/lit/ - Literature

Independent, critical thinking is a sure path to hubris, bias confirmation, cherry picking, and a whole host of other flaws your brain was not designed to even notice much less adequately check.

The only way to have any confidence that you are not deceiving yourself is to submit to an authority that will tell you what to believe. At least this way, if you are deceived, you won't have "reasoned" yourself into it by being a pompous asshole.

This seems to be the obvious conclusion of every psychology book ever written, and of most logic books (which demonstrate that "reason" is only as good as the assumptions you arbitrarily state are true). If this is the case, why does western culture continue to cling to the fallacy of independent thinking?