The Bliss of Being Told What to Do (Wait! Hear me out guys...)

[KazeCraven]

Ever been in the "flow state?" It happens when we have, among other things, no reason to question what should be done. http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/199707/finding-flow

And let's face it, many people spend lots of time questioning what they want to (or ought to) do. It's a difficult question, for one. Even the most advanced computers and chimps can't help much here. Two, there's often psychological pain when we get things wrong or make dumb choices. Now, how do we solve this problem? We can either think it through or we can...

Listen to authority!

It's perfectly logical really. We listen to authority all the time to get information, because authority knows better than we do (in the area that they are the authority). It doesn't take much to rationalize a little sttrreeeetch of the expertise and let the authority tell us what to do too. Our parents/friends (gurus?) know us well enough and have our best interests in mind (more wisdom due to life experience, etc., etc.), so they can decide for us!

And if we screw up, well we were just following orders. The man in charge is the one who has responsibility, right? (I disagree, but majority believes so, so...) Plus, trust is a virtue, and arguing against authority is arrogance. The greatest thinkers of all time have been working hard at the right way to live. Just take Aristotle's philosophy, or Kant's, or God's: you can't go wrong!

So to wrap it all up, by being told what to do we can make good, quick decisions, get to the more enjoyable mind states, experience less conflict, and can't be held accountable for our mistakes in judgement. Nevermind the fact that it's a plan only half-wits would follow fully, there is a logic to it.

 

[Saeros]

And let's face it, many people spend lots of time questioning what they want to (or ought to) do. It's a difficult question, for one. Even the most advanced computers and chimps can't help much here. Two, there's often psychological pain when we get things wrong or make dumb choices. Now, how do we solve this problem? We can either think it through or we can...

Listen to authority!

It's perfectly logical really. We listen to authority all the time to get information, because authority knows better than we do (in the area that they are the authority). It doesn't take much to rationalize a little sttrreeeetch of the expertise and let the authority tell us what to do too. Our parents/friends (gurus?) know us well enough and have our best interests in mind (more wisdom due to life experience, etc., etc.), so they can decide for us!

And if we screw up, well we were just following orders. The man in charge is the one who has responsibility, right? (I disagree, but majority believes so, so...) Plus, trust is a virtue, and arguing against authority is arrogance. The greatest thinkers of all time have been working hard at the right way to live. Just take Aristotle's philosophy, or Kant's, or God's: you can't go wrong!

There are so many things that are wrong with this post. Firstly, people in authority are just ordinary people with agendas. They don't have more privileged access to knowledge about the right course of action than anyone else. With you're line of reasoning, the nazi party was justified in their actions because they were in authority, and the people who worked in the concentration camps killing people were justified in that they were only following orders. As rationally thinking humans, we have to take individual responsibility for our choices, and our actions. Trying to place the responsibilty for your actions into the hands of the severely misguided is a mistake. 'Finding flow' seems like a wonderful way of rephrasing the expression 'burying your head in the sand'.

 

[BigApplePi]

Ever been in the "flow state?" It happens when we have, among other things, no reason to question what should be done. http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/199707/finding-flow

And let's face it, many people spend lots of time questioning what they want to (or ought to) do. It's a difficult question, for one. Even the most advanced computers and chimps can't help much here. Two, there's often psychological pain when we get things wrong or make dumb choices. Now, how do we solve this problem? We can either think it through or we can...

Listen to authority!

It's perfectly logical really. We listen to authority all the time to get information, because authority knows better than we do (in the area that they are the authority). It doesn't take much to rationalize a little sttrreeeetch of the expertise and let the authority tell us what to do too. Our parents/friends (gurus?) know us well enough and have our best interests in mind (more wisdom due to life experience, etc., etc.), so they can decide for us!

And if we screw up, well we were just following orders. The man in charge is the one who has responsibility, right? (I disagree, but majority believes so, so...) Plus, trust is a virtue, and arguing against authority is arrogance. The greatest thinkers of all time have been working hard at the right way to live. Just take Aristotle's philosophy, or Kant's, or God's: you can't go wrong!

So to wrap it all up, by being told what to do we can make good, quick decisions, get to the more enjoyable mind states, experience less conflict, and can't be held accountable for our mistakes in judgement. Nevermind the fact that it's a plan only half-wits would follow fully, there is a logic to it.

Well yeah. If you want to continue immediate flow just follow the best authority. It's only when the next authority comes along or you run out of authorities you get into trouble.

Figuring it out yourself may interrupt your flow -- unless you are an INTP. I would guess INTP's would rate high on thinking out the do-it-yourself solutions. Personally authorities interrupt my flow. Even if they were trustworthy, how did they do it? Can I trust they haven't come up with a universal? No they haven't. I'd like to know how it works myself.

 

[WorkInProgress]

[I don't see any sense in posting this sort of thing in the INTP forum unless it's either a) a joke or b) playing devil's advocate so kaze can have our insight (could have just asked)]

I'm all for low error visibility, but I wouldn't be able to respect myself if I blindly followed orders that ended up being some "authority's" mistake. I'm sure this is okay for some, but I'll take thinking for myself over subservience any day. We're INTPs afterall, even if we did go into flow mode we'll still be analyzing the crap out of it afterward.

Sure someone that's known as an expert at something will know more about that something than me, but at the end of the day he or she is still a human like the rest of us. It's far from arrogance to not have full faith that a person is perfect.

 

[BigApplePi]

[I don't see any sense in posting this sort of thing in the INTP forum unless it's either a) a joke or b) playing devil's advocate so kaze can have our insight (could have just asked)]

I'm all for low error visibility, but I wouldn't be able to respect myself if I blindly followed orders that ended up being some "authority's" mistake. I'm sure this is okay for some, but I'll take thinking for myself over subservience any day. We're INTPs afterall, even if we did go into flow mode we'll still be analyzing the crap out of it afterward.

Sure someone that's known as an expert at something will know more about that something than me, but at the end of the day he or she is still a human like the rest of us. It's far from arrogance to not have full faith that a person is perfect.

WIP. I was just wondering more about experts/authorities. If we haven't a clue, they give us direction -- and a start. We can follow along the trail a little way and then abruptly abandon it when a more interesting possibility comes up.

 

[KazeCraven]

WIP: Actually, it's not a joke per se. I just came up with the idea and thought I'd see the reaction. More of a way of making sense of things after hearing people's reaction to the Stanley Milgram Experiment a while back.

Otherwise, I think the tone of the post speaks for itself.

 

[Ermine]

I see what you mean, but I would only trust that flow for superficial decisions where it wouldn't matter much if it didn't work anyway. For anything else, I don't trust any one person to tell me what I want to do. I would much rather disrupt that "flow" and research and work at it until I get it right.

And it's truly scary to me when people use the excuse "I was following orders". Many people have committed heinous crimes they knew were wrong in order to "follow orders". It's absolutely spineless. I don't care about standard procedures. I don't care about authority. Right is right and wrong is wrong. Everyone has accountability, assuming they know what they're doing. Of course, this isn't just for moral decisions. If there's a better choice, why not follow it?

And I don't know about you all, but I actually experience flow the most when I'm doing what I want to do. Sometimes it coincides with authorities, sometimes it doesn't.

 

[Saeros]

I see what you mean, but I would only trust that flow for superficial decisions where it wouldn't matter much if it didn't work anyway. For anything else, I don't trust any one person to tell me what I want to do. I would much rather disrupt that "flow" and research and work at it until I get it right.

That's a good point, but where do you draw the line? which decisions are superficial enough to let other people make them? You would essentially have to be aware of all of the decisions so you could make that assessment, but if you're going to that amount of trouble you might as well make the decision, yourself.

 

[Deleted member 1424]

Milgram summarized the experiment in his 1974 article, "The Perils of Obedience", writing:​

The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.
Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.[3]

The results of the experiment are downright scary......

 

[KazeCraven]

@Saeros: I agree, to an extent (esp. with the justification argument about Nazis). The thing I disagree with, however, is the idea that elected authority should necessarily be the authority one follows in this case. Though someone habituated to this mode of living probably would not be able to discern which authority to follow, so I definitely see the problem. @2nd post, I think one would gain a sense of when the stakes of the decision are significant so I doubt every choice would have to be conscious.

@BAP: I didn't notice it before, but I think you are on to something with that figuring it out yourself -> flow idea. The main idea with the flow state is that we are focusing on a given task of a moderately high difficulty, using above average (relatively speaking) skills, and have clearly defined goals. The issue that arises, I think, is when someone decides to do something and then, realizing that some new information would change the judgment, must rethink the issue. Outside judgments, I think, work differently because we accept the judgment based on that person's expertise (to the extent we follow by authority, not reason).

@Ermine: I wholeheartedly agree that we are still accountable for our actions even when someone else tells us to do something. I think what got me was that Milgram's point was most people behave as if we weren't responsible anymore, and discussions among presumably intelligent college students, after understanding the experiment, argue that we really aren't responsible.

And yeah, I think the argument for flow, in retrospect, is a weak because it has to be something we want to do in the first place. (Flow, from my understanding, is driven only by "intrinsic" motivation). However, being told to do something can overcome barriers of starting and can raise the priority of the task such that setbacks do not knock us out with a "it's not worth it" attitude. I like to think of our brains as computers too, and if you think of actions as being weighted with a priority, if your current activity is a 1 (which would be, what, above survival level?) then there is nothing to distract you from it. What causes high priority, I think, is based on our values. Those who do not value authority much perhaps cannot use this tactic well.

 

[BigApplePi]

Authority and Flow.

What if the authority is culture? Don't we all follow our culture -- until we encounter another culture and wonder what gave us what we have? We naturally flow with our culture, our language, our loyalities, our behavior. Do you think if you grew up in Nazi Germany and were inducted into the Nazi Youth group you would behave any differently?

http://www.mchekc.org/PDFFiles/Curr... Pebbles/Lesson Plans/Lesson 10/Lesson 10.pdf

 

[Fallenman]

@Saeros: I don't think it is a hard endeavor to make a snap shot judgment about what decisions are superficial and which ones aren't. Buying a burger instead of a hotdog might not be such a difficult decision, speeding up at a yellow light might take a little more thought, and trying to figure out whether your smoking cup is poisoned or not might take a little more of your time. It isn't hard to determine whether or not we care more or less about a decision in the instant of a second. So I don't see any drawing the line problems here.

@Everyone: I don't know about you guys but to me the process of questioning all of authority seems tiring to me. If I'm going to go around questioning everything I hear how am I ever going to learn? You guy's are so incredibly stuck on independence it makes me tired just hearing you guys. I certainly see the value in independence and follow it myself, I just don't see why we've got to be a pain in the ass of every authority figure we meet.

 

[Cavallier]

Plus, trust is a virtue

Trust is a...what now? There are many varying levels of trust. Trust with a capital T is only meant for those closest to us such as certain family members, friends, and lovers. Yet, even in those situations it ebbs and flows.

So to wrap it all up, by being told what to do we can make good, quick decisions, get to the more enjoyable mind states, experience less conflict, and can't be held accountable for our mistakes in judgment. Never mind the fact that it's a plan only half-wits would follow fully, there is a logic to it.

There is a logic to it. That is true. Yet, I don't think it's for everyone as evidenced by the responses to this thread. Trusting in authority is for those who can willing trust in authority. If it rubs a person wrong to follow rules unquestioningly then there is no argument that will change that person's mind. There are soldiers and there are philosophers. The person most torn about this issue would be a complicated combination of the two. This discussion reminds me of All Quiet On The Western Front. A simple soldier turned pocket philosopher...I wonder if age and the experiences earned by following authority is what often turns a person against that authority.

I certainly see the value in independence and follow it myself, I just don't see why we've got to be a pain in the ass of every authority figure we meet.

Because spite is fun!

 

[BigApplePi]

@Everyone: I don't know about you guys but to me the process of questioning all of authority seems tiring to me. If I'm going to go around questioning everything I hear how am I ever going to learn? You guy's are so incredibly stuck on independence it makes me tired just hearing you guys. I certainly see the value in independence and follow it myself, I just don't see why we've got to be a pain in the ass of every authority figure we meet.

We don't have to buy off on all judgments of authority (J interpretation). But one thing is good about authorities if we can pick it out. They have experience (Si skills). So use them for their experience and what you do after that is your own business.

 

[KazeCraven]

@Fallenman: I actually was pretty trusting and mostly used authority until mid adolescence. Until then, I was also not very independent and pretty much only ventured off the beaten path during my free time. Which is probably why I made this thread. Though I agree with hardly any of the ideas I threw up there now, I do think many people think that way.

 

[Fallenman]

Well on further reflection there actually isn't very many things in my life that I have to listen to authority about now a days. I guess I just keep getting the idea that INTP's are disruptive. Perhaps I question authority in much the same way you guys do and just take it for granted but I feel like INTP's make things unnecessarily complicated. Why would we go against the flow when we are so accustomed to going with it? Certainly I understand the importance of getting things right, but I hate wasting time and being unnecessarily disruptive makes things unnecessarily long. Now in something like your job or your career i definitely understand taking charge of things for yourself. What I don't understand, or the picture that I am getting, is that we feel the necessity to question the credentials of every authority figure we meet. In order to keep things in motion I like to give authority figures the benefit of the doubt. I don't mean that some homeless guy can come up to me and tell me that the moon is falling and i'll believe him straight off the bat. I'm saying that I'm not going to tell him that hes wrong just because I assume hes incompetent. I check their credentials against what I know about them and what I know about the information they're giving me. Maybe hes dressed in rags but if the moon seems to be getting abnormally large as he tells me this, i may just take his word for it. Or if it was head liner news and everyone was talking about it. Or if he explained to me in detail that some asteroid hit the moon that knocked it off its trajectory and within a few days would collide with the earth, I would believe in the plausibility but perhaps I would go do some more research on my own time. Maybe I'd ask him where he heard that from so on and so forth. But I'm not going to enter a room and automatically assume authority figures are incompetent.

 

[BigApplePi]

I'm glad for this thread. It's the right thing. Let me tell you what you can do with it. Here's the way it's going to be. The way things are going down you can trust me. I will be back on Thursday. Bring your keyboard. Be prepared to sit down and take notes or else.

Your Master and Commander.

 

[Fallenman]

lol BAP this elucidates the point of your earlier post. I don't live for anyone or allow anyone to dictate my life. I do use people for their experience and go on about my way.

 

[KazeCraven]

Okay BAP, you win. I fold.

 

[BigApplePi]

Okay BAP, you win. I fold.

Craven don't give it up yet. Ah can still work on dealing with authority. Here goes:

Say you are an ordinary person. What to do? You can move in any direction, choice of 360 degrees. You are modestly experienced but have some. So your choices are say, 45 degrees. Along comes an authority whose experience with this rates 135 degrees. Whom do you follow? Yourself with 45 degrees or the authority with 135 degrees?

 

[Saeros]

@Saeros: I don't think it is a hard endeavor to make a snap shot judgment about what decisions are superficial and which ones aren't. Buying a burger instead of a hotdog might not be such a difficult decision, speeding up at a yellow light might take a little more thought, and trying to figure out whether your smoking cup is poisoned or not might take a little more of your time. It isn't hard to determine whether or not we care more or less about a decision in the instant of a second. So I don't see any drawing the line problems here.

Right, but in the same second it takes to identify a decision as superficial, you could just make the decision because it's so superficial. People in authority need to make larger, more important decisions, otherwise their importance becomes negligible. If they were restricted to making small, trivial decisions for people, like what to have for lunch, then their presence would become unnecessary. The 'where do you draw the line' problem lies therein. How irrelevant does a decision have to be before the mediation of an authority figure becomes meaningless? Does the authority figure have a right to dictate your lifestyle choices? like eating right? and exercising? and not getting addicted to drugs? How low do they have to go before they're seen as nothing more than your personal servant? And as you move towards the middle of the spectrum, it gets even harder to determine whether the intervention of authority is necessary. For example, how to best raise a child. And larger decisions like how to respond to an attack from a foreign nation. or, on a slightly smaller scale, what to do if someone attacks you in the street. These larger decisions are of the kind that an authority needs to make to remain relevant, but she/he should not be able to make them without oversight, and scrutiny. Authority figures are just as capable of making mistakes as everyone else, but the difference is that their choices can affect hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people.

 

[BigApplePi]

Right, but in the same second it takes to identify a decision as superficial, you could just make the decision because it's so superficial. People in authority need to make larger, more important decisions, otherwise their importance becomes negligible. If they were restricted to making small, trivial decisions for people, like what to have for lunch, then their presence would become unnecessary. The 'where do you draw the line' problem lies therein. How irrelevant does a decision have to be before the mediation of an authority figure becomes meaningless? Does the authority figure have a right to dictate your lifestyle choices? like eating right? and exercising? and not getting addicted to drugs? How low do they have to go before they're seen as nothing more than your personal servant? And as you move towards the middle of the spectrum, it gets even harder to determine whether the intervention of authority is necessary. For example, how to best raise a child. And larger decisions like how to respond to an attack from a foreign nation. or, on a slightly smaller scale, what to do if someone attacks you in the street. These larger decisions are of the kind that an authority needs to make to remain relevant, but she/he should not be able to make them without oversight, and scrutiny. Authority figures are just as capable of making mistakes as everyone else, but the difference is that their choices can affect hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people.

Saeros. You have brought up something not mentioned before -- unless I missed it. That is POWER.

Talking about following the choices of an authority over oneself assumes we have the freedom of choice. However authority figures often appear in a social hierarchy where those lower in rank are obligated to act according to the wishes of those higher in rank. Those lower in rank may suppose a better choice but they have to follow the choice of the "authority" higher in rank. This can lead to apparent contradictions of what is actually the "best" choice.

 

[Fallenman]

I just see it as there are systems created to achieve certain goals. I create a company to sell certain programs to large companies. The authority I would need, as it is my company, would be to dictate to my employees what I need them to do in order to achieve my end. They can choose to disagree with me and work at some other company or they can follow my dictates to reach my end and i'll give them some money. Why do they follow me? Who am i? Well the goal project is mine and I have a goal that i'm trying to achieve and i'm purchasing your labor to achieve this end. Now how much do i need to dictate to you? Enough to achieve my goal. What if i'm wrong? Well if your actions improve the efficiency of achieving my end then by all means do what you must. But unless you know what you're doing you have no other recourse than to follow my lead until you understand what i'm trying to do. I think it is everyones hope that an employee becomes self sufficient though. Likewise in every other aspect of life.