A moment if you may!!?

Question

Do you think reading others work (books), discoveries, or perspectives/insights on how they view the world, brainwashes your mind to think like them? For example, if you read a science book, can it take you of the road from finding your own path, because your simply focused in there minds/ideas now of how they view things? Wouldn't we be better off discovering things on our own without reading? This is just a thought. Also, did you ever feel that way before, and how did you deal with it?

If you never heard or read their ideas, then your mind would be free, without others influence, to explore on its own, right?

Thank you for taking the time to answer my question!

Answer 1

Unfortunately, if you never heard/read ideas, then you wouldn't know anything, so no one is 100% unbiased because we're always leaning toward the idea which seems the best, but that in itself is influenced by what you know

Answer 2

somehow or the other, you'll be 'brainwashed' ie physics, geology. but you'll also need to make up your mind based on knowledge on what to accept and what to discard

Answer 3

that depends on how easily influenced a person is and how influential an opinion is.

i think it is important to be exposed to other ideas to know if you agree or disagree, and so to know your ideas.

i don't think anyone can really believe in their own opinions if they didn't know about other opinions.

it is just what i think......

Answer 4

We learn from others. From the age of six months we emulate those around us. As our brains develop, we gain the capability to form opinions and we develop our own character. Technology is advancing at such a pace since the introduction of the computer that no one could exist without the knowledge of others. When you buy a new appliance: the owner's manual is your guide to its safe use. Science texts impart knowledge of the world we live in. They are not meant to force you to think in only one way. Rather, they attempt to explain a specific truth

or posit a hypothesis. Without books we would need to rediscover technologies each generation or two. We would be as the Chinese were in the sixteenh and sevententh centuries. Possessing technology far ahead of the all other cultures but by not deseminating it among their culture: trapped in a rural society that distrusted all outsiders.

You ask if books create a mindset that may be inimical to your ideals but you are asking for other's opinions. By reading other people's

ideas and of technology, we do not need to test hypotheses by trial and error.

I hope this answers some of your doubts.

Phil