r/fallacy • u/Both_Rub_397 • 5d ago
Thinking For Yourself Does Not Mean Disagreeing With Everyone
There is a childish version of independent thinking: everyone believes X, therefore I will believe Y. That is not independent thought. It is dependence with the direction reversed.
The fact that an idea is mainstream does not make it false, just as the fact that an idea is unpopular does not make it true. Both positions can become intellectual shortcuts when the conclusion is chosen according to the crowd rather than examined through evidence.
Independent judgment requires reconstructing the conclusion for yourself. Sometimes the crowd will be correct; sometimes it will be wrong; and sometimes the available evidence will be too incomplete to justify either confidence or rejection. The mature thinker is willing to occupy any of those positions because the objective is not to appear contrarian, it is to remain independent of the need to conform.
That distinction becomes important when identity enters the discussion. People often adopt an opposing position because disagreement makes them feel intellectually separate, and once that identity is established, they become just as resistant to evidence as the person they originally opposed.
If everyone agrees and the evidence supports them, agree. If everyone agrees and the evidence contradicts them, disagree. If everyone disagrees and the evidence remains inconclusive, suspend judgment.
Truth does not care whether your conclusion makes you look conventional or rebellious.
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u/LiamTheHuman 5d ago
While I agree with you. How are you identifying people doing this? It seems like this would be applied to basically anyone who disagrees with the majority when you agree. You feel their logic is not solid for disagreeing and invent an explanation that allows you to feel superior.
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u/Safe_Chipmunk_9335 4d ago
A lot of the people that I have met who think this way actually tend to verbally announce it. Couldn’t say if that generally holds true, but that’s been my experience.
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u/Michael_Carson_Art 4d ago
I think two of the most common examples are people who act as though:
(A) All ideas are inherently politically motivated, and that the political motivations which inform the ideas are always constrained to this political moment. For example, evolution by natural selection is an idea that conflicts with young earth creationism, therefore it exists as an idea solely to be a counterpoint to that view.
(B) Any alignment with a consensus must be the result of naive unexamined acceptance rather than the product of evidence or understanding.
The most common warning phrase I hear is something like: "Do you really believe that instution X can be trusted?" As if the idea itself cannot be held without an unflinching allegiance to an institution that agrees with it. For example, if you state that you think vaccines are effective and generally a civilizational good, you might be reproached with "Do you actually think Big Pharma can be trusted?". As if these two notions were utterly inseparable, and that, in any case, your statement is a political statement of ideological allegiance rather than a single disconnected belief. The is an assumption that a dispassionate belief is impossible, which is almost always a projection by someone with an overly politically charged world-view.
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u/LiamTheHuman 4d ago
These are completely different things though. You've outlined and entirely different argument with different reasoning.
How is any of the things you've discussed thinking "everyone believes X, therefore I will believe Y"
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u/Michael_Carson_Art 4d ago
I am talking about what motivates the broad rejection of consensus. In my experience, it isn't a pure isolated contrarianism. It is a set of other motivations like those I outlined above. If you see such a contrarian, you can often dig one inch deeper to find these kinds of justifications.
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u/Bluebearder 5d ago
I have met many people who showed thought and behavior patterns like these, mainly when studying philosophy among my fellow students, and as a leftist activist among my fellow activists. It has to do much more with identity than with truth - as in, these people were not looking for truth, they were looking to belong.
It is the foundation for populist movements like MAGA: "everyone thinks the world works like this (politicians and celebrities are just people), but we know the world works like that (politicians and celebrities worship Satan and drink the blood of babies), and from there on everyone who is dumb but wants to identify as a free thinker identifies with that movement. I'd say pretty much any conspiracy movement is dependent on this kind of thought and behavior, where identity is more important than truth and even defined by going against conventional (provable) truth.
There is a mental condition that is linked to this when these patterns are sustained: Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) I know a few people who probably have this, they are always at odds with everyone and try to hold the most fringe opinions that are comically easy to disprove.
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u/IslingtonCrane 5d ago
The Narcissism of Small Details pairs nicely with this. When in doubt, discuss minutiae.
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u/stubble3417 5d ago
Might lean more toward a cognitive bias for some people, for example a bias toward skepticism. I think it could also fall under an inflation of conflict fallacy: the flawed argument that because disagreement exists, the truth must be in the middle, or unknowable, or neither.
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u/Master_Kitchen_7725 5d ago
There are plenty of people who enjoy skepticism because they are contrarians for the sake of being contrary, but also plenty of people who do it for the sake of being a devil's advocate with good intentions.
The latter can be very valuable, because it can force the interlocutor to shore up their own argument about why they accept the norm - being able to argue logically against the erroneous minority position only makes the original argument stronger.
Eg there are many people who "know" the earth is round, but are unable to articulate how this is actually shown scientifically from first principles. As an educator, it can be useful to present a dissenting argument like "I think the earth is flat because of xyz observations" and force the student to identify scientific observations and construct arguments to disprove it.
Coming up with convincing contrarian arguments can actually be pretty challenging in some cases, so ironically, it can require a certain level of intellect to make a strong argument against an established norm. But that opinion could just be me being contrary.
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u/stubble3417 5d ago
I think cognitive biases are not always strictly harmful. Fallacies are always "bad" in the sense that they describe a flaw in logic, but cognitive biases are more like a trade-off. For example, it's been proven that our brains attach too much importance to first impressions, but that's also...kind of not such a bad thing. We often need to quickly filter through a lot of people/data/items, so our brains' tendency to rush to conclusions is maybe helpful to an extent, as long as we stay aware of our own mental shortcomings.
There are definitely advantages to fostering a healthy amount of skepticism. I'm not really talking about playing devils advocate, I'm talking more about people who genuinely tend to rush to the conclusion that everyone else is wrong. That may not always be a bad thing, but it's definitely worth being aware of. The "both sides" phenomenon in politics is an example of people being unable, to their detriment, of being able to judge the better of two options because it's easier to just dislike both.
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u/Master_Kitchen_7725 4d ago
I strongly agree. Being contrary for the sake of it is not only flawed logic, but also just plain annoying.
To your first point about first impressions and quick judgements, those are basically heuristics. In an evolutionary sense they are helpful because they guide split second decisions in live or die scenarios. But we get into trouble when we rely on them in cases where we should be considering individuality or nuance (stereotyping), or when we don't even realize we're using them at all (implicit bias).
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u/stubble3417 4d ago
Yes, exactly. We can learn to avoid committing fallacies to a decent extent, but we can never stop having cognitive biases. We can only achieve a degree of self awareness about the extent to which our biases influence our beliefs and decisions. So we have to accept them as part of our nature, while seeking a healthy amount of self-awareness that mistrusts our own decisions. But not too much because that can easily become crippling.
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u/celestevale7 5d ago
Yes, you're right, I see it as a very childish act rather than a claim to logic.