Mindcleaning

Mind optimization

Occupy a house or apartment, and it will acquire junk. Much the same can be said of your mind. In the years you have “occupied” it, you have doubtless acquired mistaken beliefs. Many were acquired when you were too young to thoughtfully sort through the things people told you, deciding which to believe and which to reject. And when you gained this ability, you might have failed to exercise it. You might, in particular, have uncritically accepted the misinformation disseminated by “news” outlets on the internet.

As we have seen, a Thinker’s goal is to optimize their mind by filling it, to the extent possible, with beliefs that are true and useful, and to accomplish this, they will engage in a mind-optimization program. In my previous post, I introduced the first component of this program, a mindcare regimen in which we take care in choosing the sources of information to which we expose ourselves. Fail to do this, and our mind will end up stuffed with mistaken beliefs, the way a hoarder’s dwelling is stuffed with junk.

In this post, I will discuss mindcleaning, the second component of our mind-optimization program, but before doing so, let me remind readers that there is a big difference between mindcleaning and brainwashing. Indeed, mindcleaning can play an important role in the intellectual rehabilitation of people who have been brainwashed.

Realize that even if you engage in mindcare, your mind will harbor mistaken beliefs. Some will have slipped past your critical guard. Others will have been intentionally planted in your mind by people who are trying to manipulate you. This can include salespeople, politicians, and “opinion journalists” on the internet. A Thinker will realize as much and will therefore make a point of mindcleaning, of periodically looking for their mistaken beliefs and eradicating any they find.

Cleaning a house or apartment isn’t fun; neither is cleaning your mind. It takes time and effort to track down your mistaken beliefs. This is one reason for you to engage in mindcare. Doing so will dramatically lighten your mindcleaning workload.

On finding mistaken beliefs, you might be reluctant to eradicate them. This is because in the same way as you can be attached to the junk in your house, you can be attached to your beliefs. This is particularly true of those you acquired early in life. You innocently believed whatever your parents told you. They were, after all, grownups, and as all kids (up to a certain age) know, grownups are infallible. At school, you also believed whatever your teachers taught you. Your logic: They wouldn’t go to the trouble of teaching you something that wasn’t true. The problem is that in many cases, your parents and teachers didn’t use evidence-based reasoning to acquire their beliefs; they simply believed what their parents and teachers had told them.

The sensible way to initiate a housecleaning project is to assess the mess. If your kitchen table is so cluttered that you can’t eat on it, cleaning it should be high on your to-do list. Similar reasoning can be employed in your mindcleaning activities. Rather than embarking on a random search for mistaken beliefs, you should first examine those that play a significant role in your worldview and daily life.

Suppose, for example, that with respect to the abortion debate, you are a staunch pro-life advocate. As part of your mindcleaning, you will “stress test” this belief. To do so, you will make a point of finding and listening carefully to someone on the pro-choice side of the debate.

In response to this suggestion, you might say that this would be a waste of time, since pro-choice advocates are clueless and amoral. If this is in fact your response, then there is a very good chance that you are in the grips of confirmation bias: You are unwittingly seeking and readily accepting evidence that confirms your views, and avoiding or dismissing evidence that disconfirms them.

Realize that even if many or even most pro-choice advocates are clueless and amoral, there is an excellent chance that among them are individuals who engaged in evidence-based reasoning to reach their pro-choice conclusions. If you are interested in optimizing your mind, you owe it to yourself to find them and listen carefully to what they say.

Doing this might not “change your mind.” In particular, it is unlikely that you will be transformed into a pro-choice advocate. It is entirely possible, though, that you will come away from the encounter with altered beliefs. You might, for one thing, realize that the abortion debate is more involved than you had imagined, and as a result your views with respect to abortion might become more nuanced. You might also come away less confident of your views. This might sound like an undesirable outcome, but realize that one of the worst things that can happen is for you to be overly confident of what turns out to be a mistaken belief. The problem is that because of your confidence, you might act on that belief, perhaps with tragic consequences.

Before signing off, one last comment is in order. My goal is to keep this substack apolitical. Readers therefore shouldn’t interpret my remarks about the abortion debate as a defense of the pro-life position. I could instead have supposed that you were a staunch pro-choice advocate, and gone on to explain how you would benefit from stress testing your views by finding and carefully listening to a thoughtful pro-life advocate.

I don’t want to be your surrogate thinker! I want to help you think more and better so you can confidently think for yourself.