).
It almost sounds like people install, or learn, Mindware that defaults to certain attitudes towards emotions, like knee-jerk reactions learned from trauma which warp further perceptions of a certain emotion or stimuli. A lot of DrK interviews involve men with Alexithymia (difficulty to understand one's own emotions) which is definitely interesting, as some of these people seem to be completely unable to even comprehend their own feelings. I'm not very emotive, but even I find that perplexing!
DrK's approach revolves around observing one's emotions within one's bodily senses, and reinterpreting those bodily senses via meditation, like relearning the emotional mindware. I have some potential disagreements with DrK although it's difficult to argue them since he's clearly more of an expert on the subject than I am. Overall, I think he's pretty interesting.
That was a tangent and a half! Hopefully that didn't feel too shoe-horned in. I had interesting things to share!!!1!
The wikipedia article puts it in a way I found fascinating; it's not meant as a criticism of those people in the sense that they are "clearly wrong"; the existence of UFOs or extra-terrestrial life interacting with mankind is essentially unfalsifiable, so calling it "wrong" would be technically incorrect. The curiosity is more about how these kinds of people come to select what they want to investigate, despite the lack of "concrete" evidence in favor of their hypothesis.
The RQ theory doesn't appear to be very elaborated (there are tests for it, although they are only accessible via academic platforms), but two concepts caught my attention, which I understood as essentially the same thing: Mindware, and the Algorithmic Mind. Mindware is described specifically in the context of people with irrational ways of perceiving logic, for instance devout religious people who associate all negative experiences (including disproving evidence) as coming from The Devil (or something). The researchers call this "Infected Mindware", which I've (at a high-level) understood as "improper 'algorithms,' installed within the algorithmic mind" and the algorithmic mind is conceived as a subset of Type-2 systems of cognition (being the effortful, conscious mode of critical thinking).
The idea is appealing to me, because it seems like people rationalize things in very specific ways sometimes, and I like the idea that some people learn "logic" in a specific way, and the "Mindware" installed in people's minds provide logical tools (or sometimes, pitfalls), and the hope of the researchers is to be able to uninstall the infected mindware somehow, whereas we can install useful philosophical logic tools to aid general thinking.
If it feels like I'm going on a limb to talk about Rationality, it's because I am! I love talking about it. BUT it's ALSO because I wanted to go on ANOTHER limb (lots of limbs! True body horror!) about a psychiatrist I've taken notice of recently, who seems to specialize in CBT with Buddhist/Hinduist aspects of Spirituality and meditation. It might be your thing; there's even a long video where he talks to a female streamer about her history of debilitating social anxiety [LINK] . Seeing applied psychology (and I presume many aspects of CBT) - even though this is explicitly not therapy and is clearly disclaimed as being equivalent to therapy - I really like how DrK traces the history of how to process emotions, and our emotional instincts (and sometimes our emotional instincts on how to suppress our emotions).
It almost sounds like people install, or learn, Mindware that defaults to certain attitudes towards emotions, like knee-jerk reactions learned from trauma which warp further perceptions of a certain emotion or stimuli. A lot of DrK interviews involve men with Alexithymia (difficulty to understand one's own emotions) which is definitely interesting, as some of these people seem to be completely unable to even comprehend their own feelings. I'm not very emotive, but even I find that perplexing!
DrK's approach revolves around observing one's emotions within one's bodily senses, and reinterpreting those bodily senses via meditation, like relearning the emotional mindware. I have some potential disagreements with DrK although it's difficult to argue them since he's clearly more of an expert on the subject than I am. Overall, I think he's pretty interesting.
That was a tangent and a half! Hopefully that didn't feel too shoe-horned in. I had interesting things to share!!!1!