Tag: Secondhandedness

More examples of secondhandedness thoughts/questions (with links) contrasted with rational/reality-oriented thoughts/questions.

Also, for a long form analysis of a great example of second-handedness, read this whole post.

Secondhanded thought	Better thought
You shouldn’t claim you’re the best philosopher; you might be proven wrong and embarrassed.	I’d love to be proven wrong and learn about someone better than me.†
I should post a bunch of candid moments of my children on Facebook because they’re cute and people will like them.	Is getting Facebook likes a good goal? And does my child have any right to privacy?
I want it to appear to others that I am a fast learner.	I want to actually learn stuff quickly and well.
Am I an imposter or fraud, despite being recognized as a successful person?	Am I objectively good at what I do?
Will other people judge me for not learning FI?	Would learning FI serve my life and values?
What solution to this programming problem does the interviewer want?	What solution to this programming problem would work?
Am I coming off as weird or autistic in continuing to talk about this topic?	Do I want to continuing to talk about this topic?
Do some prestigious people say Ayn Rand and Sam Harris have similar ideas?	Are the ideas of Sam Harris and Ayn Rand actually similar?

†Elliot Temple, in a July 2, 2013 Fallible Ideas email, subject line “Psychology of a Pretzel” (no longer directly linkable online because Yahoo took down its archives), said “I’d be fucking thrilled. If someone could prove me wrong, I would learn something and thank them. And it’d be something particularly useful. Please tell me who is better that I missed. I will read their stuff and get in touch with them. That’d be amazing.” 🙂