Lost in the Woods
Gold Member
I try to trust people unless they are obvious after something, think Realtor, etc. I don’t trust anything in the media, I’ll read something and wonder what if any truth is in it.
How do you decide who you're going to believe?
- Post starter scout86
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scout86
VIP Member
That's the problem I was thinking of when I started this topic. You have one set of sources saying climate change is a real thing and largely caused by us. (And likely to be fatal to most species on the planet, including us.) And another set of sources saying it's not. How do you decide who to believe? And (serious question) how do we move through the world not believing anyone?
No More
Diamond Member
For things like this, I look to the people who work on the ground in relevant fields. You can manipulate a statistic into whatever you want it to be, depending on who’s paying for the report to be done.
I generally find the average person with a passion is probably going to be nearer to the truth than someone who stands behind massive financial gain.
Defaultxlove
VIP Member
I always follow the money as well
enough
Diamond Member
motivated speaker? Lies will follow. Money, power, most of the things that motivate people breed dishonesty.
Religious people are not immune to lieing, for sure on that, but i do try to remember that they are also victims of a lie so i feel sorry for them as the lies come through their teeth.
Religious people are not immune to lieing, for sure on that, but i do try to remember that they are also victims of a lie so i feel sorry for them as the lies come through their teeth.
Lost in the Woods
Gold Member
I trust my dog more than most people and she isn’t completely housebroken either.
enough
Diamond Member
heard recently:
I trust dogs that dont like people more than people that dont like dogs!
this is just a gross stereotype and of course we all know that ALL gross stereotypes are ALWAYS wrong.
Teasel
VIP Member
Truth and lies and who do you believe?
Things that come to mind, bit of a ramble this
How I'll find someone who seems more measured more believable, though that's definitely not everything, sometimes someone shouting wildly seems clearly to be telling the truth, eg an abuser in court, coming across as the very voice of reason, and the abused seeming a hot mess.
But yeah I'm probably a bit less likely to believe someone shouty, spouting with utter conviction and scorn for anyone who doesn't agree with everything they think.
When people talk about others as if they make choices that are genuine, considering their values and point of view, I'll find that more believable than someone who says oh you're just a narcissist / moron / ignorant / sheep who believes propaganda etc etc
Eg I'm most definitely left leaning, but left and right both can fall into the trap of assigning reasons for the other's viewpoint that denigrate them for not having our (correct) values and opinions. That's a bit simplistic innit.
It's pretty understandable too. If you really believe a thing, then someone seemingly trashing all over what you hold sacred, is going to be hard to deal with.
I've seen a few posts by lbgtqi folks recently saying hell no, I'm not going to stay friends with people who want to remove my rights and freedoms. Pretty understandable too.
I remember removing someone from my Facebook friends list for sharing views I found abhorrent, and then thinking to myself, but I know X, they are good people otherwise. So I apologised, and added them back. Understand those that feel differently though too.
I think the truth tends to be complicated, lies can be as simple as you like. The truth might be more nuanced. And less attractive - the truth might be painful, rather than a story that pumps up our ego and warrants self righteousness.
But also when someone spews hatred, and I find almost all of what they say ugly, then I'm going to be less likely to believe them.
And yeah self rightenousness isn't high on my list of qualities that seem believable.
Someone seeming intelligent helps, though again that's definitely not everything.
Being a tad suspicious of charm seems good to me
I've become more aware of stories on social media that seem put in my feed to catch my anger and keep me on the site. I try not to engage with them, it isn't easy but seems worth the effort.
If I'm not sure if a thing is true or not I'll often Google it and see what comes up. What sources are talking about this thing? and do I trust them? Or is the article more click bait where the main body of the article doesn't match the attention grabbing headline really at all.
Does a story seem to make a vulnerable group into a scapegoat? Easy also cheap?
Stuff others have said about what are people's motives, is it in their interests to be selling a particular viewpoint?
Scientific studies carry weight for me, though who has funded them, and is the hypothesis too narrow, for eg, missing other important information?
For years we've believed that fat or sugar are the evils in our diets, now people are talking about the ultra processing. It seems to have been in the interests of the food companies for us to be looking at fat or sugar, and not at them.
Saw an interesting interview with Yuval Harari last night, who says that information isn't truth. That the idea that putting out more and more information and then the truth will float to the top is false. That actually, putting out more and more information buries the truth. He said that telling the truth is more expensive, it can involve months of research. Whereas conspiracy theories etc, you can just write what you want. And he mentions truth tending to be complicated, whereas we tend to like simple explanations for things.
He talks about how the ways we have had the truth told to us are being dismantled, and so there is a proliferation of conspiracy theories and fake news. How the democratic conversation is collapsing, and we can't have reasoned conversations with each other or agree about basic facts and how at odds that is with us having the most sophisticated information technology in history. And maybe there is something wrong with our information technology.
Anyway, very interesting bloke.
Well that'll do, love the topic btw
Things that come to mind, bit of a ramble this
How I'll find someone who seems more measured more believable, though that's definitely not everything, sometimes someone shouting wildly seems clearly to be telling the truth, eg an abuser in court, coming across as the very voice of reason, and the abused seeming a hot mess.
But yeah I'm probably a bit less likely to believe someone shouty, spouting with utter conviction and scorn for anyone who doesn't agree with everything they think.
When people talk about others as if they make choices that are genuine, considering their values and point of view, I'll find that more believable than someone who says oh you're just a narcissist / moron / ignorant / sheep who believes propaganda etc etc
Eg I'm most definitely left leaning, but left and right both can fall into the trap of assigning reasons for the other's viewpoint that denigrate them for not having our (correct) values and opinions. That's a bit simplistic innit.
It's pretty understandable too. If you really believe a thing, then someone seemingly trashing all over what you hold sacred, is going to be hard to deal with.
I've seen a few posts by lbgtqi folks recently saying hell no, I'm not going to stay friends with people who want to remove my rights and freedoms. Pretty understandable too.
I remember removing someone from my Facebook friends list for sharing views I found abhorrent, and then thinking to myself, but I know X, they are good people otherwise. So I apologised, and added them back. Understand those that feel differently though too.
I think the truth tends to be complicated, lies can be as simple as you like. The truth might be more nuanced. And less attractive - the truth might be painful, rather than a story that pumps up our ego and warrants self righteousness.
But also when someone spews hatred, and I find almost all of what they say ugly, then I'm going to be less likely to believe them.
And yeah self rightenousness isn't high on my list of qualities that seem believable.
Someone seeming intelligent helps, though again that's definitely not everything.
Being a tad suspicious of charm seems good to me
I've become more aware of stories on social media that seem put in my feed to catch my anger and keep me on the site. I try not to engage with them, it isn't easy but seems worth the effort.
If I'm not sure if a thing is true or not I'll often Google it and see what comes up. What sources are talking about this thing? and do I trust them? Or is the article more click bait where the main body of the article doesn't match the attention grabbing headline really at all.
Does a story seem to make a vulnerable group into a scapegoat? Easy also cheap?
Stuff others have said about what are people's motives, is it in their interests to be selling a particular viewpoint?
Scientific studies carry weight for me, though who has funded them, and is the hypothesis too narrow, for eg, missing other important information?
For years we've believed that fat or sugar are the evils in our diets, now people are talking about the ultra processing. It seems to have been in the interests of the food companies for us to be looking at fat or sugar, and not at them.
Saw an interesting interview with Yuval Harari last night, who says that information isn't truth. That the idea that putting out more and more information and then the truth will float to the top is false. That actually, putting out more and more information buries the truth. He said that telling the truth is more expensive, it can involve months of research. Whereas conspiracy theories etc, you can just write what you want. And he mentions truth tending to be complicated, whereas we tend to like simple explanations for things.
He talks about how the ways we have had the truth told to us are being dismantled, and so there is a proliferation of conspiracy theories and fake news. How the democratic conversation is collapsing, and we can't have reasoned conversations with each other or agree about basic facts and how at odds that is with us having the most sophisticated information technology in history. And maybe there is something wrong with our information technology.
Anyway, very interesting bloke.
Well that'll do, love the topic btw
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Lost in the Woods
Gold Member
I enjoy Yuval Harare tremendously, I am glad to see the reference to him.
Reasonable minds can look at the same set of facts and come to different conclusions. I don’t mind reading views different than my own if they were arrived at in good faith. In fact I seek out such views. Often these days people throw out the “Lie” word just because a view doesn’t match their own. This is sloppy thinking because to lie requires an intent to deceive which is not present if someone arrives at a different conclusion in good faith or is simply speaking from a position of misunderstanding or ignorance. I am always looking for conformation bias in my own thinking and I am always ready to stand corrected. When I do understand that my thinking has been incorrect I always admit it to whoever I was formerly defending my defective position. Particularly with family members, this takes the power out of the disagreement.
Reasonable minds can look at the same set of facts and come to different conclusions. I don’t mind reading views different than my own if they were arrived at in good faith. In fact I seek out such views. Often these days people throw out the “Lie” word just because a view doesn’t match their own. This is sloppy thinking because to lie requires an intent to deceive which is not present if someone arrives at a different conclusion in good faith or is simply speaking from a position of misunderstanding or ignorance. I am always looking for conformation bias in my own thinking and I am always ready to stand corrected. When I do understand that my thinking has been incorrect I always admit it to whoever I was formerly defending my defective position. Particularly with family members, this takes the power out of the disagreement.
Could you come at it from the pov of, rather than searching for a black and white truth or not, you weigh up the consequences of believing or not believing someone or something? And then make your decision based on that? I know that's a kind of risk-based approach in a way, but it could go both ways... what do you gain or what do you lose... what do you have to change or do as a result of believing... etc
- Moderator
- #23
Friday
VIP Member
Try taking modern politics out.
We know scientifically/historically that it was fawking HOT during most of the 165 MILLION years that dinosaurs walked the earth. (Compare 165million, to the 100-150k or so humans have been around, and 2,000-5,000 years we really have written history for
) Co2 was 16x higher than it is today, creating a greenhouse effect across much of the planet, and in the Mesozoic it was about 95F in the polar caps. HOT. Even so? There were periods where the temperatures rose & fell, seas rose & fell, a few ice ages, and at least one if not more “nuclear winters” (asteroid dust winters) where it was fawking COLD.Which leads us to (modern) Ice Ages.
Technically we’re still “in” one (because it’s not tropical -or hellish- world wide), but we’re in the warming up side of the last major one, where half the world was covered in ice, instead of “just” the poles. (Google image “ice age” for some reeeeeally cool pics & recreations!) <<< It’s not a steady warming up, however. There was a snap series of “mini-ice ages” / “the little ice age” during the 1400s-1800s that caused wide sweeping famine & drought (water that freezes into glaciers doesn’t rain into rivers/crops/seas), & people suffered plague & war as a result.
So, climate change, on this planet? Is just a fact of life on earth. It happens. The world heats up. The world cools down. To some fairly extreme degrees. No one, except religious extremists who believe the world was created 6,000 years ago, disputes this.
Why do we care if we’re accelerating EITHER process? <<< This is where we START to run into politics.
1. Because we have the tech/toys/recorded history to be able to recognise it happening. (When we don’t it’s an obscure scientific or religious or academic musing. That few outside those spheres pay much mind to).
2. We (as a species) don’t like change very much, in any form, but especially dislike extinction level events. Which have happened soooooo many times throughout history that we also know THAT happens. Diverse individual opinions & cultural opinions abound around any extinction level event… but they’re not only present in our modern understand of such things, but also rife throughout both our mythology/religions (I’m not conflating those 2, there are things that happened so long ago they’ve shifted from history, to legend, to myth…. But the stories are still told… And in every religion there are stories of great cataclysmic change -the flood, for example- and those stories are also still told.
3. We actually have the capability, as a species, to deliberately -or accidentally- accelerate or slow the warming up / cooling down periods the earth goes through. That’s still part of the historic record, the both drastic & subtle changes seen once we hit the Industrial Revolution. There’s very little dispute about this, even back in the 1800s people tried to start limiting the extent of damage the toxic sludge of industry was having on local environments, 100 years later various versions of the EPA, Health & Safety, etc. all over the world are still attempting to limit the acute effects of industry on both the land and its peoples.
How much are we changing things, climate-wise, and what “should” “we” do about it? <<< Enter politics, FULL FORCE. >>> And people start fighting, from every position imaginable; polar opposites attracting the greatest numbers, as per usual.
^^^ So that’s STEP ONE in what I do, on huge issues, in deciding who to believe. I take a step back, and do my own research from before politics got its grubby little paws involved. From before there were “sides”. And then STEP TWO is to really follow the political clusterf*ck, and see how it came about. If one can bear the trip through the sewers? There’s usually useful worthwhile information there. On both/all/every side of any issue. But it is waist deep in shite.
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Lost in the Woods
Gold Member
I believe we are contributing to climate change but how much I have no idea. I am not going to pretend to understand the science but I grasp the concept of a tipping point. It isn’t that we are destroying the Earth, we are just making it unfit to support human life. The planet will be better off without us but we are also taking down an amazing amount of other species with us. All the political stuff boils down to never waste a good crisis. The bottom line is each and every one of us is responsible. If we didn’t buy the crap, THEY (the magical THEY) would not make it. We don’t need massive carbon trading wealth transferring schemes, we just have to look at ourselves and stop consuming like pigs at the trough.
