Of Mindtraps

Mindtrap is the name I created to identify fallacies, biases, partialities, inconsistent thinking, conclusionings, generalizations, sensationalism, understimations, hypocrisies and prejudicial thoughts all into one (I could go with Bullshitting, but, eh). It was fundamentally important to have a name that would take the role of being like one huge red button.

It was created mostly for trying to prevent myself from being mindtrapped. I try to keep constant vigilance over mindtraps. They're like the criminals, there inside my mind. And who are the cops, then? Reasonability, of course. Sheer reasonability. Years ago I've unconsciously started doing more tangibly something I've been calling Antithesis Thinking and just lately I've learned it was also called doublethinking. The main idea is to hold two opposite views in your head, like those Angel and Devil on Your Shoulders discussions. Another obvious thing that works wonders after you realize its fundamental importance. It might be a little stressful as there'll always be a voice telling you might be wrong wrong wrong, but it's worth it.
But still, like real crime, one can't be too careful. Neither 100% safe. It's like our natural behavior to go bullshitting all over the place. It's amazing. You know it, you know the internet. Mostly, you know yourself. You should, at least. You know our tendency to fill the gaps with incomplete information we have.

Ignorance and arrogance fuel mindtraps. Have you tried complaining about something you don't really know nothing about but you assume you have because IT'S TOTALLY WRONG? We all do that. Even today, even when we are constantly trying not to.
I'll go with an example of myself: once I had to slow down the car to half the speed in front of the police station and I was all like "This is outrageous, this is sheer hypocrisy! How dare them to make us slow down like obedient sheep right in front of them when less than one mile from here everybody is going to be rushing like the devil all over again?" And my father, by my side, just said "They do it to have the cars visible for identification", and that day I learned my lesson. Yeah, this big boy here just fully learned this lesson this year. Sure I knew how important it was before that, but, yeah, we need the punch to learn it. The worst thing is, I'll probably keep doing this same kind of mistakes.


And that's one big drawback to mindtraps: the paranoia. Anything could be a mindtrap. Identifying mindtraps could be a mindtrap itself (see the paradox lurking over again?). One could go insane and shut his mouth forever out of fear of saying any kind of bullshit ever again. We can't avoid them bullshits. We can try, but we will always be ignorant, misinformed people (or do you think that avoiding the evil mass media is the only thing you have to do to avoid misleading information?).
I don't want to make generalizations and go all "everybody is like that nowadays", though it would be amusing to end this very topic that way, but, seriously, I have to shut off my anti-mindtrap system, for I feel like I have to leave a message for us, here, now. We need to be more tolerant. Let's not get into an unnecessary rage for every dumb thing we see being said. So what if there's a lot of bullshit being said on Youtube comment sections. We probably hate it more because of the trend telling us they're all stupid people, more than they actually are. A little more patience, I ask.
Let's not understimate and just stop talking with every person we meet because this or that bullshit they say, lest it happens to you. We can try being less sure of the things we think. It doesn't really hurt. Let's stop pretending we know everything. Let's stop thinking we can criticize and doubt everything.We can't. What we are forgetting to do first is to question everything. There's one world of a difference there.
Yeah, I know the paradox and hypocrisy of being too sure when talking we can't be too sure, or criticizing people who criticize everything, but fuck, that's too much for my head to think of a way to overcome this circle of doom.


This topic is far from over, but I'll stop it here for now. My head aches.