Comment by lukev
3 months ago
The "aha" moment is also a cognitive risk, since it's often the moment we stop looking for more answers.
This is the premise of a really good article I reccommend to anyone, the Seductions of Clarity by C. Thi Nguyen (https://philarchive.org/rec/NGUTSO-2)
which is of course used as a trap by Charlatans Who want to trigger that aha hiding that they are the ones manipulating you. In fact the whole point of humanities is learning to build a shield and your own rethoric Sword against bullshit
This happens to people when they’re stoned or delusional. They have a false aha moment and false, but deep certainty of their own brilliance.
It is quite literally the source of one of our most dangerous failure modes.
Similar to this is the Thought Terminating Cliche
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_cliché
I'm convincing myself that the root of all evils^H^H^H^H^Hpoor thinking and argumentation generally arises due to not thinking further and more critically. Those clichés are just some nicely packaged, ready-made products to induce this.