I was recommended to explore this topic yet again by Mr. Steven Gong, I was making a website using quartz to host my Obsidian notes online and Steven noticed that my website looked awfully similar to his, was this on purpose? No, I really liked the layout of Steven’s website so I decided to take “inspiration”, little did I know I was just straight up copying him. Hence, I am exploring the topic thinking for yourself
What is thinking for yourself
Google definition: to form opinions and make decisions without help from other people
My definition: to generate unique thoughts and theories
Issues with thinking for yourself
In the modern world, I believe thinking for yourself has become harder than ever. With social media everyone is influenced by a lot of people, whether it be a famous celebrity, role model, or even youtubers which makes it hard for people to have their own opinions without being biased to what a certain someone who they look up to believes in.
Aside from social media we live in the world of AI, rather than thinking about different approaches to solve a problem we resort to the shortcut of asking AI for answers. Don’t get me wrong, I am also guilty of this. I myself have asked ChatGPT for answers to multiple scenarios which I was too lazy to think of, and this can be good! It saves people time, but at the same time LLMs like ChatGPT often provide with “recycled thoughts” which is the opposite of thinking for yourself
Solution
This is what I think is the best solution, your results may vary
- Write down everything you do in a day and circle things that you believe are influencing your opinions
- Analyze how they are each effecting your way of thinking, what are they teaching you?
- Often times, being aware of these influences often allows you to classify what’s your actual opinion vs something that is being presented to you
- Think of a random topic and question it, why do I like this chocolate bar?
- Boom, now that you can differentiate from your own opinions and others opinions you are finally able to analyze and form your own personal thoughts
I still believe that the top 5 people you spend the most time with influence you the most