For practical sociological questions that many people want to get right, if there is a conventional answer, you should go with the conventional answer
I’m not confident that this is right. I’m thinking about conventional answers to common questions (although I suppose it depends on what you define as sociological) that tend to be not great. Ideas such as
If you want to find a romantic partner, convention wisdom says to make yourself as appealing to as wide an audience as possible; remove quirks and be bland; don’t be weird. Whereas I think that it would be far better to filter out the people that wouldn’t be a good match.
If you want to be happy, convention wisdom says that you should get a well-paid and respectable job. Whereas much of the of the literature (both psychological research and Buddhist psychology) suggest other methods, such as this paper, or Happiness: Lessons from a New Science.
I’m sure there are others, and I don’t want to make the claim that conventional answers are never right (for example, for finding a romantic partner having good conversational skills and grooming yourself are convention wisdom that I agree with). But I would be wary of the claim that “if many people want to get right and there is a conventional answer, you should go with the conventional answer.”
I’m not confident that this is right. I’m thinking about conventional answers to common questions (although I suppose it depends on what you define as sociological) that tend to be not great. Ideas such as
If you want to find a romantic partner, convention wisdom says to make yourself as appealing to as wide an audience as possible; remove quirks and be bland; don’t be weird. Whereas I think that it would be far better to filter out the people that wouldn’t be a good match.
If you want to be happy, convention wisdom says that you should get a well-paid and respectable job. Whereas much of the of the literature (both psychological research and Buddhist psychology) suggest other methods, such as this paper, or Happiness: Lessons from a New Science.
I’m sure there are others, and I don’t want to make the claim that conventional answers are never right (for example, for finding a romantic partner having good conversational skills and grooming yourself are convention wisdom that I agree with). But I would be wary of the claim that “if many people want to get right and there is a conventional answer, you should go with the conventional answer.”