Systematic suspension of disbelief explained

I've been asked by some friends to explain what I mean by this; it's basically pretty simple-one practices "turning off" any critical thinking while examining a curious belief or puzzling event, one attempts to resist our innate tendency to reach for explanations based on what we believe we know, and merely accept the information being presented as though it is literally true, regardless of what we might otherwise think. We "suspend" our tendency to disbelieve. Concurrently, we do not particularly believe, but merely take in, uncritically, the relation. It's sort of the polarity of exercising critical thinking in a skeptic's fashion.

Now, why would one want to do this? Well, for starters, the notion is grounded in a taoist understanding of balance and polarity; might there not be some benefit to stretch the mind and imagination in the opposite manner we normally employ them? In SSD, we are exercising that part of our mind that is rarely employed. Too, we are dispassionately considering that, perhaps, there's something in the previously unconsidered that we might want to examine more closely, uncontaminated by our habitual understandings. And, ultimately, I find it fun.

Now, here's a link to an important skeptic site:

http://skeptoid.com/episode_guide.php


Brian Dunning does a yeoman job critically assessing pop phenomena and ephemera; I don't always agree with him (in fact, somewhat rarely) but in the service of SSD, it's only right to employ the same discipline to skeptics that we apply to "true-believers". In fact, it's downright enjoyable to systematically suspend disbelief in disbelieving-it turns the whole thing into a delightful Ourouborean twisted knot of what-do-I-think-and-why-do-I-think-it? And, dispassionately examing our beliefs and disbeliefs reveals amazing things about ourselves to ourselves.

Robert Anton Wilson promoted a more-active SSD, wherein the practicioner would actively believe the previously disbelieved or unconsidered. And while that's a worthy exercize (his spelling), I find that a bit taxing-I seem to get more out of merely suspending any belief or disbelief by thinking, "who can really say? Isn't Universe far too huge for me to totally apprehend? Maybe this view is right?" And then, that little bit of my mind that stands outside of all of this, gets to go tee-hee-hee. And, ultimately, I come away from it all knowing a bit more about what I, at the end of the day, really do believe.