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SPINOZA_CYCLE

                                             November 30, 2013


Daniel Kanehman,
"Thinking Fast and Slow"               FAST_SLOW_AND_SLOWER
(2011)

       "The psychologist Daniel Gilbert, widely known
       as the author of _Stumbling on Happiness_, once
       wrote an essay, titled 'How Mental Systems
       Believe,' in which he developed a theory of
       believing and unbelieving that he traced to the
       seventeenth-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza.
       Gilbert proposed that understanding a statement
       must begin with an attempt to believe it: you
       must first know what the idea would mean if it
       were true.  Only then can you decide whether or
       not to _unbelieve_ it."  --p.80, 81


                              This sounds like the
                              method I outlined as
                              "riding the faith cycle":

                                o  shut off skepticism,
                                o  try to become a true believer,
                                o  then stop to reevaluate
                                   and consider apostasy:

                                     FAITH_CYCLE



       "Contrary to the rule of philosophers of science,
       who advise testing hypotheses by trying to refute
       them, people (and scientists, quite often) seek
       data that are likely to be compatible with the
       beliefs they currently hold." --p.81





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