alt Hacker NewsHere's One Weird Trick™ to avoid being an ideologue: be ok with being wrong.
Flipping that over: aspire to be correct in your beliefs, not in "being right".
Karl Popper (the man behind the Intolerance of Intolerance "paradox) identified it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability
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I only recently learned that most peoples beliefs are not "factual beliefs". Since most of mine are, I thought that's how other people work. I think Popper may have made the same mistake by assuming "correctness" is always the primary value a belief offers.
The other kind of beliefs are "Symbolic beliefs." Symbolic beliefs are not held because they are true, or because they are useful on their own. They're held because they signal that you belong to the tribe. They are similar to the "Alief", which is an automatic unequestioned belief. Most Symbolic beliefs are aliefs, but not all.
Since learning about this I've been trying to identify my own aliefs and symbolic beliefs and question them. It turns out I have more than I'd realized. We probably all do.
"Correct" is a synonym for "right". What you need is unrefuted.
As the article talks about Marx, let us consider the falsifiable predictions of Narx, who died in 1883.
* Economic crises (recessions, depressions) would continue, and becone worse over time (example: subprime crisis of 2008)
* profitability rates would go down over time
* wealth would concentrate more over time
* middle class would be slowly shrunk - say, doctor's losing their own offices and made to see people in 15 minute appointment blocks
* real hourly wages would fall
* proletariat will revolt and displace the bourgeoisie, in the manner the bourgeoisie overthrew the feudal order
These predictions are all falsifiable
Falsifiability - misunderstood idea that's often used to discredit string theory, for example.
As stated on Wikipedia:
> Falsifiability is a standard of evaluation of scientific statements, including theories and hypotheses. A statement is falsifiable if it belongs to a language or logical structure capable of describing an empirical observation that contradicts it.