The reason it’s hard to take seriously people like
Richard Dawkins on religion, Owen Jones on economics, Jermy Corbyn on politics,
Naomi Klein on climate change, Afua Hirsch on discrimination, Paul Mason on
geopolitics, to name a few examples, is because on that subject they are
monothinkers; that is, someone who can only process ideas through a single
worldview or framework. Their demand for explanation exceeds their supply,
producing the intellectual equivalent of a mispriced asset.
As a consequence, they draw inadequate conclusions because they don’t know what they don’t know. On these subjects, they operate in a permanent state of cognitive overdraft, where they can offer only a single explanation for the thing they oppose: Religious belief = ignorance; wealth = exploitation; inequality = injustice; climate change = doom, discrimination = oppression, and so forth.
This works alongside the slightly more subtle phenomenon of what’s called ‘belief-clustering’, whereby the probability of an individual believing x increases the probability that one could predict their belief on y and z. Like, if I know where you stand on inequality, I can probably predict where you stand on Israel; if I know where you stand on they/them pronouns, I can probably predict where you stand on climate change (interestingly, though, probably not so much if you reverse that); if I know where you stand on feminism, I can probably predict where you stand on welfare and state intervention; if I know where you stand on abortion, I can probably predict where you stand on chastity and homosexuality; that sort of thing.
Don’t be a monothinker, because it gives strong indication that your beliefs have been imprudently implanted, not carefully thought through.
