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> We live in post-factic time when anything can be disputed and I think its one of sign of healthy democracy. Dangerous wording there. The ability to dispute s

> We live in post-factic time when anything can be disputed and I think its one of sign of healthy democracy. Dangerous wording there. The ability to dispute stuff is good, but the facts are the facts, and what we think of the shape of the Earth or whodunnit, doesn't change the actual shape of the Earth, nor who actually did it. And sometimes the evidence is overwhelming enough that disputing it is at best a distraction. > At the end it's just a personal decision of what you want to believe. I hope for your own sake that you only want to believe true things. Besides, you don't really have a choice: what "choosing to believe" a false thing even means? If you make that choice it's too late already: you can't believe something you know to be false. Maybe you can persuade yourself that you believe it, but… you don't. You need to distinguish the political ideal, where it is very important that you do not mandate or forbid people from believing any particular thing, from the rational ideal, where you need to recognise that you don't actually have a say in what you believe. Evidence comes your way, and that evidence is supposed to make you believe things to various degrees. The maths of it (probability theory) is intractable, but it is inevitable. For instance, if you see a green traffic line you probably don't want to walk across that road just yet.

t0bia_s 4y ago
"but the facts are the facts" Leaks on internet are information that you probably cannot verify by yourself. So you cannot clarify it as observable fact. "you can't believe something you know to be false" Yet, a lot of people believe in things that cannot be proved as fact. And I'm not talking about religious things. Just random information in news, internet, etc. For example there are a quite a lot people who believe in in flat earth, third gender, global warming, alliens or immunity from vaccines, even though they cannot prove it (and I'm not saying it if that is right or not).
- jonathanstrange 4y ago
  One thing I know for sure is that the leaks concerning the US were real. That's the reason why Assange has been so relentlessly pursued by the US. US authorities aren't doing this for fun or when someone posts fictitious information that would give them no legal grounds for prosecution.
  - t0bia_s 4y ago
    We know from history that a lot of government actions has no legal grounds whats so ever. I'm not saying that what you write is right or wrong. I just cannot prove any of leaks, you probably either. I'm just trying to explain you why there are people who don' believe in same things as you do. Or simply find out that information are irrelevant for them.
    - jonathanstrange 4y ago
      That's not the whole story, though. If government employees with security clearance are reminded by their government that reading leaked documents constitutes a crime, as happened with documents stored by Wikileaks, you have good indication that the leaks are genuine. If leaks are not genuine, then governments simply say so and move on. They're not overly concerned with false stories, these are everywhere. It's not as if they persecute people who make up stories about UFOs in Area 51. They are persecuting Assange, however, and with an unusually malignant ferocity.
      - t0bia_s 4y ago
        Well they arrest Joerg Arnu for photos of Area 51 on his web, should we start believe in UFO?
        jonathanstrange 4y ago
        No, because his photos present no evidence of UFOs whatsoever.
        t0bia_s 4y ago
        If someone would manipulate images, would you believe in UFO?
        jonathanstrange 4y ago
        That's a deviation from the topic and completely irrelevant to this thread. Even worse, what falsified photos would tell me or not is also logically independent of my claim that his photos did not show any evidence of UFOs. Moreover, Arnu wasn't arrested for making up stories about UFOs, so the whole subthread is pointless and cries false analogy. We can safely close the discussion at this point.
klibertp 4y ago
You're speaking as if rationality was something most people aspire to. Something acknowledged as worth the effort. However, it doesn't look like this view is shared by many people. Not to mention, people are perfectly capable of believing in something (whether it's in any way a fact or not, doesn't matter) while still acting rational regarding something else. You'd think that schizophrenic state of mind has to collapse at some point. Yet, in many people, it's perfectly stable, and they live and die without ever confronting the contradiction. > you can't believe something you know to be false. Of course you can. The easiest way is to simply ignore the question of falsity completely. Another is to cling to controversies, blowing them out of proportion and invalidating the question that way. There's a conspiracy-theoretic way, too. I don't know if people are on average more rational than irrational, but I know for sure that every single person can be both rational and irrational at the same time. I'd say this is the natural, innate state of the human mind, even.

t0bia_s 4y ago

"but the facts are the facts" Leaks on internet are information that you probably cannot verify by yourself. So you cannot clarify it as observable fact. "you can't believe something you know to be false" Yet, a lot of people believe in things that cannot be proved as fact. And I'm not talking about religious things. Just random information in news, internet, etc. For example there are a quite a lot people who believe in in flat earth, third gender, global warming, alliens or immunity from vaccines, even though they cannot prove it (and I'm not saying it if that is right or not).

jonathanstrange 4y ago
One thing I know for sure is that the leaks concerning the US were real. That's the reason why Assange has been so relentlessly pursued by the US. US authorities aren't doing this for fun or when someone posts fictitious information that would give them no legal grounds for prosecution.
- t0bia_s 4y ago
  We know from history that a lot of government actions has no legal grounds whats so ever. I'm not saying that what you write is right or wrong. I just cannot prove any of leaks, you probably either. I'm just trying to explain you why there are people who don' believe in same things as you do. Or simply find out that information are irrelevant for them.
  - jonathanstrange 4y ago
    That's not the whole story, though. If government employees with security clearance are reminded by their government that reading leaked documents constitutes a crime, as happened with documents stored by Wikileaks, you have good indication that the leaks are genuine. If leaks are not genuine, then governments simply say so and move on. They're not overly concerned with false stories, these are everywhere. It's not as if they persecute people who make up stories about UFOs in Area 51. They are persecuting Assange, however, and with an unusually malignant ferocity.
    - t0bia_s 4y ago
      Well they arrest Joerg Arnu for photos of Area 51 on his web, should we start believe in UFO?
      - jonathanstrange 4y ago
        No, because his photos present no evidence of UFOs whatsoever.
        t0bia_s 4y ago
        If someone would manipulate images, would you believe in UFO?
        jonathanstrange 4y ago
        That's a deviation from the topic and completely irrelevant to this thread. Even worse, what falsified photos would tell me or not is also logically independent of my claim that his photos did not show any evidence of UFOs. Moreover, Arnu wasn't arrested for making up stories about UFOs, so the whole subthread is pointless and cries false analogy. We can safely close the discussion at this point.

klibertp 4y ago

You're speaking as if rationality was something most people aspire to. Something acknowledged as worth the effort. However, it doesn't look like this view is shared by many people. Not to mention, people are perfectly capable of believing in something (whether it's in any way a fact or not, doesn't matter) while still acting rational regarding something else. You'd think that schizophrenic state of mind has to collapse at some point. Yet, in many people, it's perfectly stable, and they live and die without ever confronting the contradiction. > you can't believe something you know to be false. Of course you can. The easiest way is to simply ignore the question of falsity completely. Another is to cling to controversies, blowing them out of proportion and invalidating the question that way. There's a conspiracy-theoretic way, too. I don't know if people are on average more rational than irrational, but I know for sure that every single person can be both rational and irrational at the same time. I'd say this is the natural, innate state of the human mind, even.