Unpopular Opinion
Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!
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Vote the opposite of the norm.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
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Tag your post, if possible (not required)
- If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
- If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].
Rules:
1. NO POLITICS
Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.
2. Be civil.
Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...
Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.
5. No trolling.
This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.
6. Defend your opinion
This is a bit of a mix of rules 4 and 5 to help foster higher quality posts. You are expected to defend your unpopular opinion in the post body. We don't expect a whole manifesto (please, no manifestos), but you should at least provide some details as to why you hold the position you do.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
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I'm not convinced your concept of your concept of concentration sending people insane. There's no evidence of that, unless you'd like to share some?
I think those groups (and the lawyers you mention) are made up of broard cross sections of the population. As with the general population, they include people who have empathy and compassion and people who don't. Those with empathy and compassion try to benefit everyone, those without try to benefit themselves. Sadly engineers, scientists, artists and lawyers who only seek to benefit themselves will consider and act on developing unethical things (weapons, toxic materials, propaganda, defending people doing unethical things).
I think the people who control the world tend to be the people with power, a group also made up of people with/without empathy and compassion. The groups you list who do unethical things might be included in the group of those with power, but they might also just be benefiting themselves by helping those with power but without empathy and compassion. The control remains with those with power.
When you concentrate on a thing you ignore pretty much everything else. Do it enough and that ignoring becomes blindness. And habitual.
Now your world is just a sliver of what it once was. But you still call this sliver "the world", of course. And upon this sliver is all your reasoning based.
That's what I'm calling insanity.
Those who concentrate best tend to succeed in our society. They achieve the goals, climb the ladder, implement the truth. The rest of us are slackers comparatively.
They are the ones with the greatest power. These alpha concentrators. And they are the most visibly insane.
But even the moderate concentrators have great power. A million software engineers surely have a power equal to a single billionaire businessman.
I don't think it's true that those that concentrate best tend to succeed. Those with a leg up from their previous generation tend to succeed.
Ok. Fair argument. But concentration is key to scientists, engineers etc. And they, as a population, do dictate the form of our culture to a great degree. And this power does not require great success.
How about my first point, the thing about the insanity, got anything to say about that?
I said I don't think there's any evidence of concentration leading to insanity in my first response. I also asked for evidence. For any great thinker you can point to who you think went insane, you could easily find another who didn't. Anecdotal evidence doesn't really cut it, so got any studies that show that intense study of a topic leads to insanity?
I have only my own study of the thing. And insanity is a very gooshy term after all. But if you examined concentration yourself you might come to a similar conclusion.
Consider the parts of my explanation. The fact that when you concentrate on one thing you ignore another. And then the habit and so on. Do any of these parts fit your own experience? Do any of them seem absurd?
It doesn't fit my experience. I'm an engineer, I concentrated regularly in my studies and I concentrate regularly through my work, I don't find its training me to ignore other aspects of the world or my life. I know lots of highly successful people, they tend to be more well rounded than not.
I wonder if maybe you are confusing concentration with hyperfixation?
It's hard to account for what you're blind to. Because you're blind to it. You could be blind to a hundred things and never know it
It's more like there's no actual evidence other than the anecdotal.
We both know that when you concentrate on one thing you ignore another.
We both know that there is this thing called a habit.
Even without making an examination of the phenomenon we can put these obvious pieces together and reach the obvious implication.
That's 2 paths to my conclusion. To casually disregard both is silly.
So hypothesis not proof, great. Concentration require focus on a task not ignorance of others, so can you form a habit of opposite action to what you are completing? My hypothesis is that you can't and that the habit formed would be to have good concentration and ability to focus your attention. Like the opposite of ADHD. If you have anti-ADHD are you then insane?
Do you not ignore everything else when you concentrate on a thing?
Do you not collect habits like a bumper collects stickers?
That's my "proof".
Again, that's not proof, it's hypothesis based on anecdotal observation.
Proof would be a well structured repeatable study verifying the hypothesis. Given the other comments, it doesn't even seem repeatable across other anecdotal observations let alone within a study.
I will note, I do form habits easily, and my work and past times require concentration, but I have never found that forms a habit of ignoring things, it forms a habit of having improved concentration when required. If anything I have found increased study leads to improved awareness of my surrounds and increased desire to learn more in general.
You claim your observations are proof of your hypothesis, but my observations directly disprove your hypothesis, so whose observation is correct? You could claim my observations are clouded because if l've concentrated and then am unaware of my ignorance, but I could claim the same thing of you, or even that you haven't concentrated enough and so are unaware of your surroundings and the true nature of things. This is a never ending cycle of anecdotal nonsense. Hence the need for a well structured repeatable study as proof.
Yeah that's why I put it in quotes, because it's a dumb term for what we're looking for here.
Try just answering those 2 questions.
Or not, this is exhausting.
I mean I literally did.
But also I agree, this is exhausting, it's like you're being obtuse on purpose. Good luck with your poorly thought out opinion. I'm done.