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As Abe Lincoln always said: Don't believe everything you read on the internet. But we do. There's research. Even if you read something that you know is wrong

• tsol 4y ago
  I have suspected similarly. Skepticism and critical thinking are useful devices, but they can't always tell a truth from a lie. And even if they could-- humans aren't totally rational beings. Sometimes we believe lies because we want it to be true or because everyone around us does. Hell sometimes people believe things just to win an argument
• autoexec 4y ago
  > Even if you read something that you know is wrong you still believe it. That seems like bullshit to me. I read your words (you even posted links!) so how come I don't just instantly believe you? If it were true, wouldn't it make all fiction inherently dangerous? Let's see how it holds up in real life... here's a lie: "My uncle works at Nintendo and he told me that Mario (Jumpman at the time) was originally intended to only have one testicle, but the NES (famicom) didn't have powerful enough graphics to show that so they scraped that part of his official character design and have left the number of testicles unspecified ever since." Somewhere, secretly deep inside you, do you believe that now? Nah. I think we don't have to worry about people believing everything just because they read it. Reading things can put ideas into your head (have you ever even considered Mario's testicles before today?) but at this point we're straining the hell out of "belief" and going into philosophical arguments. In real life though, we are capable as a species of separating fact from fiction some of the time.
  • krapp 4y ago
    It obviously doesn't work if you only say it once. It does work if you repeat it often enough. If you surround someone in a self-reinforcing bubble of misinformation, and all of their friends not only believe it, but dismiss and ridicule anyone who doubts it. If people make convincing arguments supporting it. It works because people don't judge truth based on sober, rational, purely logical analysis but emotion and bias and most importantly comfort. If you're in an environment in which everyone believes X, you will inevitably begin to conform if the social pressures to do so are strong enough, and counter-signals weak enough. This is how radicalization works, through the gradual osmosis of a worldview, and the acceptance of smaller lies that lead to accepting bigger lies. It's how Nazi propaganda worked, and it's how modern advertising and politics work. It's why witness testimony is unreliable and how police can convince suspects that they committed a crime they went in knowing they were innocent of. The effect isn't universal - nothing about human psychology is. But it is real.
    • autoexec 4y ago
      > It obviously doesn't work if you only say it once. It does work if you repeat it often enough. Repetition isn't enough, but I'll accept that with enough effort from enough people you might eventually be gaslit or brainwashed into believing just about anything so long as it didn't violate some fundamental aspect of your identity in which case it's more likely you'll just lie about believing it to make your life easier.