Why self-respect is a first prerequisite for discovery

Recoil away. Just know for the context that I am very critical of all sorts of experts. That said, I do read and get information from them and recognize that some people have spent their lives on certain things, where I have focused on others.

Well, I have an incomplete set of knowledge of what you are interested in. I have learned quite a bit from neuroscientists. Now if something they have said goes against what I think or even feel, I don’t just accept it. But for me experts have helped me with certain sports, starting projects of learning, giving me knowledge about things I have not spent anywhere near as much time on learning myself.

Sure, but I recognize that some people are less silly than me when it comes to certain topics. I don’t have to reinvent the wheel in every subject. I have gotten all sort of useful links to research, heuristics while learning, short cuts, areas of knowledge, sources of information, from a wide variety of experts. Even learning astrology, say, I got a base through reading and from working with a group who were more experienced - I sure did not have the time to start working out from scratch what a trine would be like empirically personally. I tended, in this example, to read and discuss with contrasting experts, and then moved into my own approach working empirically from the base they gave me. I did not start making up my own guesses about what each of the planets were as natal and transits and the houses and so on. So even with a subject I came to feel knowledgeable in, I got a base - which I did not treat like a Bible - from experts.

With other subjects where I have not investing time, I have gone with experts, often using them to shorten the learning curve.

Well, sure. I am both fortunately and unfortunately in a city right now. And some days after passing people in the streets I see an animal and immediately I am struck by what an incredibly being is like. Grace, decisiveness, awareness, and the ability to move from calm to harnessing all of its possible skill and power in a second. And that’s just amongst the animals you find in cities which are to some degree tainted by our presence and effects.

Good point, I agree.

I mean, if I am going to move to another country, I am going to look at what experts say to make the transition easier. This doesn’t mean anyone who is called an expert is one, or is one I will listen to. But I won’t just start from zero on any new subject and start, for example, doing neurological research. I just don’t have the time to waste the work already done by others for some things.

I commend you on your take on animals. My advice would be to engage animals with more seriousness than we are taught to. Certainly there is no animal as witless and weak as the average city-dwelling human.

As for the term “expert” - it has been used to designate so many idiots that it has become an affront to my ears. “Lets listen to the expert” - and what follows is always a perverse slushwave of obscene stupidity. What you mean however might simply be “someone with a lot of experience.” Yes, we can learn some things there, from experienced people. But most of all, Ive found they usually teach their mistakes, their arrogance, the things they wish were true but aren’t, the things that indicate their ignorance which they do not want to accept. I don’t know of any fields where experts aren’t also ignorants.

And I must say, the few times Ive visited a country based on the views of an expert, the travel turned to a disaster. I travel best on instinct and fate. No citizen of any country can tell a foreigner what is a good reason to visit, they always misunderstand their own country completely. In my experience. Ive been to very many countries and the most worthless, boring, disturbing and shitty experiences always arose from people trying to show me some stuff they just knew I was going to appreciate.

When I visited Canada, I met Pedro I Rengel there, and thank God he didn’t actually seem to like the place too much. We just met on a hill and walked down it, observing things like two foreigners, allowing me to value on my own terms and, as it turned out, come to love the country above all others.

Be strong, do not succumb to thy creation, but encompass it,
be affirmative in thy actions, do not divide nor multiply,
be as Thou art, praise Thy being, love Thy Self.

One either does or does not respect oneself. Where things get tricky though is in our reactions to the things that some respect themselves for that we do not feel are worthy of respect at all.

The part where someone will point out, “I’ll bet Donald Trump has a ton of self-respect.”

I know: let’s not go there. :wink:

But most fields have some worthy experts, unless the field itself is founded on foundational weaknesses too damning to be worthwhile. like psychiatry. Any psychiatrist who is a worthy expert is a heretic to his or her colleagues, for example. But I also want to add that self-respect must include respecting oneself to choose good experts and reject bad ones.

I can’t simply redo all the work of other humans through time, start as a cromagnon man, distrust to the degree of ignoring the conclusions of all experts. I don’t have the time. I must base my work and thought on them, with a skepticism and criticism in myself I respect. I have learned a lot from experts in neuroscience, biology, ecology, physics, psychology - though here I am much more actively critical as a rule, since I am an expert - history - with huge grains of salt - sports/training, litterature - and the arts in general that I do myself, I have learned a tremendous amount from other artistis and writers and musicians - philosophy - which is not to say I base my conclusions on them, but use their concepts, tweak them, reach new conclusions with them - pedagogues - how one can learn and learn more quickly - languages - iow have native teachers help me learn languages - yes, have my own ideas aobut language, but their expertise helped me immensely - survival skills - I did not just try to figure out all survival skills, say in the woods, just exploring and experimenting on my own, I read books, learned directly from people with vaslty more experience than me - and having moved to two different countries one in Europe another in Asia, I have relied to a great degree on local experts to help me navigate culturally and beauracratically. I rely on tools designed and made by experts and I often start using those tool based on their ideas aobut how to use the tools. This forms a base.

Anyone saying the do not rely on experts either cannot do very much or is not paying attention. They have handicapped themselves.

Of course you have to have a good intuition you trust and good critical skills. But then that is what this is thread is all about. Trusting yourself, including the trust to choose the right experts and notice errors in choosing, to be able to be critical and when to be extremely skeptical and so on.

If you cannot trust yourself to use experts as part of your learning, you lack self-respect.

Well, experts for me have saved all sorts of time in travel. Here’s where I will catch the ferry over to the island. Here where I go to get visas renewed. Some of the traditions that are important - don’t point my feet at their faces even in casual situations. I have to choose the right experts. I have to be open to them having errors. I can ask questions when i get there, but of course this is treating natives as experts, which they are. Though some are morons.

I have my own reasons for visting, and often based on the nature. But of course, I know about the nature the via people more experienced then me and books and so on.

Maybe you gotta get a better nose about who to ask. I mainly explore places and if I ask people I can describe what kinds of experiences and things I am looking for. Yes, some people have misunderstood or been morons, but I am pretty good at describing what I am looking for, what I like to explore, and having a sense of the people answering me or whom to ask.

I have a lot of love for Canada, with relatives strewn through it. Most of what I do in a new place is explore. But I will look at bus schedules, which are the products of experts, to find when the next bus is going to place X I am interested in. I have heard of place X via some product most likely of some expert.

I build on the work of people before me. Using intuition and analysis I choose whose work, evaluate, chose again, do my own work or learning.

But I am not learning everything from scratch. And no one is. None of us have time.

“If you cannot trust yourself to use experts as part of your learning, you lack self-respect.”

Haha, well played.
Fine, I’ll concede. Experts, i.e. people with experience (rather than people who know everything there is to know about a field which is how Ive seen the term used too much, hence my loathing of it) can be very valuable.

Still, I really have to stretch to find an expert thats been of true use to me personally. Sure, someone who knows how to put together a laptop factory can be sad to be an expert, and thats of use to me. A farmer who knows how to butcher and produce my beef, yes, can be said to be an expert. If were using the term in this way, people with expertise, which I admit makes sense, you’re right. I use things on a daily basis and they’ve been made by people with expertise. I still would never call these people experts, personally, but ok.

Clearly however you live in a world where regulation is far more important and all-around than it is to me. Its been years since I looked at any kind of schedule, for example, and I wouldn’t occur to me calling the person putting them together an expert, nor do I see someone who knows some stuff about something as an expert. I know there are no experts when it comes to countries. For example, someone may be highly knowledgeable about his native country, but would likely not know any of the people Ive come to know from there, and thus is also highly ignorant. Etc etc etc.

Ultimately one is only expert at ones own life, if that.

Oh also - in my eyes psychiatry is almost exclusively warfare against citizenry, government ideology. If you can demonstrate that it is not, that would be interesting.

In Canada, I recorded this talk about it with the guy I talked about earlier, may or may not interest you. Linked to the first mention of the term, sparing you the silly introduction.
youtu.be/P8HDN-z_z64?t=100

The other guy is clearly more “expert at psychiatry” than I am since he has met more of them, seen more of them at work. I only was in treatment by one of these once, and really found it a psychopathic profession. Still do.

Good, that was precisely why I said it snarkily. Glad it got a laugh.

Sure, I don’t htink they know everything. And of course there are experts where I learn X, but notice they believe Y, and I think the are brasinwashed or naive for believing Y and stay away from any suggestions where Y might affect their advice or knowledge.

Well, how about my astrology example? Did you when learning not accept, for the moment, expert ideas about planet meanings/energies, the various angles (trine vs. square, say), sign meanings, house meanings, how to prioritize a chart reading. IOW you started looking at people’s charts using prior, more expertienced astrologers’ ideas how things should be interpreted

rather than

not reading anyone, listening to anyone and making a chart, then just seeing that first chart you made, your own most likely: well, mars might mean this, because…hm, it seems like 120 degrees might be a more gentle integration of energies since my mercury and nepture are in a trine and I have a gentle intuitive thinking style, that’s kinda fluid but I don’t get confused much…then on to the next chart, taking nothing from this base of knowledge provided by any other astrologer to form your base? Though why you would even associate mercury wiht minds or neptune in any way with intuition…I suppose you might have had a thorough background in mythology, but even then, I think that would skew some of the interpretations adn some of that was probably based on reading books and perhaps some experts on mythology.

Now of course one can do both, to some degree, simultaneously, and I did. But I started out using experts to give me a base to interpret from immediately. Then over time anomalies coupled with observations in general, my own take on humans and more gave me my own style and take and understandings. But I did not reinvent the wheel. No particular astrologer was my guru, I learning form a number often pulling out a best guess from contradictory ideas. But still there were consensus ideas and this formed a kind of base, from which I then, over time leaned on hardly at all and then was critical of in many areas.

But I built on previous work. I did not arise as an astrologer ex nihilo.

You did also mention a Kung fu teacher in the Buddhism thread. Did you not learn from him?

I do live somewhere with quite a bit of regulation…love has led me there, so there it is. But with the schedules, I was actually thinking of a rather chaotic country I lived in where I had to do visa crap with some regularity and here they changed the rules all the time or had none or improvised. Still, schedules kneow more than me, and local experts helped me navigate even the improvised BS by giving me insight into the likely cultural and psychological tendencies of the beauracrats. Their thinking was not like bureaucrats I was used to in the West. Little kings rather than little nazis, would be a quick heuristic.

I agree. It’s a huge topic. Over the years pieces of my criticism have appeared in various forums. They use weak science, weak philosophy, uninformed consent, fad diagnoses, weak logic, confused ideas about the self, magic bullet thinking and short cuts, and tremendous propaganda to spread views of the self, suffering, emotions and problems that are really quite pernicious. I tend to think this is not just idiocy and self-serving rationalizations by Pharma and those who have decided which treatments are valid. So I don’t have any reason to try to demonstrate that it is not.

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They have an extremely high rate of suicide if that’s any consolation.

In any case as far as ‘expert’ - I do not remotely see them as finished - knowing it all - or remotely as infallible. If I was planning a trip to the Arctic next month, however, I would do some reading, and preferably some in person talking with experienced travellers. I wouldn’t kiss their feet.

A number of years back I got a music production program. It came with a handbook I read. I got a book on music production using that specific program. Took questions to online forums. Read other books on production in general.

I could have used my intuition and trial and error alone to work through the millions of options, but getting advice and a foundation from experts cut down my learning curve by years. I was not learning how my music should sound, but learning how to use the program.

I just continue to make issue with the term “expert”. Someone who knows some stuff from experience is just that, I wouldn’t use the term “expert”. Ever.
Obviously I have some hard aspects to my Saturn.

What you’re referring to however is the canon of established ideas rather than any particular astrologer.

But I would just say “I started out using astrologers” rather than “I started out using experts”.
Ive never read a truly expert astrologer. Ive talked to and read a great number of very adept ones, but even Ptolemy has a very great deal of nonsense under his belt.

Of course not. But that doesn’t mean any of that previous work was expert.

Yes, but I never called him an expert. All anyone really ever gets to be is an advanced student. There is always more of what one doesn’t know than of what one does know.

Ive always liked traveling in chaotic countries. I seem to get things done from people much more easily there. Precisely because they don’t have to check their rule-book but can just do what I ask them because it makes sense to them.

That makes sense. It would have surprised me if you were some zealous champion of psychiatry.
I don’t know if I have more contempt for the psychiatrists and their pernicious machinery or for the people who voluntarily submit to these regimes. Like with nazis.

Hahaha yes that certainly is.
Thank you for that.

And they’d be sure to kick you in the mouth or take advantage of you. As soon as you give an “expert” too much trust chances are they’ll abuse this trust. Or so Ive unfortunately found. Again, my Saturn just won’t allow me to put faith in much besides my own judgment at all. Anytime I try I am disappointed.

Well here is an exception, when someone creates a tool, that person would more likely than not be an expert on the basic possibilities of that tool. Though still, someone will discover things that can be done with it that the creator never intended or imagined.

LOL. Ok, so would you not consider yourself an expert? When Unwrong called himself the best philosopher in the world, you, or someone quite like you, defended this self-labelling. That seems even stronger than the word expert, though I admit there is a slight category shift, from descriptive to comparative. I suppose the best philosopher in the world might not be an expert.

Do not these types exist? Are you not one of them in some area of knowledge or skill, yourself?

Sure, but I got that canon via a few people. I didn’t go up to people in the street. I went to people who had actively studied and done astrology for more than a decade, and in addition seemed to have some solid knowledge of human nature and how to write clearly and intelligently. Or speak intelligently with those I met in person.

Would you really say you, FC, do not have a great deal of skill as a philosopher or an astrologer are not very knowledgeable about it? Because that’s what the word means. Or if you are humble - nudge, nudge, wink, wink - about your abilities as an astrologer, is there not another field or skill area where you consider yourself very knowledgeable or highly skilled.?

I just don’t see ‘expert’ as the same as omniscient in a certain field.

You must have way with people. Because I consider myself pretty damn good with people and charismatic, but I found third world countries much easier to navigate with expert knowledge in advance.

Yeah, I meant the opposite. A psychiatrist who is an expert has gone against his profession. He’s a heretic. To the extent he fits his profession, he is dangerous to people.

oh, sure. I definitely got into going against advice later. Use compression at the ‘wrong’ time in a mix to see if I like it and so on.

I’ll drop the expert discussion. I don’t think that in practice we are so different in how we view and ‘use’ people who have more experience and the word itself doesn’t matter much.

This would be true where the standard in question can only be measured subjectively or predominantly so
But for objective measurement a certain degree of self respect is not really relevant so is rather arbitrary
For example self respect for the study of an academic subject is nowhere as important as an open mind is

You have to respect your analytical abilities, your choices of sources, your notes on lectures, your own way of studying (self-pedagogy), one’s critical thinking, your choice of the course being a good one, your choice of school, the goal of your studies, the potential use you will have for the course and the grade. Sure you will get a grade which will be the school’s measure of what you did, and even that you need to put in a context of your own values and plans and how you interpret, use their sense of your learning. IOW to use the course well requires confidence at the meta-level that doing it is worthwhile for you and your own goals. They you need self-respect around all the skills needed to pursue your own goals and if they include doing well in the course according to the professor, confidence in your skills in satisfying his or her criteria. There is no passive learning nor contextless events.

and as far as the open mind - this concept is really quite vague, but one cannot learn simply passively, not that you are saying this. One can come close to learning simply with an open mind through rote learning, memorizing facts another has given one, but if the idea is to have some skill with those facts, one must still have confidence in being able to paraphrase, apply to concrete situations if the learning is about concepts, and draw abstract conclusions, if the focus is on specific events or facts. Any academic course is going to require skills in interacting with the information and arguments/justifications/evidence presented. And here you must respect your own abilities to interact with the ideas and apply them. An open mind generally means a willingness to try out new ideas, to consider them. Even at this minimal level one must have confidence in one’s understanding. One needs confidence in one’s own introspective skills - am I rejecting this (or accepting this) for emotional reasons or for rational reasons. One thus also needs confidence in one’s analytical abilities and then even intuition: nagging feelings that something is missing or not justified, for example.

Notice how Fixed Cross said that if you do not respect yourself you cannot respect the standard by which you measure other things. IOW sure, you can have an open mind, but if you don’t respect yoruself and your abilities then you can’t really respect your evaluations of other things. The author of this text I got in my ancient greece course was well argued and provided strong evidence for its conclusions AND I do not respect my intellectual abilities

just doesn’t work. How would I know? Why would I respect my conclusion about that work?

For me most of that would come under the definition of self assessment rather than self respect which I think are not the same
Self respect is accepting that you have moral value as a human being because of who you are and of what you think or believe
Self assessment is knowing what you are good at and not good at and how you can improve your skillset for what is necessary

For me also an open mind is simply avoiding all dogmatism by remaining emotionally detached from whatever is being studied
For it is merely accepting that within certain disciplines such as philosophy for example there will be multiple interpretations
One can acknowledge this and understand each as much as possible without necessarily being commited to any particular one

Also when you have acquired a certain degree of self awareness you should know where your capabilities are
This knowledge is not something that has to be acquired for it should already exist based on past experience

I for example know what my academic capabilities are without having to analyse them in order to know what they are
For I can instinctively assess whether a particular course is something I could do without requiring any real evaluation

OK, but then self-assessment is neutral. You have self-assessment means you evaluate yourself. Self-respect implies that you have a positive self-assessment. You respect your skills and abilities. You respect yourself as a learner or whatever.

It seems to me he was talking about measuring, evaluating, something else. IOW drawing conclusions. Not remaining detached, but taking a position. Whether one should or should not do this, I don’t think you are quite reacting to what you quoted in your first post above.

Which means you have formed a postive regard for some of your capabilities. If you don’t have a positive regard for your abilities, how could you have a postive regard for any conclusions you might draw about a text, a book, an opinion expressed by a lecturer. Whether this is instinctive or not seems beside the point. You can’t make the evaluation of the information, position, idea, if you don’t respect your own abilities.

Somehow I think you are responding to some other position.

The words that you have used there - positive / respect - are emotional ones which I do not personally apply to ability
Knowing whether or not I can do something is just practical knowledge that requires no emotional input from me at all

I can and indeed do assess my abilities from an objective perspective rather than from a subjective one
And so avoid any unnecessary use of emotion and try instead to have detachment as my default position

Indeed. We seem to generally agree on a lot of things, and to have explored quite a lot. Differences are largely due to different histories with certain terms.

The point you made about Buddhism and the limbic system is of extreme importance to me -
Id like to spend some thought on what would amount to methods for strengthening the limbic system.

Im sure much that occurs in the west could be designated as such a method - but it would be very useful to think about it anyway. Perhaps to form some kind of discipline where he limbic system is strengthened and purified of unnecessary disgust, despair, neurosis, etc.

I guess this approach would make me into something of a psychiatrist.