(Untitled)

[maria_sputnik]

Why do people believe what they believe?*

ALSO: where + how did you learn/discover/accept the stuff you believe? What's the "intake process" through which one of your ideas graduates from hypothesis to belief?

*About politics, science, the Ultimate Nature of It All, human behavior, et cetera.

Comments

[uberdionysus]

Heh. Just going for the big questions, huh

what we see depends on where we point our telescope

[maria_sputnik]

i have days where i'm not so sure about the existence of the world

[uberdionysus]

Sure, framing is important and inevitable, and all pursuits are constrained by ideology. But that's not the same as having a conscious belief. You can't fully escape your environment, so you're always hampered by the surrounding ideologies. Scientists are no exception, yet science is still comprised of very few beliefs

we are believing machines

[maria_sputnik]

ah yeah. i think what i mean is that science is driven by unconscious assumption, not that it's driven by belief.

i can also see how being in all those different reality-tunnels might lead you to feel that most reality-tunnels are a load of horseshit. i kind of feel the same way. but i half-believe, y'know? sometimes i feel like something's wrong with me that i can't wholeheartedly believe.

what was the cult, anyway? and how did you manage to worm your way out of that many all-encompassing brainwashy organizations?

also, do you have any ideas about why the need to believe is so strong? it seems like people don't do very well with skepticism and uncertainty, and i'm not sure exactly why, esp. when the world seems so perma-conflicted and mysterious

[squidflakes]

At first, it came from my Dad's Drive Time Talks, and my mother's general beliefs. Since they were divorced, I got to different opinions at two different times.

As I got older, I got this sudden urge to fact check and broaden my horizons. Now I'm a lot more tolerant for some things and a lot less tolerant of others.

[maria_sputnik]

i too am in many ways a spicy synthesis of my improbable parents

what stuff are you more tolerant of? what stuff are you less? and why?

[squidflakes]

I've become more tolerant of gays, lesbians, and other people's view points. I am much much less tolerant of religion in general.

Kind of glib, but.. hey! glib!

[maria_sputnik]

yeah, but, see, are they? watching the news would lead me to agree, but in my own life i hardly ever meet anyone who is dumb as a rock. do you meet a lot of dumb-as-rocks-people?

[maria_sputnik]

interesting! do you have any theory on what makes people turn out not-dumb?

[astoriapark]

It all started with this video on youtube...

actually, youtube did factor into the mental instability provoking these questions

[maria_sputnik]

THAT'S WHAT I'M SAYING

[maria_sputnik]

or as otherwise stated,

1) i believe because it tastes good
2) i am a scientist, i seek to understand things
3) ONE OF US

but 1)begins to suffer some pretty heavy static if you think about it for more than two minutes and 2)the more scientific i try to get about things, the more unknowable they seem. like if i read a book about history it just seems to illuminate more UNKNOWABLE CORRIDORS THAN I HAD PREVIOUSLY IMAGINED EXIST. troublesome!

3) is the creepiest and most potent, i think, and i feel sort of vertiginous when i think about how much of "my" brain is not my own, i.e. probably about 93%

return of irrational subjectivist

[maria_sputnik]

dude, "knowledge-boner" and "mystery-boner" are going to be the name of my two next record albums

it's just that...everything...is so vast! there is so much of it, and most of the good information that we have just leads to bigger'n'trickier questions.

there are still truths.
i believe this too, but half-assedly. even the true truths seem sort of wormhole-ridden and squirmy. which, curiously, doesn't make me less hungry for information AT ALL