So, in other words: which of your core beliefs do you think has the highest likelihood of being wrong? And by wrong, I don’t necessarily mean the exact opposite - just that the truth is significantly different from what you currently believe it to be.
I’m actually good at what I do, and everyone actually likes me and doesn’t think I’m just dead weight.
“Bullshit. There’s no way the moon is actually made of cheese. That’s just a stupid story you tell kids!”
The cream does, in fact, rise to the top. All the rich idiots I’ve met were brilliant in a subtle way I couldn’t appreciate, and I myself am just being lead on by the people I know about having redeeming qualities of any kind. All the studies showing social mobility is small both upwards and downwards had some kind of fatal flaw built into their assumptions.
Stuff about moral decline is another candidate. In both cases, I’m actually pretty sure everyone in every time, place and walk of life has roughly the same capacities on average, but narratives suggesting otherwise are so damn pervasive I have to wonder if I’m missing something.
Probably the belief that there (isn’t) some kind of omnipotent god interested in guiding our affairs. It’s not like I’d ever be able to know. How would I cope? Pretty easily. It’d be comforting. That’s a pretty good reason to doubt it, since I’m biased in favor of it.
The thing is, I’m not picking this one because it’s the most likely one, but because all of the other “core” beliefs are either completely subjective judgments that can’t be “wrong” or are flexible enough that it doesn’t really matter.
And omnibenevolent? A god that’s just screwing with us is feeling relatively more likely these days, and I’m not comforted.
that part is tautological. if the almighty is perfection, then benevolence is defined by it, not by us. so the only way one can consistently hold that belief is to admit that we are the imperfection. we are the disease, we are punished. i guess that’s why i dont believe that shit lol
Yeah, that’s often put forward, but I never really found the argument satisfactory. A deity can tell me starving children is benevolence all it wants, and that just means that it’s using the word differently from me. I don’t care how impressive it is.
yeah the concepts of good and evil dont really make sense when addressing the divine.
That people’s ‘default’ morality is ‘good’.
It isn’t. It is actually pure apathy and only do we get taught, groomed, learn, decide, etc. about morality.
If that is true, then some people are actually ‘better’ and ‘worse’ than others. If so, then my entire outlook on human life will need to change. Don’t know to what, but that is the existential threat.
Recently had to come to the conclusion, that even though I have never ‘tried’ to learn, observe, or otherwise be smart, that I am well above average intelligence to those immediately around me. This is beyond infuriating. How can I be ‘better’ than everyone on average without even trying? It infuriates me to no end.
Felt this in my gut. I couldve written it. Ive had to recalibrate my entire framework for humanity as of late. My best lense has been through developmental psychology. What you frame as morality, I have come to the conclusion that most folks never develop into full grown adults. Its a childs morality. When I realized I was surrounded by children in adult bodies all the pieces fell into place. Its quite isolating. Anyhoo, best of luck with it.
That climate change won’t wipe out humanity. I firmly believe we’ll survive, but it will be a massively devastating event, like 1/3 of the population will die. I think the equator will probably become uninhabitable, but more northern or southern land will become more like the equator. Maybe I’m wrong though, and we won’t survive. Maybe there’s a reason we don’t see any advanced space faring civilizations.
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Huge migrations
And you think the ensuing wars alone wouldn’t kill half of us? It’s going to be a shit show that the youngest generation will get to experience in its fullest
I didn’t mean to make it sound instant, but I don’t think it’s going to take hundreds of years. I think it’s more on the order of decades. The deaths I’m talking about will come from things like floods, famines, hurricanes, heat waves, etc.
Sad to say but I think you’re right and came to almost the same conclusion some time ago. Except I think war and man-made famine will far outstrip anything even angry mother nature is going to do to us.
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Yep. The climate apocalypse is here, just just not evenly distributed yet.
New and fun communicable diseases has entered the chat.
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I’m not aware of a single pandemic that “came from a lab leak” unless you’re talking about abject morons who think COVID19 was a lab leak.
To your first point:
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They’d have to have evidence in either of those two cases that the labs in question ever kept these virus and there is not. One eye witness. One document. I’d also accept research showing that a significant number of the initial cases could be traced to workers at a specific lab. There is nothing like that. It’s pure speculation and the reports you cite admit as much.
The Republicans in the US House came to the same conclusion as to COVID. They are lying.
Within one or two decades, the exact family of bats in the exact cave where SARS CoV2 (COVID 19) originated will be irrefutably identified, just as it was with SARS CoV1 in a cave in Yunnan, China. As with both of those two viruses, most of the initial cases were in food handlers in China or people adjacent to food handlers, not in lab workers. The lab leak hypothesis is asinine, based on nothing more than racism.
It’s not racism any more than me distrusting my government makes me racist against ‘Americans’. It’s more Occam’s razor.
Pandemic of a virus that starts in the city that has THE LAB that studies that type of virus, in a country whose government where the one thing you can always count on them doing is covering up anything that makes them look bad? It’s either that or a MASSIVE coincidence.
It makes sense and that’s why people believe it’s possible. I agree some evidence would be nice but considering who runs that country that’s incredibly unlikely.
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That I live in a constitutional democratic republic
That there’s no such thing as too much inclusivity in LGBTQ.
I don’t think people who want to pretend to be dogs or cars or whatever inanimate object they fixated on as a child are harmful to society, but they have proven to only delegitamize actually real gender identities that are being actively erased in the real world.
I don’t care if people want to wear collars and shit in litter boxes because that makes their brains happy, but I do care when those people show up in public places wanting to be treated with the same seriousness as actually marginalized minorities and get LGBTQ movements laughed out of the room.
I tend to agree with you, but this same line of thought is used by many in the queer community to ‘other’ bisexuals and trans people, for example. Everyone draws the line in a slightly different place. I don’t know what the right answer is. For me I would probably draw the line between ‘sexuality’ and ‘fetish’. Your sexuality should be protected from discrimination and persecution, but in my mind a fetish is more akin to a hobby or sport you enjoy and wouldn’t deserve the same level of protections or attention.
You can easily choose not to walk around in a dog collar on a leash in a rubber suit in public, because you’re just doing it for kicks. You can’t choose not to be queer.
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That people are fundamentally benevolent to one another. Obviously it can be trained out of you by circumstance, overcome by self-interest, and mental illness is a thing, but I think people innately care for one another. It’s why dehumanization is the first step to committing atrocities.
But if someone offered proof that I’m wrong that might be the least surprising thing that happened all week. And if I’m wrong, the evil-doers are sub-human and should be culled without mercy until I am right.
The evil-doers are sub-human and should be culled without mercy until I’m right.
I know what you mean but that sentence is really funny when 1.5 sentences earlier you said “it’s why dehumanization is the first step to commiting atrocities” haha
It’s the intolerance paradox in action. It’s like tolerating cancer. Cancer is a living thing, it doesn’t mean you respect it and let it have its way with you without interference. Same principle.
The intolerance paradox is an explanation of fascism, not a rebuttal.
It demonstrates the motivation: destroy those who pose a danger to our way of life. It allows us a justification to do to others exactly what we accuse them of doing to us.
We’re coming for the Nazis today, and nobody is stopping us. Who are we going after tomorrow?
Hard disagree. You’ve oversimplified. We ONLY need to do to the Nazis what they want to do to everyone else, because we have no other choice except to to let them win and then die. Their actions dictate their demise, not ours.
If they left everyone alone, they’d be left alone. Since they want to kill most of the planet, and will given the opportunity, they must be killed.
because we have no other choice except to to let them win and then die.
No, that’s untrue. We do, indeed, have a choice.
For the nazis to thrive, society has to value the ability to eradicate others. We have to accept the idea that we may very well be the ones in the wrong. Probably not today, but quite possibly tomorrow. The Nazi does not value such introspection. They cannot consider a world in which they could ever be the bad guys. Our willingness to annihilate a perceived threat must always be tempered with the humility that we are not an omniscient, objective source of truth. We can, indeed, be the baddies.
The delineation always needs to be at the point of eradicating “others”. That always needs to be a trait of “them” and never of “us”. Our mindset must always be “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
That statement is addressed to a hateful speaker, but that speaker is not the intended audience. The intended audience is the one who would try to stop someone from speaking. The message is “We collectively defend even the people we hate.”
We have to accept the idea that we may very well be the ones in the wrong.
I will never accept that to let everyone live in peace no matter what they look like or who they consensually sleep with, is wrong. And therefore the rest of your argument falls apart for me. Nazism is a hateful, violent belief system and not something you are born with, and for those reasons is unworthy of protection of any kind.
I see where you’re coming from. I just don’t agree with it. Hatred must be stamped out, and that can’t always be done peacefully. I am ok with this paradox, hypocrisy, whatever you want to call it.
Hatred must be stamped out,
I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend - to the death - your right to say it. The same goes for anyone you would silence or eradicate.
You can’t out-auth a fascist without becoming a fascist yourself, and I don’t want to live in a fascist state.
It was intentional irony.
That we can build a sane, rational society.
One could argue by historical standards that we’re closer than not already. How sane would you say sane is?
I thought that Western style Democratic republics were leading the world toward purely secular forms of government, but yet another group of sociopaths has managed to take power. They have distracted the science-illiterate majority into petty conflicts based on different versions of magical thinking.
So, “sane” would mean that we don’t elevate the least sane among us (sociopaths) into positions of power. “Rational” would mean that public policy decisions are mostly made based on evidence, rather than fundamentally irrational belief systems.
I fear that we are barely-sentient primates doomed to repeat the same awful mistakes, when simple, obvious solutions are within our grasp.
Yes, that’s fair. I worry about similar things - we had 5000 years of all dictatorships in the historical record, with randomly varying types and levels of intolerance and brutality, and then real progress for 200. How do we know it’s here to stay?
I haven’t given up hope yet, because we’re so far ahead of where we were. Even with the US down the forces of enlightenment lead the world. There’s also the question of how much longer humans are going to be solely in charge, anyway. Do we really expect no AGI for another 100 years, or that we wouldn’t use it to make the big decisions as well?
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That people are not wilfully stupid. The last 10 years have proved people will act against their own benefit if TV tells them to do it.
That people can change through conversations. It’s tough to accept, but most people only change when forced to.
I’ve noticed 2 types on this, stick-in-the-muds and peak-hunters.
Stick in the muds latch on to the first version of a belief they encounter properly. They will stubbornly hang on to that for as long as possible.
Peak hunters are the opposite, they will rapidly change beliefs to maximise the results/find truth.
Interestingly, after some time, the 2 groups look almost identical. The peak hunters tend to find the ‘best’ version of their belief, based on their existing memeplex. To budge them, you need to show a different belief is better, on their rankings (not yours). This is hard when they have already maximised it. Without knowing how they are weighing things, they can look like stick in the muds.
The biggest tell is to question why they believe what they do. If they have a reasonably comprehensive answer, they are likely peak hunters. Stick in the muds generally can’t articulate why their belief is better, outside of common sound bites.
What do you think the ratio is there? And how much does it vary culture to culture?
I understood this and think it’s accurate.
People or beliefs?
I’ve changed my mind many times based on online discussions.
Beliefs. I’ve changed my mind too, but it seems to be the exception.
I can’t think of any that I’d be particularly surprised by at this point.
I don’t think it could be anything I expect. Most of the things I have consciously evaluated about myself I’ve come to a conclusion based on rational or empirical evidence, so I am certain either in my knowledge or ignorance about a topic. Most of the time when I’ve been proven wrong it’s about a belief I imbibed as a child and never questioned or considered until then.
The way I landed on all my current beliefs was taking in information from as many places as I could and I decided on what I think is right.
There are a ton of topics that can’t have an objectively correct answer which makes things fairly complicated.
