I have recently posted two threads [http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?p=2883629#post2883629 and Post # 46 of http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=111277&page=3] with the words sophisticism and xenomorphism and I have made this one to explain my understanding of them and get your feedback on them. Sophisticism: This term is used in two ways. First, Sophia - Knowledge. Thus sophisticism is the love of knowledge and the love of learning. However, its also uses the word sophistication, which I use as "mastery, complexity, expert ability, talent, large amount of knowledge and skill; in and applied to a particular field/area of human endeavour or a certain situation or circumstance." Together, these two 'isms' combine to form a interdependant whole: Sophisticism. Xenomorphism: This is the simple opposite of the classic anthromorphism that saturates our culture. It is a objective, informed, disintrested, external perspective on everything earthly/human - situations, fields of inquery, places, people, culture, behavious, nature, science, etc. A post that shares some of my views: http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=111767
The fact that you use "sophisticism" to describe yourself says enough. Such implies sophistication comparable to or beyond all other sophistication, which seems condescending and arrogant. Surely even the greatest mind would believe other minds as even greater? The greatest minds would also leave room for their own confusion.
But I dont use it in that sense. I do recognise sagan, hawkins, einstein, etc to be amazing sophistists and I consider myself less that some prominent ones on this site itself, like fraggle, aqueous, etc. I do and I aspire and try to be like them, to be that good. I agree. I hold all my convictions to be falsifiable, changable and temporary. Btw, Why did you say that?
Largely because of the word itself: sophisticism. It puts off an arrogant and condescending vibe, which I was trying to explain in a nice way. Also, this: As I learned from people wiser than myself: the more knowledge one gains, the more one realizes just how little they really know. Such is likely a culprit in the Dunning-Kruger effect.
To be sure, there is some skepticism about the Dunning-Kruger effect, given the populations on which the stuides were conducted and with what tests, but on the whole, the thesis seems to be common-sense enough: The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to recognize their mistakes.[1] The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their own abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority.
