Do we think & communicate (almost) entirely in fabricated stories?

[Politesse]

When we're talking phenomena that can be directly measured now, a little more certainty is to be expected

That describes neither most subatomic particles nor the origin of the universe.

 

[rousseau]

When we're talking phenomena that can be directly measured now, a little more certainty is to be expected

That describes neither most subatomic particles nor the origin of the universe.

I've been far too buried in difficult software problems this week for my brain to process what you're getting at. So if you want to do something more than bored post I'm going to need more words

 

[bilby]

So... we should be doubtful of our knowledge of a simple question like the history of our own species, on our own planet,

In what universe can that question reasonably be described as "simple"??

The history of our own families, back just two or three generations, is often mysterious and plagued by contradictory evidence.

History is always harder to know than the present, if only because we can run tests and gather new evidence in the present.

but utterly confident in our guesses about subatomic interactions and the birth of the universe?

They aren't just guesses, they are very rigorously tested guesses, which have failed to be falsified despite massive effort and expenditure.

And the birth of the universe is still observable, albeit from a great distance. The birth of our grandparents is less easy to see.

 

[bilby]

When we're talking phenomena that can be directly measured now, a little more certainty is to be expected

That describes neither most subatomic particles nor the origin of the universe.

On tbe contrary, most subatomic particles CAN be directly measured using the LHC and other similar equipment. And the origin of the universe is directly measurable too - that's what the CMBR is.

 

[pood]

Let’s hear from Steven Hawking on this matter (not that it’s right BECAUSE he says it, but his credentials are certainly relevant, and, anyway, I have my own critique of him appended at the end):

Hawking thinks that realism is a “naïve view of reality” that “is not compatible with modern physics” (16). His argument is first that “our brains interpret the input by our sensory organs by making a model of the world” (16). This implies that our perceived world is brain or mind dependent and therefore just a model of world – a different mind-brain would produce a different model. In addition, when theorizing about that perceived world in physics, we build models of the unperceived entities that are behind the observable phenomena and generate them. However, there is usually more than one model or theory available for the same domain with the same predictive accuracy, but with different fundamental elements and concepts (60). We can use whichever model or theory is more convenient, and therefore “one cannot be said to be more real than the other” (16). In the philosophy of science, this argument is known as “the underdetermination of scientific theories” and was first articulated in the early 20th century by the French physicist, historian, and philosopher of science Pierre Duhem. The result of this fundamental multiplicity of empirically adequate models is that for Hawking, “there is no picture- or theory independent concept of reality.

Bolds by me

Here is a quote not from the article above, but from the Hawking book to which it refers:

There might be one history in which the moon is made of Roquefort cheese. But we have observed that the moon is not made of cheese, which is bad news for mice. Hence histories in which the moon is made of cheese do not contribute to the present state of our universe, though they might contribute to others. That might sound like science fiction, but it isn’t.

Note that in this very same book, as the article mentions, and on page one at that (I read the book), Hawking declares, “Philosophy is dead.” Philosophy is dead? The idea that there is a version of reality in which the moon is made of Roquefort cheese (i.e., scientific anti-realism) is the very epitome of of philosophy. Also, since philosophy is much more than just the philosophy of science, I’ve no idea where Hawking came up with the idea that “philosophy is dead.”

 

[pood]

Earlier I referred to the idea of the dog in a library, which I believe was articulated by William James.

A dog in a library will have a model of reality, or a “theory,” so to say, if dogs can be said to theorize, although we now know they can converse with humans via signboards and even ask questions. The theory (empirically adequate) is that books do not smell like food. From this theory or model, they make a prediction: books are not edible. This prediction is instrumentally useful, just as Ptolemy’s geocentric model was both empirically adequate and instrumentally useful for more than a thousand years. But of course, the dog’s model does not even begin to touch on what books are to us, in a wider context of “book.”

Now it may be argued, of course, that if reality has some wider context than humans even CAN be aware of or investigate, than that wider reality is irrelevant to us. But is it? The dog’s owner might take out a book from a library counseling him to beat his dog if it is refractory, and the owner proceeds to do just that. So, yes, these wider contexts can be relevant to the dog and might be relevant to us as well.

This is why I identify as an agnostic (a-gnosis, dealing with knowledge claims rather than belief or non-belief) rather than strictly an atheist, because while I certainly do not believe there are gods of any sort, I don’t claim to know that because I can’t.

 

[pood]

Just to throw something else into the mix, we have several views of a multiverse, including the quantum multiverse Hawking alludes to that may well include a moon made of Roquefort cheese. Another multiverse was actually advocated by the late analytic philosopher David K. Lewis, called the modal multiverse, or extreme modal realism. On this account, all counterfactual accounts of reality (possible non-actual worlds in modal-speak) are actually real, just not to us. On this account (says Lewis) there is an actual world, but actual only to its inhabitants, in which donkeys talk, another in which pigs fly, and let another in which the Greek gods are literally real. Lewis says that since these worlds are logically possibly, we should infer that they actually exist — just not for us.

Ludicrous as that might sound, he wrote a whole book, which I also read, expatiating on this subject.

 

[pood]

Just to elaborate a bit, Lewis held that actuality is an “indexical,” or point of view, exactly like HERE is a spatial indexical, and NOW is a temporal indexical. The book is On the Plurality of Worlds. He said when people understood what he was saying, he invariably was met with an “incredulous stare,” and he certainly evoked that from me.

 

[pood]

There is a wonderful short story by the Argentine fantasist Jorge Luis Borge, The LIbrary of Babel, that posits the universe as a vast and perhaps infinite library in which we are all sojourners. Most of the books contain nothing but nonsense, but here and there enigmatic phrases such as O Time Thy Pyramids pop up, and from these we try to construct meaning — the narrative strain again.

 

[steve_bank]

We all communicate in pictures. Metaphors, myths, analogies, and stories.

I take that to be a slam dunk. so to speak.

Psychologically the Abraham god and Greek gods are a refection of human beings not the other way around.

 

[rousseau]

Let’s hear from Steven Hawking on this matter (not that it’s right BECAUSE he says it, but his credentials are certainly relevant, and, anyway, I have my own critique of him appended at the end):

Hawking thinks that realism is a “naïve view of reality” that “is not compatible with modern physics” (16). His argument is first that “our brains interpret the input by our sensory organs by making a model of the world” (16). This implies that our perceived world is brain or mind dependent and therefore just a model of world – a different mind-brain would produce a different model. In addition, when theorizing about that perceived world in physics, we build models of the unperceived entities that are behind the observable phenomena and generate them. However, there is usually more than one model or theory available for the same domain with the same predictive accuracy, but with different fundamental elements and concepts (60). We can use whichever model or theory is more convenient, and therefore “one cannot be said to be more real than the other” (16). In the philosophy of science, this argument is known as “the underdetermination of scientific theories” and was first articulated in the early 20th century by the French physicist, historian, and philosopher of science Pierre Duhem. The result of this fundamental multiplicity of empirically adequate models is that for Hawking, “there is no picture- or theory independent concept of reality.

Bolds by me

Here is a quote not from the article above, but from the Hawking book to which it refers:

There might be one history in which the moon is made of Roquefort cheese. But we have observed that the moon is not made of cheese, which is bad news for mice. Hence histories in which the moon is made of cheese do not contribute to the present state of our universe, though they might contribute to others. That might sound like science fiction, but it isn’t.

Note that in this very same book, as the article mentions, and on page one at that (I read the book), Hawking declares, “Philosophy is dead.” Philosophy is dead? The idea that there is a version of reality in which the moon is made of Roquefort cheese (i.e., scientific anti-realism) is the very epitome of of philosophy. Also, since philosophy is much more than just the philosophy of science, I’ve no idea where Hawking came up with the idea that “philosophy is dead.”

I could be wrong but I think what Hawking is saying is that we can't access reality directly. I have no qualms with that. But this doesn't touch on the quality of theory we do have about reality. All it says is that our understanding of reality is by necessity contingent on theory.

I'll take Hawkings point and discuss a theory like evolution. It may be true that we need to theorize about the phenomenon of 'life' to understand it. But as far as anyone can tell evolution is an extremely powerful description of what life is and where it comes from. It's not just something that scratches the surface of an otherwise mysterious void. It pretty much explains biological life entirely, which is a major feature of the universe. You can take many of our other theories and find that they are, in practice, very powerful theories with immense explanatory power. They're really not as superficial as you're making them out to be.

I don't really know how else to explain it but you just don't seem to agree with me on the basis of a bunch of philosophy you've read. I've spent the past 20 years studying just about every field out there, and I can tell you that we're not dogs sniffing books.

 

[pood]

Let’s hear from Steven Hawking on this matter (not that it’s right BECAUSE he says it, but his credentials are certainly relevant, and, anyway, I have my own critique of him appended at the end):

Hawking thinks that realism is a “naïve view of reality” that “is not compatible with modern physics” (16). His argument is first that “our brains interpret the input by our sensory organs by making a model of the world” (16). This implies that our perceived world is brain or mind dependent and therefore just a model of world – a different mind-brain would produce a different model. In addition, when theorizing about that perceived world in physics, we build models of the unperceived entities that are behind the observable phenomena and generate them. However, there is usually more than one model or theory available for the same domain with the same predictive accuracy, but with different fundamental elements and concepts (60). We can use whichever model or theory is more convenient, and therefore “one cannot be said to be more real than the other” (16). In the philosophy of science, this argument is known as “the underdetermination of scientific theories” and was first articulated in the early 20th century by the French physicist, historian, and philosopher of science Pierre Duhem. The result of this fundamental multiplicity of empirically adequate models is that for Hawking, “there is no picture- or theory independent concept of reality.

Bolds by me

Here is a quote not from the article above, but from the Hawking book to which it refers:

There might be one history in which the moon is made of Roquefort cheese. But we have observed that the moon is not made of cheese, which is bad news for mice. Hence histories in which the moon is made of cheese do not contribute to the present state of our universe, though they might contribute to others. That might sound like science fiction, but it isn’t.

Note that in this very same book, as the article mentions, and on page one at that (I read the book), Hawking declares, “Philosophy is dead.” Philosophy is dead? The idea that there is a version of reality in which the moon is made of Roquefort cheese (i.e., scientific anti-realism) is the very epitome of of philosophy. Also, since philosophy is much more than just the philosophy of science, I’ve no idea where Hawking came up with the idea that “philosophy is dead.”

I could be wrong but I think what Hawking is saying is that we can't access reality directly. I have no qualms with that. But this doesn't touch on the quality of theory we do have about reality. All it says is that our understanding of reality is by necessity contingent on theory.

I'll take Hawkings point and discuss a theory like evolution. It may be true that we need to theorize about the phenomenon of 'life' to understand it. But as far as anyone can tell evolution is an extremely powerful description of what life is and where it comes from. It's not just something that scratches the surface of an otherwise mysterious void. It pretty much explains biological life entirely, which is a major feature of the universe. You can take many of our other theories and find that they are, in practice, very powerful theories with immense explanatory power. They're really not as superficial as you're making them out to be.

I don't really know how else to explain it but you just don't seem to agree with me on the basis of a bunch of philosophy you've read. I've spent the past 20 years studying just about every field out there, and I can tell you that we're not dogs sniffing books.

I’ve not said that our theories our superficial. Most of them are quite robust. But that’s not the point.

I’ve simply stated the anti-realist position, that the best we can expect from a theory is empirical adequacy and instrumental utility. The TOE meets those criteria in spades.

But the test for theoretical superficiality or robustness must alway occur in the context of our own particular cognitive architecture and perceptual apparatus, and not against some unobtainable standard of what is somehow “true” outside of us. And the strength of science, for us, is that theories change, or are discarded, as new evidence comes along.

I’ve given an example of a model that was empirically adequate and instrumental useful, and also wrong — Ptolemy’s geocentrism. Strictly, Newton’s “laws” are also wrong, but are still in use.

I think Hawking is saying that it makes no sense to ask what a reality outside the mind is, since whatever any sentient being makes of reality is necessarily mind-based. And in that he is no different from Kant, and Plato, and a number of others. He just gives it a scientific gloss that the others lacked, while insisting he is not doing philosophy, which is absurd.

Reading a “bunch of philosophy books” is good, not bad, and those scientists who scoff at philosophy might want to try it sometime.

What would the world like to, and how it theorize about, an alien intelligence that could remember the future, as so brilliantly depicted in the movie Arrival? If there were aliens who somehow had direct perceptual apprehension of the quantum realm, what would the history of life look like? Maybe their theory of evolution would involve constant decohrence of entangled superpositions across time, and that theory might be perfectly empirically adequate and instrumentally useful for them.

The “dogs sniffing at books” was simply to point out that other minds can have their own empirically adequate and instrumentally useful models of reality without those models touching on some wider truth, and I see no reason why humans are exempt from that.

 

[rousseau]

Let’s hear from Steven Hawking on this matter (not that it’s right BECAUSE he says it, but his credentials are certainly relevant, and, anyway, I have my own critique of him appended at the end):

Hawking thinks that realism is a “naïve view of reality” that “is not compatible with modern physics” (16). His argument is first that “our brains interpret the input by our sensory organs by making a model of the world” (16). This implies that our perceived world is brain or mind dependent and therefore just a model of world – a different mind-brain would produce a different model. In addition, when theorizing about that perceived world in physics, we build models of the unperceived entities that are behind the observable phenomena and generate them. However, there is usually more than one model or theory available for the same domain with the same predictive accuracy, but with different fundamental elements and concepts (60). We can use whichever model or theory is more convenient, and therefore “one cannot be said to be more real than the other” (16). In the philosophy of science, this argument is known as “the underdetermination of scientific theories” and was first articulated in the early 20th century by the French physicist, historian, and philosopher of science Pierre Duhem. The result of this fundamental multiplicity of empirically adequate models is that for Hawking, “there is no picture- or theory independent concept of reality.

Bolds by me

Here is a quote not from the article above, but from the Hawking book to which it refers:

There might be one history in which the moon is made of Roquefort cheese. But we have observed that the moon is not made of cheese, which is bad news for mice. Hence histories in which the moon is made of cheese do not contribute to the present state of our universe, though they might contribute to others. That might sound like science fiction, but it isn’t.

Note that in this very same book, as the article mentions, and on page one at that (I read the book), Hawking declares, “Philosophy is dead.” Philosophy is dead? The idea that there is a version of reality in which the moon is made of Roquefort cheese (i.e., scientific anti-realism) is the very epitome of of philosophy. Also, since philosophy is much more than just the philosophy of science, I’ve no idea where Hawking came up with the idea that “philosophy is dead.”

I could be wrong but I think what Hawking is saying is that we can't access reality directly. I have no qualms with that. But this doesn't touch on the quality of theory we do have about reality. All it says is that our understanding of reality is by necessity contingent on theory.

I'll take Hawkings point and discuss a theory like evolution. It may be true that we need to theorize about the phenomenon of 'life' to understand it. But as far as anyone can tell evolution is an extremely powerful description of what life is and where it comes from. It's not just something that scratches the surface of an otherwise mysterious void. It pretty much explains biological life entirely, which is a major feature of the universe. You can take many of our other theories and find that they are, in practice, very powerful theories with immense explanatory power. They're really not as superficial as you're making them out to be.

I don't really know how else to explain it but you just don't seem to agree with me on the basis of a bunch of philosophy you've read. I've spent the past 20 years studying just about every field out there, and I can tell you that we're not dogs sniffing books.

I’ve not said that our theories our superficial. Most of them are quite robust. But that’s not the point.

I’ve simply stated the anti-realist position, that the best we can expect from a theory is empirical adequacy and instrumental utility. The TOE meets those criteria in spades.

But the test for theoretical superficiality or robustness must alway occur in the context of our own particular cognitive architecture and perceptual apparatus, and not against some unobtainable standard of what is somehow “true” outside of us. And the strength of science, for us, is that theories change, or are discarded, as new evidence comes along.

I’ve given an example of a model that was empirically adequate and instrumental useful, and also wrong — Ptolemy’s geocentrism. Strictly, Newton’s “laws” are also wrong, but are still in use.

I think Hawking is saying that it makes no sense to ask what a reality outside the mind is, since whatever any sentient being makes of reality is necessarily mind-based. And in that he is no different from Kant, and Plato, and a number of others. He just gives it a scientific gloss that the others lacked, while insisting he is not doing philosophy, which is absurd.

Reading a “bunch of philosophy books” is good, not bad, and those scientists who scoff at philosophy might want to try it sometime.

What would the world like to, and how it theorize about, an alien intelligence that could remember the future, as so brilliantly depicted in the movie Arrival? If there were aliens who somehow had direct perceptual apprehension of the quantum realm, what would the history of life look like? Maybe their theory of evolution would involve constant decohrence of entangled superpositions across time, and that theory might be perfectly empirically adequate and instrumentally useful for them.

The “dogs sniffing at books” was simply to point out that other minds can have their own empirically adequate and instrumentally useful models of reality without those models touching on some wider truth, and I see no reason why humans are exempt from that.

I guess that's what I'm getting at though with the philosophy comment. The anti-realist position as you're presenting it is claiming a number of things, just not really demonstrating those claims with any kind of substantive argument. All I'm seeing is these things stated as true because someone said it, but I'm not seeing why it is true given the context of what we actually understand about reality.

I get the argument that you're presenting, I understand it, but in it's current form I just don't find it convincing.

 

[pood]

Let’s hear from Steven Hawking on this matter (not that it’s right BECAUSE he says it, but his credentials are certainly relevant, and, anyway, I have my own critique of him appended at the end):

Hawking thinks that realism is a “naïve view of reality” that “is not compatible with modern physics” (16). His argument is first that “our brains interpret the input by our sensory organs by making a model of the world” (16). This implies that our perceived world is brain or mind dependent and therefore just a model of world – a different mind-brain would produce a different model. In addition, when theorizing about that perceived world in physics, we build models of the unperceived entities that are behind the observable phenomena and generate them. However, there is usually more than one model or theory available for the same domain with the same predictive accuracy, but with different fundamental elements and concepts (60). We can use whichever model or theory is more convenient, and therefore “one cannot be said to be more real than the other” (16). In the philosophy of science, this argument is known as “the underdetermination of scientific theories” and was first articulated in the early 20th century by the French physicist, historian, and philosopher of science Pierre Duhem. The result of this fundamental multiplicity of empirically adequate models is that for Hawking, “there is no picture- or theory independent concept of reality.

Bolds by me

Here is a quote not from the article above, but from the Hawking book to which it refers:

There might be one history in which the moon is made of Roquefort cheese. But we have observed that the moon is not made of cheese, which is bad news for mice. Hence histories in which the moon is made of cheese do not contribute to the present state of our universe, though they might contribute to others. That might sound like science fiction, but it isn’t.

Note that in this very same book, as the article mentions, and on page one at that (I read the book), Hawking declares, “Philosophy is dead.” Philosophy is dead? The idea that there is a version of reality in which the moon is made of Roquefort cheese (i.e., scientific anti-realism) is the very epitome of of philosophy. Also, since philosophy is much more than just the philosophy of science, I’ve no idea where Hawking came up with the idea that “philosophy is dead.”

I could be wrong but I think what Hawking is saying is that we can't access reality directly. I have no qualms with that. But this doesn't touch on the quality of theory we do have about reality. All it says is that our understanding of reality is by necessity contingent on theory.

I'll take Hawkings point and discuss a theory like evolution. It may be true that we need to theorize about the phenomenon of 'life' to understand it. But as far as anyone can tell evolution is an extremely powerful description of what life is and where it comes from. It's not just something that scratches the surface of an otherwise mysterious void. It pretty much explains biological life entirely, which is a major feature of the universe. You can take many of our other theories and find that they are, in practice, very powerful theories with immense explanatory power. They're really not as superficial as you're making them out to be.

I don't really know how else to explain it but you just don't seem to agree with me on the basis of a bunch of philosophy you've read. I've spent the past 20 years studying just about every field out there, and I can tell you that we're not dogs sniffing books.

I’ve not said that our theories our superficial. Most of them are quite robust. But that’s not the point.

I’ve simply stated the anti-realist position, that the best we can expect from a theory is empirical adequacy and instrumental utility. The TOE meets those criteria in spades.

But the test for theoretical superficiality or robustness must alway occur in the context of our own particular cognitive architecture and perceptual apparatus, and not against some unobtainable standard of what is somehow “true” outside of us. And the strength of science, for us, is that theories change, or are discarded, as new evidence comes along.

I’ve given an example of a model that was empirically adequate and instrumental useful, and also wrong — Ptolemy’s geocentrism. Strictly, Newton’s “laws” are also wrong, but are still in use.

I think Hawking is saying that it makes no sense to ask what a reality outside the mind is, since whatever any sentient being makes of reality is necessarily mind-based. And in that he is no different from Kant, and Plato, and a number of others. He just gives it a scientific gloss that the others lacked, while insisting he is not doing philosophy, which is absurd.

Reading a “bunch of philosophy books” is good, not bad, and those scientists who scoff at philosophy might want to try it sometime.

What would the world like to, and how it theorize about, an alien intelligence that could remember the future, as so brilliantly depicted in the movie Arrival? If there were aliens who somehow had direct perceptual apprehension of the quantum realm, what would the history of life look like? Maybe their theory of evolution would involve constant decohrence of entangled superpositions across time, and that theory might be perfectly empirically adequate and instrumentally useful for them.

The “dogs sniffing at books” was simply to point out that other minds can have their own empirically adequate and instrumentally useful models of reality without those models touching on some wider truth, and I see no reason why humans are exempt from that.

I guess that's what I'm getting at though with the philosophy comment. The anti-realist position as you're presenting it is claiming a number of things, just not really demonstrating those claims with any kind of substantive argument. All I'm seeing is these things stated as true because someone said it, but I'm not seeing why it is true given the context of what we actually understand about reality.

I get the argument that you're presenting, I understand it, but in it's current form I just don't find it convincing.

I am not stating anything as true just because someone said it, but merely outlining the anti-realist position, which you can accept, reject, or remain agnostic about. Hawking himself seems to go in the anti-realist camp, The evidence or demonstration of the stance is really just the self-evident truth that we have no access to a world outside of our phenomenological one. This has been understood for a very long time. In particular I’m not suggesting we are as far from the “true” content of reality as a dog is from the “true” nature of a book. I’m simply saying that because of a dog’s particular cognitive makeup, his theory about a book — empirically adequate and instrumentally useful — will necessarily differ from ours. That’s a clear demonstration of the antirealist position right there.

 

[JohnG]

I appreciate this conversation. I am reading and learning from you all. So much to think about here.

 

[JohnG]

I appreciate the deep dive into whether what we are narrating is a close approximation of reality, as it is the starting point of this discussion.
I'm concerned more with the social ramifications of this behavior, if it is in fact the case that we can only really give and receive information in the context of a narrative, and the main goal of the narrative is to convey an emotion, or feeling, and that facts are not important.

Our eyes have blind spots and our brain fills in the rest. Some optical illusions illustrate this well. But whatever that process is does a very good job at recreating a relevant reality. I think. I don't want to get too sidetracked as to what that reality is. It just needs to be good enough.

The theory of Narrative thought talks about an evolutionary purpose - so we can see what might happen next to take action.

The Theory (as far as I understand it) doesn't really address the main currency being the feeling or emotion. Is that "good enough?"

Seeing as how there is no way to predict an often chaotic universe, it's just the best our minds can do.

I think it's the case that we do this, but I'm thinking we do this a lot more than we realize, and it really makes having agreed upon knowledge difficult.

Maybe it is good enough in many cases?

It sure leaves us open for manipulation.

 

[JohnG]

An example - we might tell a child they cant watch TV because it's broken. Or if they lie their nose will grow. Again referring back to the OP "They're eating the Dogs"

Not sure if the first 2 are good examples (just trying to keep a kid safe without having to over explain)

The irony is this: I'm looking for a narrative as to why we say and believe things with no evidence, often in the face of objective facts.

 

[rousseau]

An example - we might tell a child they cant watch TV because it's broken. Or if they lie their nose will grow. Again referring back to the OP "They're eating the Dogs"

Not sure if the first 2 are good examples (just trying to keep a kid safe without having to over explain)

The irony is this: I'm looking for a narrative as to why we say and believe things with no evidence, often in the face of objective facts.

The people who believe it do have evidence, though. It's just not what you and I would consider credible evidence

Eternal and oblivious positivity wipes the floor with strong intelligence when it comes to producing kids and evolution. People who have a mental make up that is motivated to produce children make up a large part of our world. I think that largely takes a small dose of delusion.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

An example - we might tell a child they cant watch TV because it's broken. Or if they lie their nose will grow. Again referring back to the OP "They're eating the Dogs"

Not sure if the first 2 are good examples (just trying to keep a kid safe without having to over explain)

The irony is this: I'm looking for a narrative as to why we say and believe things with no evidence, often in the face of objective facts.

The people who believe it do have evidence, though. It's just not what you and I would consider credible evidence

Eternal and oblivious positivity wipes the floor with strong intelligence when it comes to producing kids and evolution. People who have a mental make up that is motivated to produce children make up a large part of our world. I think that largely takes a small dose of delusion.

And there is no anti-realist to have without the reality smacking you upside the head at every turn.

Poli made a good point, that being that the more one learns of a given subject the more one realizes how much more there is to learn. That's called Dunning Kruger. I only think I'm not so smart about something if I know a lot about it. But I'm more the genius the less I actually know.

And having this discussion really isn't any different than when we were much younger having a discussion about green ghosts on Mars. We know there aren't really green ghosts on mars so we move onto to something just as intellectually stimulating but that encompasses our knowledge of what is and what isn't. The brain enjoys it all. That's why there are evangelicals who believe in a Big Flood.

 

[JohnG]

An example - we might tell a child they cant watch TV because it's broken. Or if they lie their nose will grow. Again referring back to the OP "They're eating the Dogs"

Not sure if the first 2 are good examples (just trying to keep a kid safe without having to over explain)

The irony is this: I'm looking for a narrative as to why we say and believe things with no evidence, often in the face of objective facts.

The people who believe it do have evidence, though. It's just not what you and I would consider credible evidence

Eternal and oblivious positivity wipes the floor with strong intelligence when it comes to producing kids and evolution. People who have a mental make up that is motivated to produce children make up a large part of our world. I think that largely takes a small dose of delusion.

An example - we might tell a child they cant watch TV because it's broken. Or if they lie their nose will grow. Again referring back to the OP "They're eating the Dogs"

Not sure if the first 2 are good examples (just trying to keep a kid safe without having to over explain)

The irony is this: I'm looking for a narrative as to why we say and believe things with no evidence, often in the face of objective facts.

The people who believe it do have evidence, though. It's just not what you and I would consider credible evidence

Eternal and oblivious positivity wipes the floor with strong intelligence when it comes to producing kids and evolution. People who have a mental make up that is motivated to produce children make up a large part of our world. I think that largely takes a small dose of delusion.

And there is no anti-realist to have without the reality smacking you upside the head at every turn.

Poli made a good point, that being that the more one learns of a given subject the more one realizes how much more there is to learn. That's called Dunning Kruger. I only think I'm not so smart about something if I know a lot about it. But I'm more the genius the less I actually know.

And having this discussion really isn't any different than when we were much younger having a discussion about green ghosts on Mars. We know there aren't really green ghosts on mars so we move onto to something just as intellectually stimulating but that encompasses our knowledge of what is and what isn't. The brain enjoys it all. That's why there are evangelicals who believe in a Big Flood.

Maybe we know that there are no green ghosts on mars, but if my lizard brain was feeling anxiety and fear about something that is not completely clear to me, I may sub in the green ghosts from mars for that thing I can’t name.

There can be different reasons why I can’t name it, most likely I’m just ignorant, or it could be unknown as of yet, or I’m ashamed to be honest about it. For example I may say that public education is turning kids gay against their will, instead of just admitting that I’m a homophobe. I need to create a narrative that gets the feeling across to others. I can’t really directly say you should be a homophobe too, but with this emotional narrative I can make someone FEEL the same as I do.

This isn’t anything new or surprising- Im just starting think this is just how/why we believe what we do, and that we do it with a majority of our communication

I’ve seen countless articles about “Why do people vote for Trump” or “Why do people believe in gods” or “Why do people believe in 911 conspiracies” or Bigfoot, qanon, flat earth, anti-vax and on and on

It’s like a unified theory for all of this stuff.

I’m not quite neurotypical so I obsess over such things. I need to know what inside the black box.

This is the closest I’ve come up explain odd beliefs