5 ms·

There's a difference between what people say they believe and what they truly believe. One way to find out would be to offer a bet. If you truly believe that ar

There's a difference between what people say they believe and what they truly believe. One way to find out would be to offer a bet. If you truly believe that are you willing to bet that nobody can prove you wrong. This often bothers me about commentary on TV. They say that this and that politician believes that ... But no. The TV commentators have no way of knowing what anybody actually thinks or believes. They can only know what people say they believe. Some people say they believe the election was stolen. Then it gets reported that this percentage of people believe the election was stolen. But there is no proof of that. There is only evidence that certain percentage of people SAY they believe the election was stolen. We don't know what they truly believe, only what they say they do.

i5heu 5y ago
This reminds me of the book "Skin in the Game". I have often the feeling that people "believe" in certain things to be edgy or interesting.
- quinnjh 5y ago
  I think people acquire false beliefs using the peer-effect vulnerability. :| Virtue signalling is necessary to maintain social capital within social networks, and people will change their words and adapt worldviews accordingly- especially when theres no "skin in the game" !
  - necovek 5y ago
    What do you consider false beliefs? How many of the beliefs you have have you individually verified that they come from properly vetted facts and are properly interpreted too? Majority of our beliefs are vulnerable to "peer review". There is nothing negative about that, because otherwise, we'd all be spending time verifying everything anybody says. The only thing I am saying is that you should not try to discredit anyone for holding a set of beliefs, because we are all guilty of similarly not vetting the truth. Very rarely do we dive into establishing the facts fully, because it would be impossible to talk about anything. If you disagree, let's go through an exercise. So your car says it's now going 60km/h. I can't trust you or your car, let's put side markers on the road, and I'll use a stopwatch. We'll also have to do like 100 runs, and change the surface a bit so we control for skid (non-slippery, slippery...). Ok, for those side markers, how do we measure them? What about the time? I'll drop by Paris to get 1-true-meter and compare my stopwatch with their atomic clock to ensure the error is within, say, 1%. All this is the vetting required for a basic, easily measurable "fact". Anything involving the human mind, it's nigh impossible.
    - galaxyLogic 5y ago
      > you should not try to discredit anyone for holding a set of beliefs You should discredit the beliefs (if they are not factual), and discredit people who knowingly spread misinformation. AND you you should question at least privately whether they truly hold those beliefs or merely say they do. Rumors. Think why spreading rumors is considered bad and unethical? It is because many people will believe them and thus get mislead. And whoever spreads the rumors typically somehow gains from doing so, perhaps simply by getting the attention of other people. When you get people to listen to you, and "believe" you, you are in a better position.
      - necovek 5y ago
        FWIW, I was not concerned with malice: that one is, I think, obvious (might still be hard to figure out, but it's clear where our moral compass should steer). However, on the topic of "if they are not factual", how do you practically check that? Seriously, do you exclude all prejudice, and if I give you two contradicting sources, how would you establish which one is "factual"?
    - DarylZero 5y ago
      Your example isn't too good. We can just say that the fact is that the speed meter reads 60. And we call the possibility of meter error a nuance.
      - necovek 5y ago
        The example is of a simple case and how one would need to verify if someone or something represents "facts" (I was neither focusing on the measuring error, so I should not have brought it up: my apologies). > We can just say that the fact is that the speed meter reads 60. (As an aside, my car needs software recalibration at the dealer if I switch to differently sized wheels: if I don't know to what wheel size software was calibrated to, I would need to verify it) "Just say" is a manifestation of a "belief". The question is how do you, in a grand scheme of things, establish if it's not a "false belief"? You are, ultimately, putting your trust in somebody else doing the verification (of a speedometer in a car, in this example)! Basically, it is our hope that actual facts will "surface" through this chain of trust between people into majority of people's heads, but throughout periods in history, that was not the case: eg. think Middle Ages; or any of the propaganda initiatives by the modern media. As an obvious example of such a modern media play, I am sure you'd find most of the people in the USA before the Iraq invasion believed Iraq had been actively developing WMD. A quick search gives me this (I have no idea how trustworthy the source is, but such caveats should be assumed in human communication): > Moreover, the share of the American public that believed it was “very likely” that U.S. forces would eventually uncover Iraqi weapons of mass destruction fell from 59 percent in early April to 39 percent in late April. (From https://www.brookings.edu/articles/rally-round-the-flag-opinion-in-the-united-states-before-and-after-the-iraq-war/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/rally-round-the-flag-opin...) As far as we know, at least 59% of Americans had "false beliefs" prior to the invasion, and even after troops were there, 39% still maintained them! In accepting that it's too easy to have false beliefs promulgate, we open ourselves to an ability to develop tools and processes to combat that. But I truly wonder what are the practical tools we have to do that today? How is a "regular" Jane or Joe going to do that?
atorodius 5y ago
Agreed on the first paragraph but it feels like the rest is just a misunderstanding of semantics on your part, to me it seems people saying „I believe“ exactly should be interpreted as „I think/pretend I believe“. Figuring out what one truly believes is a lot of work and so as always, we have proxies.
- galaxyLogic 5y ago
  It's a question of Bona Fide. If you say "I believe" we should be able to assume that you do believe so. Meaning you would be willing to bet on it being true. If you don't then that is bad faith on your part, which will not help the rest of us. Of course with some people you would assume that they are only pretending to believe but that means simply that you don't trust them generally. People who use "believe" when they should say "I pretend to believe" should not be trusted, and are not trusted when it becomes clear what they are up to. Like say pretending to believe that vaccines are bad and not helpful and then getting the vaccine yourself.
haroldp 5y ago
> One way to find out would be to offer a bet. I have had a lot of success with this approach when people are trying to feign ignorance or muddy the waters. People often know the right answer and just don't want to cop to it. I'll say team A has all the best players and they are clearly going to win. Well this stat isn't the whole picture, anything could happen, that player is pretty good too... Ok if I gave you $100 to bet, which team would you put it on?
- pydry 5y ago
  How would you bet that "the election wasnt stolen" though? For a bet to work youd need some sort of authority everybody agreed upon as an arbiter of objective reality.
  - haroldp 5y ago
    It wouldn't be an appropriate tactic for that sort of argument.
  - galaxyLogic 5y ago
    Right the bet would be that a court-case will find the election was stolen. We do have some trust in courts. There are kangaroo courts but only in corrupt countries. We do need to trust in some authority. It is another bet, do you believe that scientists are deliberately trying to mislead you? That is possible and it is also possible that scientist are wrong by mistake. But how much would you bet that scientists are wrong? Point is we trust some authorities more than some others.
- wruza 5y ago
  On the best odds. E.g. if A win gives 1.2x and B win gives 3x, it’s B indeed.
  - necovek 5y ago
    Please don't bet your own money :) If A win gives 1.2x, and B win gives 3x, the betting house probably has the probability of A winning something like 90% of the time, and B winning 10% of the time. They want sufficient people to bet on either so that in the full picture, they'd be at net positive whatever happens. That's also why they adjust the winning odds as the bets come in (they don't care about winning big, just winning consistently). However, for an individual bet, you're more likely to keep your money if you go with the 1.2x choice.

i5heu 5y ago

This reminds me of the book "Skin in the Game". I have often the feeling that people "believe" in certain things to be edgy or interesting.

quinnjh 5y ago
I think people acquire false beliefs using the peer-effect vulnerability. :| Virtue signalling is necessary to maintain social capital within social networks, and people will change their words and adapt worldviews accordingly- especially when theres no "skin in the game" !
- necovek 5y ago
  What do you consider false beliefs? How many of the beliefs you have have you individually verified that they come from properly vetted facts and are properly interpreted too? Majority of our beliefs are vulnerable to "peer review". There is nothing negative about that, because otherwise, we'd all be spending time verifying everything anybody says. The only thing I am saying is that you should not try to discredit anyone for holding a set of beliefs, because we are all guilty of similarly not vetting the truth. Very rarely do we dive into establishing the facts fully, because it would be impossible to talk about anything. If you disagree, let's go through an exercise. So your car says it's now going 60km/h. I can't trust you or your car, let's put side markers on the road, and I'll use a stopwatch. We'll also have to do like 100 runs, and change the surface a bit so we control for skid (non-slippery, slippery...). Ok, for those side markers, how do we measure them? What about the time? I'll drop by Paris to get 1-true-meter and compare my stopwatch with their atomic clock to ensure the error is within, say, 1%. All this is the vetting required for a basic, easily measurable "fact". Anything involving the human mind, it's nigh impossible.
  - galaxyLogic 5y ago
    > you should not try to discredit anyone for holding a set of beliefs You should discredit the beliefs (if they are not factual), and discredit people who knowingly spread misinformation. AND you you should question at least privately whether they truly hold those beliefs or merely say they do. Rumors. Think why spreading rumors is considered bad and unethical? It is because many people will believe them and thus get mislead. And whoever spreads the rumors typically somehow gains from doing so, perhaps simply by getting the attention of other people. When you get people to listen to you, and "believe" you, you are in a better position.
    - necovek 5y ago
      FWIW, I was not concerned with malice: that one is, I think, obvious (might still be hard to figure out, but it's clear where our moral compass should steer). However, on the topic of "if they are not factual", how do you practically check that? Seriously, do you exclude all prejudice, and if I give you two contradicting sources, how would you establish which one is "factual"?
  - DarylZero 5y ago
    Your example isn't too good. We can just say that the fact is that the speed meter reads 60. And we call the possibility of meter error a nuance.
    - necovek 5y ago
      The example is of a simple case and how one would need to verify if someone or something represents "facts" (I was neither focusing on the measuring error, so I should not have brought it up: my apologies). > We can just say that the fact is that the speed meter reads 60. (As an aside, my car needs software recalibration at the dealer if I switch to differently sized wheels: if I don't know to what wheel size software was calibrated to, I would need to verify it) "Just say" is a manifestation of a "belief". The question is how do you, in a grand scheme of things, establish if it's not a "false belief"? You are, ultimately, putting your trust in somebody else doing the verification (of a speedometer in a car, in this example)! Basically, it is our hope that actual facts will "surface" through this chain of trust between people into majority of people's heads, but throughout periods in history, that was not the case: eg. think Middle Ages; or any of the propaganda initiatives by the modern media. As an obvious example of such a modern media play, I am sure you'd find most of the people in the USA before the Iraq invasion believed Iraq had been actively developing WMD. A quick search gives me this (I have no idea how trustworthy the source is, but such caveats should be assumed in human communication): > Moreover, the share of the American public that believed it was “very likely” that U.S. forces would eventually uncover Iraqi weapons of mass destruction fell from 59 percent in early April to 39 percent in late April. (From https://www.brookings.edu/articles/rally-round-the-flag-opinion-in-the-united-states-before-and-after-the-iraq-war/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/rally-round-the-flag-opin...) As far as we know, at least 59% of Americans had "false beliefs" prior to the invasion, and even after troops were there, 39% still maintained them! In accepting that it's too easy to have false beliefs promulgate, we open ourselves to an ability to develop tools and processes to combat that. But I truly wonder what are the practical tools we have to do that today? How is a "regular" Jane or Joe going to do that?

atorodius 5y ago

Agreed on the first paragraph but it feels like the rest is just a misunderstanding of semantics on your part, to me it seems people saying „I believe“ exactly should be interpreted as „I think/pretend I believe“. Figuring out what one truly believes is a lot of work and so as always, we have proxies.

galaxyLogic 5y ago
It's a question of Bona Fide. If you say "I believe" we should be able to assume that you do believe so. Meaning you would be willing to bet on it being true. If you don't then that is bad faith on your part, which will not help the rest of us. Of course with some people you would assume that they are only pretending to believe but that means simply that you don't trust them generally. People who use "believe" when they should say "I pretend to believe" should not be trusted, and are not trusted when it becomes clear what they are up to. Like say pretending to believe that vaccines are bad and not helpful and then getting the vaccine yourself.

haroldp 5y ago

> One way to find out would be to offer a bet. I have had a lot of success with this approach when people are trying to feign ignorance or muddy the waters. People often know the right answer and just don't want to cop to it. I'll say team A has all the best players and they are clearly going to win. Well this stat isn't the whole picture, anything could happen, that player is pretty good too... Ok if I gave you $100 to bet, which team would you put it on?

pydry 5y ago
How would you bet that "the election wasnt stolen" though? For a bet to work youd need some sort of authority everybody agreed upon as an arbiter of objective reality.
- haroldp 5y ago
  It wouldn't be an appropriate tactic for that sort of argument.
- galaxyLogic 5y ago
  Right the bet would be that a court-case will find the election was stolen. We do have some trust in courts. There are kangaroo courts but only in corrupt countries. We do need to trust in some authority. It is another bet, do you believe that scientists are deliberately trying to mislead you? That is possible and it is also possible that scientist are wrong by mistake. But how much would you bet that scientists are wrong? Point is we trust some authorities more than some others.
wruza 5y ago
On the best odds. E.g. if A win gives 1.2x and B win gives 3x, it’s B indeed.
- necovek 5y ago
  Please don't bet your own money :) If A win gives 1.2x, and B win gives 3x, the betting house probably has the probability of A winning something like 90% of the time, and B winning 10% of the time. They want sufficient people to bet on either so that in the full picture, they'd be at net positive whatever happens. That's also why they adjust the winning odds as the bets come in (they don't care about winning big, just winning consistently). However, for an individual bet, you're more likely to keep your money if you go with the 1.2x choice.