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.
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.
It was intentional irony.
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.
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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.
I understood this and think it’s accurate.
What do you think the ratio is there? And how much does it vary culture to culture?
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.
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 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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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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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
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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I can’t think of any that I’d be particularly surprised by at this point.
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.
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.
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.
My deepest core belief is that there is a non-zero likelihood (which may be quite high) that everything I think I know about the world is wrong.
If it was proven to me beyond a doubt that something I know is undoubtedly correct, I would probably think that there was a possibility that the proof was wrong and go on with my day.
I’m actually good at what I do, and everyone actually likes me and doesn’t think I’m just dead weight.
That I live in a constitutional democratic republic
Would be interested in a list of past facts that turned out to be wrong.
Government of the people, for the people, by the people.
That the sun is the center of the universe
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.
For me it would be that while lies are in many cases morally justifiable.
My current belief on this is that lying is never right unless you’re literally using it as a form of self defence as an alternative to physical violence. However, I also tend to believe that absolute beliefs are virtually always wrong, and these two are conflicting beliefs. I can atleast think of a few extreme scenarios where a white lie seems justifiable even when you’re not in danger. For example: a dying person showing their painting and you complimenting it despite not liking it.
