How the “Thought Experiment” Became the Royal Flush of Intellectual Bullshit
You’re scrolling through your social media feed when the ever helpful algorithm serves up a video from some far-right influencer with a neatly trimmed beard and a smug grin. He’s not spouting his usual rhetoric today.
No, he’s got something special for you: a “thought experiment.”
Congratulations, you’re about to witness the bastardization of one of philosophy’s most powerful tools; a useful concept that has become the go-to for every half-arsed, fash-agenda-driven hypothetical claptrap designed to lead you down a rabbit hole of propaganda and misinformation.
The Far-Right’s Thought Experiment Trojan Horse
This pseudo-intellectual bullshit has infected our discourse, turning what should be a tool for expanding our minds into a Trojan horse for narrowing them. The far right has discovered that if you package your prejudices as “thought experiments,” you can smuggle all sorts of toxic ideas past people’s critical thinking defenses, making it damn near impossible to separate genuine insights from mental masturbation.
These fuckers are annoying internet provocateurs, yes; but they’re employing a calculated strategy to legitimize and spread their ideology like an Aldi-Brand Goebbels. By cloaking their prejudices in the language of intellectual inquiry, they’ve found a way to make bigotry palatable to a wider audience, painting their backwards, balderdash and blather as sociology.
Take, for example, the “Just Asking Questions” gambit. You’ll hear them pose seemingly innocuous questions like, “What if we had a society where immigration was based solely on IQ?” It sounds like harmless speculation, doesn’t it? But scratch the surface, and you’ll find it’s a backdoor way to promote racist ideas about intelligence and ethnicity. It’s not a genuine inquiry into immigration policy; it’s a way to smuggle in the notion that some ethnicities are inherently less intelligent and therefore less desirable as immigrants.
Then there’s the false equivalence trap. “Imagine a world where being proud of your white heritage was as accepted as Black Pride,” they’ll muse. This “thought experiment” falsely equates white supremacy with movements for racial equality, conveniently ignoring centuries of historical context and power dynamics. It’s not an invitation to discuss cultural pride; it’s a way to legitimize white nationalist talking points.
The slippery slope slide is another favorite. “What if allowing gay marriage leads to people marrying animals?” This classic far-right trope disguises itself as a logical exploration of consequences, when it’s really fearmongering and homophobia in a cheap philosopher’s costume. It’s not a genuine concern about the institution of marriage; it’s a way to dehumanize LGBTQ+ individuals and stoke moral panic.
Their tactics are more than rhetorical flourishes; they serve specific strategic purposes. By framing their half baked (not to mention Paul Hollywood rejected, soggy bottomed, Bake Off flameout) ideas as thought experiments, far-right influencers gain plausible deniability. When called out, they can retreat to “It’s just a thought experiment! I’m not saying I believe this.” It’s the intellectual equivalent of “It’s just a prank, bro!” This framing also creates a false sense of objectivity. Presenting bigoted ideas as hypotheticals creates an illusion of detached, rational analysis. It’s harder to dismiss someone who appears to be engaging in Socratic dialogue rather than spewing hate.
These pseudo-thought experiments are perfect engagement bait. They stir up controversy, driving clicks, comments, and shares. Outrage, after all, is engagement, and engagement is the currency of the internet. But the impact goes beyond mere online metrics. These tactics serve as a recruitment tool. For those already leaning towards far-right ideologies, these “thought experiments” provide a seemingly intellectual justification for their beliefs. It’s radicalization disguised as philosophy.
It helps shift the Overton window — the range of ideas considered acceptable in public discourse. By constantly pushing extreme ideas under the guise of intellectual discourse, they gradually make these concepts seem less shocking and more worthy of “debate.” Ideas that would have been instantly dismissed as racist or sexist a decade ago are now given airtime under the banner of “free speech” and “intellectual diversity.”
The real-world consequences of these rhetorical games are severe. Constant exposure to these “thought experiments” can desensitize people to racist, sexist, or xenophobic concepts. When actual scholars try to engage in nuanced discussions about complex social issues, they’re often drowned out by these bad-faith actors.
Young people, especially those drawn to contrarian ideas, can be led down a rabbit hole of increasingly extreme ideologies, all packaged as “just asking questions.” And these ideas don’t stay online. They seep into mainstream discourse.
What a Thought Experiment Really Is (And Isn’t)
A thought experiment isn’t you thinking about shit. It’s not about confirming your preexisting biases or justifying your worst impulses. And it sure as shit isn’t your shower thoughts about whether the Multiverse is real, man.
A real thought experiment is the mental equivalent of a controlled explosion, designed to blow apart our preconceptions and reassemble them in mind-bending new configurations. It’s a carefully constructed scenario, blending well-researched ideas with mental obstacles, questions and hypotheticals.
Here’s what makes a genuine thought experiment:
- Purposeful Design: It’s created with a specific goal in mind, often to test a theory or explore a concept. It’s not random brain vomit.
- Logical Structure: It follows a clear, logical progression of ideas. You know, like actual thinking.
- Controlled Variables: Like a scientific experiment, it controls for certain factors to isolate the concept being examined. It’s not a free-for-all of “what ifs.”
- Theoretical Implications: The outcomes have meaningful implications for our understanding of the world.
Let’s look at some classic examples to illustrate what I’m talking about:
Einstein’s Elevator
Albert Einstein didn’t pull the theory of general relativity out of thin air. No, he used one hell of a thought experiment to get there. Enter the Einstein Elevator, aka “The Happiest Thought of My Life.”
Imagine you’re trapped in an elevator. Not any elevator, mind you, but one floating in the emptiness of space. No windows, no “ding” when you reach your floor, just you and your thoughts in a metal box.
Now, Einstein asks: If you’re accelerating upwards at 9.8 m/s² (the same as Earth’s gravity), could you tell the difference between this scenario and standing in an elevator on Earth?
In both cases, you’d feel a force pushing you down. Drop a pen, and it falls to the floor. Jump, and you hit your head on the ceiling (because you’re a klutz, obviously). There’s absolutely no experiment you could conduct inside that elevator to tell whether you’re on Earth or accelerating through space.
This seemingly simple scenario led to a profound realization: gravity and acceleration are fundamentally indistinguishable. This is the principle of equivalence, and it’s the cornerstone of general relativity, the theory that explains how massive objects warp the fabric of space-time.
But Einstein didn’t stop there. He pushed this elevator idea to its limits. If gravity and acceleration are equivalent, what happens when you have a really massive object, like a planet or a star? Well, its gravity would bend the path of light, in the same way you’d see light bending if you shone a flashlight in an accelerating elevator. And guess what? We’ve observed this happening in space, with distant galaxies bending the light from even more distant objects behind them.
This is the kind of thought experiment that revolutionizes our understanding of the cosmos. It’s not designed to confirm existing biases or push a hidden agenda. It’s a mental tool crafted to pry open the secrets of the universe, to challenge our most fundamental assumptions about how reality works.
Schrödinger’s Cat
Thanks to The Big Bang Theory practically beating this one to death with a pair of novelty Hulk hands, this thought experiment has almost become a meme. But don’t let its pop culture status fool you — Schrödinger’s Cat is a brain-twisting exploration of quantum mechanics that’ll leave you questioning reality itself.
Erwin Schrödinger constructed this scenario to illustrate the sheer absurdity of applying quantum principles to everyday objects.
Picture a cat, sealed in a box with a vial of poison, a radioactive source, and a device that will shatter the vial if it detects radioactive decay. The twist? Quantum mechanics tells us that until an atom is observed, it exists in a superposition of states — both decayed and not decayed simultaneously.
If the atom’s state determines the cat’s fate, then according to quantum theory, until we open the box and observe the system, the cat must also exist in a superposition of states. It’s both alive and dead at the same time. Schrödinger wasn’t advocating for shoving cats into death boxes in the name of science. He was pointing out the logical conclusion of extending quantum principles to larger systems — and how utterly bonkers that conclusion seems.
This thought experiment forces us to grapple with some mind-melting questions: At what point does a quantum system become a classical one? Can a living being exist in a superposition of states? Is observation really necessary to collapse a quantum state, or is there some other mechanism at play?
These questions are about how we understand reality itself. The implications ripple out into fields like quantum computing, where researchers are trying to harness the power of superposition to create computers exponentially more powerful than anything we have today.
The Trolley Problem
Philippa Foot cooked up a mindfuck that has challenged philosophy students and ethicists for decades. Here’s the scenario:
You’re standing near a trolley track and notice a runaway trolley heading towards five people tied to the tracks. You realize you can save these five individuals, but the only way to do so is by pulling a lever to divert the trolley onto another track where it would kill one person instead.
This thought experiment forces us to confront the conflict between two ethical principles: the idea that it’s wrong to harm an innocent person, and the utilitarian notion that we should act to bring about the greatest good for the greatest number.
Philosophers such as Judith Jarvis Thomson later expanded on the problem with variations to explore different aspects of our moral intuitions:
- The Fat Man: You are on a footbridge with a large stranger. The only way to stop the trolley and save the five is to push the stranger onto the tracks, killing him but stopping the trolley.
- The Loop Track: The track loops around, and the five people are on the far end. You can divert the trolley to a side track where one person is tied, killing them but saving the five. This scenario feels different from pushing someone. But why?
- The Organ Lottery: You’re a doctor with five patients who need organ transplants. A healthy patient comes in for a routine check-up. Do you harvest their organs to save the five?
Each variation probes different aspects of our moral intuitions, forcing us to grapple with questions like: Is there a moral difference between action and inaction? Between intended and foreseen consequences? How do we weigh personal relationships against impartial moral calculations?
The Trolley Problem is a powerful tool for examining the foundations of our moral reasoning, exposing contradictions in our ethical intuitions and the limits of simple moral rules. It also has real-world implications. As we develop AI systems for autonomous vehicles, we’re essentially programming trolley problems into their decision-making algorithms. When a self-driving car faces an unavoidable accident, how should it choose who to protect or endanger?
The Epidemic of Intellectual Peacocking
Clearly, there’s value in real thought experiments. So why has “thought experiment” become the go-to term for every half-assed idea that pops into someone’s head?
We’re living in an age where the appearance of intelligence is often valued more than actual intellectual rigor. We’re all contestants in a bizarre game show where the prize is being perceived as the smartest person in the room.
This desperation to appear intelligent has led us down a path of intellectual vanity. We’ve become peacocks, but instead of colorful feathers, we’re flaunting fancy terms and pseudo-profound bullshit.
We’ll slap impressive labels on the most mundane mental meanderings, hoping that no one will notice the emperor has no clothes — or in this case, that our “thought experiment” is a half-baked idea we had while waiting for our coffee to brew.
The Irony of Sounding Smart
The misuse of “thought experiment” backfires spectacularly. Instead of making us sound like the next Stephen Hawking, it reveals our intellectual insecurity like a neon sign flashing “I’m trying too hard!” We think we’re elevating our musings to the realm of profound insight, but in reality, we’re slapping a fancy label on a mediocre product.
Calling something a thought experiment doesn’t magically imbue it with depth or significance. It’s not an intellectual Midas touch that turns every random brain fart into philosophical gold. Your “what if dogs could talk” scenario isn’t suddenly going to unlock the secrets of the universe because you’ve dubbed it a thought experiment.
It’s time to reclaim “thought experiment” for what it truly is: a powerful tool for exploring ideas, not a verbal crutch for propping up our intellectual egos. We need to challenge ourselves to think deeper, to question our assumptions, and to engage in genuine mental exploration.
Here’s what we’re going to do:
- Stop throwing around “thought experiment” like confetti at a parade of pseudo-intellectualism. If it’s not a carefully constructed scenario designed to explore a specific principle or theory, it’s not a thought experiment. Period.
- Embrace the discomfort of real intellectual exploration. If your “thought experiment” always leads you to a neat, tidy conclusion that confirms everything you already believed, you’re doing it wrong.
- Call things what they are. Had a random idea? Great. Call it an idea. An interesting hypothesis? Fantastic. But don’t dress it up as a thought experiment unless it truly is one.
- Push our thinking beyond the superficial. Ask the hard questions: What assumptions are we making? What principles are we testing? What are the logical consequences of our ideas?
- Cultivate intellectual honesty. There’s no shame in having a cool thought or an interesting hypothesis. Not everything needs to be elevated to the status of a thought experiment.
We’re reclaiming “thought experiment.” We’re saving it for those mental exercises that truly deserve the title — the ones that challenge us, push the boundaries of our understanding, and lead to genuine insights. We’re restoring it to its rightful place in our intellectual toolkit.
By doing so, our conversations will become richer, our thinking deeper, and our insights more profound (as if that’s fucking hard).
Not because we’re trying to sound smart, but because we’re genuinely engaging in the messy, challenging, exhilarating process of exploring ideas.
