A new way to think

Many people are often obsessed with having one opinion and then arguing that opinion. It is a simple way of viewing the world in true/false thought models. This makes the thinker unflexible and stubborn. A more interesting way is to switch between opinions, depending on the context.

Sometimes you need different counterintuitive thoughts and views to understand reality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kanizsa_triangle.svg

Some examples:

1. Light, the wave-particle duality: Sometimes it makes sense to look at a photon as a particle of light. Other times it makes sense to look at a photon as a wave — depending on the context.
2. “I hate that person”: because they talk too much, are disrespectful, or whatever it is. Yes, you can hate someone but also love them for other qualities. You don’t have to create one coherent view of the world based on one opinion; many can be true!
3. Free will: The Universe as a whole is probably deterministic and we lack free will. Nevertheless, it makes sense to have a mental model of myself as an actor with free will. This is in order to avoid negative fatalism which can cause us to stop action.

To repeat: we are obsessed with having one opinion on topics and people, and arguing that opinion trying to create a coherent view. Sometimes it makes sense to change from this binary thought into the unknown to understand more.

As Albert Einstein put it:

“It seems as though we must use sometimes the one theory and sometimes the other, while at times we may use either. We are faced with a new kind of difficulty. We have two contradictory pictures of reality; separately neither of them fully explains the phenomena of light, but together they do.”

Thanks for reading.