> Fact -Testosterone levels are dropping globally every year. Fact- Altrazine is a pesticide that can turn male frogs to females. Conspiracy - liberal govts are putting shit in the water and food to lower testosterone and turn guys feminine, and thats also why gays and trans people are so common now, and men no longer act like traditional make 'me a sandwich bitch' types males. Proof the globalist and liberal elites want to lower the population, and fuck the world. Result- far right, masculine obsessed, christofascist, borderline incel conspiracy theorist. Reality- Testosterone levels dropping is explained extremely easily by obeistity rising, smoking dropping, and more sedentary work + lifestyles. > > > > I've thought a lot about whats the problem with their thinking. I think the problem occurs when biases are stronger than your epistemology.

This comment seems self-referential, and potentially self-refuting (in that you do not have the means to know the quality of thinking of conspiracy theorists, and you give no indication that you realize you are wholesale speculating).

>> If there is sufficient existing evidence for a certain belief, so much so that one can act intuitively as if it is true, then demanding impossible evidence is unreasonable skepticism. Only without this intuitively satisfying evidence can we reasonably warrant suspending disbelief.

> Well, sure. But this is basically just a tautology

tautology: a statement that is true by necessity or by virtue of its logical form

The proposition is subjective - subjective matters can be framed in a tautological manner, but this does not seem to be an example of that.

> if there is sufficient evidence to warrant a certain belief, then that belief is justified, period. This isn't interesting or controversial.

I disagree with it, because of the subjectivity.

I agree with your other points though.

> there is reasonable and unreasonable skepticism

Unfortunately: opinions vary on what is valid skepticism, because reasoning varies and opinion often appears as fact.

> Because you either didn't understand what I wrote

That is not a good reason for not addressing what I wrote.

Sir: if you do not respond to what I say, I am unable to take your seriously. Sorry!

I wish downvotes were used a bit more sparingly in the Philosophy sub. I mean is the main idea of philosophical discussion limiting things you disagree with? Maybe that’s where moronic arguments come from.

Because you either didn't understand what I wrote or you are arguing in bad faith. Nothing you said has any bearing on the gist of my post.

."Consider the practical effects of the objects of your conception. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object." C.S. Peirce

The problem with your “assumption “ (it’s actually more of a postulate) about a mind- independent world (and I assume you follow this from a scientifically oriented worldview ) Is the way one tends to reify one’s conception as if it’s absolutely real. This is The problem of our modern day. Josiah Royce in his biggest work, The World and the Individual, described it as the common metaphysical stance, but no real thinker can hold it for long because of its inherent self contradictions. “

However to make a fully supported argument would take more space than we have time for in this forum, and besides, my philosophical heroes do a better job than I. A good intro would be RM Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Causality as such doesn’t exactly exist outside of the will. It’s a tool of human thought used to help us understand the world.

It's a decent story, I wonder how true it is.

You didn't address anything I said.

Either you didn't understand what I wrote or you are arguing in bad faith. I can't tell.

My point, which you are either unable to understand or simply refuse to accept, is that the word "belief" encompasses a wide range of things, some weakly held beliefs and others that are given the weight of fact. To treat both senses of the word as the same thing is sloppy thinking at best, and intellectually dishonest at worst, and the term for such a fallacy is "equivocation."

I like to take a bath in hot water, I make coffee with hot water. If I took a bath in water that was the same temperature that I made coffee with, I would end up in the hospital. "Hot" encompasses a range of temperature.

If you are unwilling to accept that some beliefs are held more strongly than others, then we really can't have an intelligent discussion about this.

What are you asking me exactly?

First, I accept the notion that people are influenced by the media to which they are exposed. If you don't believe this, then all the world's ad agencies would like a word with you. A preponderance of scientific evidence demonstrates that media exposure sways beliefs, whether it be the brand of tomato sauce they buy or whether African Americans commit crime at a higher rate or are more prone to violence.

Secondly, it is hardly a stretch of the imagination to conceive of the idea that the ownership of the media, especially the right wing media, would be would be predominately oligarchs who would welcome right wing violence against their political opponents, but would not wish to be connected to the actors who commit such acts.

Thirdly, it is similarly no stretch of the imagination to believe that the people who have committed such violence in the past have been avid consumers of far right media, the primary source of such false news stories as the "stolen election."

Finally, given the first fact, and the two entirely reasonable assumptions, it would seem to follow that there is some connection between the well documented increase of right wing violence and the prevalence of far right media sources. The fact that these right wing media sources have not toned down their rhetoric in the face of this increase means one of three things: 1)They don't believe that there is a connection, 2) They believe that there is a connection but the outcome has been undesirable, or 3) They believe that there is a connection and they are pleased with the outcome.

Option 1 and 2are unlikely; the aim of media is to influence. If they thought they were not influential they would do something different, and if they thought they were influential in a way that was dangerous, they would change as well. That leaves option 3. So, given the first fact, and the reasonable assumptions that followed, it appears that the oligarchs and I would be in agreement on the effectiveness of stochastic terrorism.

Unfortunately, the coincidence of the rise in right wing media outlets and the rise in right wing violence may be only coincidental. We can document correlation but not causality, so therefore, my belief is still just a belief, and a very provisional belief at that.

So we're back to where I started, I have a belief but with insufficient evidence to take it as fact. As I stated elsewhere in this thread, "belief" is a broad term. My belief in the universality of gravity is much stronger than my belief in next week's weather forecast. Both are subject to change, given compelling evidence. Though one will require more evidence than the other. The more strongly held my belief, the more I am likely to treat them as fact.

yet what I argue is there is reasonable and unreasonable skepticism, particularly where evidence is impossible to obtain and one's skepticism isn't subject to falsification. That level of doubt couldn't be justified to others.

And I wouldn't say all evidence is mere opinion, particularly when we act intuitively on where the evidence takes us.

>“ Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?”

Nobody to complain to. So, we have to make the best of the hands we've been dealt.

On that note, religious faith - when you give it political power - has routinely gotten in the way of people trying to make the best of what cards they've been dealt.

I have realised that a lot of the time, whenever people choose to follow idealistic philosophies, here meaning any philosophy that strives towards some form of higher ideal or purpose in life, the restrictions that this way of life poses ends up corrupting the individual from within and strengthening their urges and desires to a point that they become unbearable. Usually this happens when a person is in a very bad stage in their life, for example if they have had a lot of stress, problems with their relationships, bouts of nihilism and a lack of belief in their own philosophy, etc. This strengthening of desire, be it lust, sloth, greed, passion or melancholy, leads to cognitive dissonance: because most idealistic philosophies limit specifically the animalistic nature of humans, when people start to desire the very things they are limiting, they start to subconsciously question their own ideals and act against them. Once a person does what is considered "sinful" for long enough, they lose the light that was once guiding them, and become numb to the ideals that once drove them and light a spark within them. They become nihilistic, seeing life as inherently meaningless and they no longer feel guilt for "tripping" or going against their ideals.

Nihilism, however, is only an in-between stage, for it eventually leads to hedonism: no individual can stay perfectly sane in nihilism, for without purpose, one doesn't know how to act and can't see any purpose in living, which goes fundamentally against our animalistic nature, our desire for self-preservation. Thus to combat the feeling of meaninglessness and the pessimism inherent to it, the individual begins to find more joy in the hedonistic actions that they once were shameful of. The hedonism turns into a light at the end of the tunnel that brings purpose to life and satisfies the animalistic urges of humans. It's a win-win situation: not only do you now have a purpose, but the purpose in question also agrees with your very nature.

However, the core problem with hedonism is that it loses its value after some time: the individual soon ends up questioning what they are doing, wondering whether it is correct or good. The pleasure no longer feels pleasurable and suddenly their idealistic urges start to creep up on them: the individual suddenly becomes desperate, as if they awoke from a coma realising that they have wasted all their time on nothing. This panic and fear leads them to try and somehow prove themselves to the world and repay their sins: they don't want to end up in hell, whatever hell means to them, so they try to be a good person again. I must quickly state that this text is by no means religious, I merely use words like "sin" and "hell" metaphorically. Anyway, suddenly the individual gains back their consciousness and seeks to be idealistic again, pushing away their hedonism. However, this sudden surge of power doesn't usually last long, since it comes back in the form of an extreme and considering people don't like change, especially drastic change, the idealistic will quickly degrade back into nihilism and hedonism.

What I am trying to get at here is that idealism and hedonism are strongly connected to each other when you consider the dual nature of humanity: humans are simultaneously both idealistic and hedonistic. We have moral and intellectual qualities, such as intelligence, rational thinking, wisdom, creativity, deep and spiritual emotions, altruistic characteristics, empathy and compassion, but at the same time we also have deeply animalistic qualities, such as the need for self preservation, sexual love and pleasure, the desire for power and submission, and the need for physical and emotional closeness. I must state here that by idealistic qualities I simply mean the qualities we usually associate with high intelligence and thus consider "humane", while animalistic qualities are those characteristics we share in common with other animals and that don't require especially high intelligence. The core issue here is that humans try to separate themselves from the animal kingdom and thus argue that those qualities that fundamentally separate humans from other animals, idealistic qualities, are more "humane" and thus "better", while animalistic qualities have nothing to do with humanity at all and are "sinful". Therefore anyone who seeks to be idealistic and practise "human virtues'' is considered "good" or even "divine", while anyone who dares to practise animalistic, hedonistic qualities is considered "bad" or even "sinful". The problem is that these animalistic qualities are just as much part of our humanity as idealistic qualities, and thus we can't fully avoid them. Humans are very aware of this fact, and because we all know deep down that we are animals, we try our hardest to forget this fact so that we can maintain our egoism and narcissism. We assume that everyone is good. We project this optimism oftentimes to the entirety of the animal kingdom, depicting animals as "innocent" and "pure". And whenever we do anything animalistic, instead of feeling guilt or hatred towards ourselves, we call it "humane weakness" and don't attempt to confront it in any way, simply accepting it and moving on with our lives. Thus the entirety of the human race (slight exaggeration) is in a constant state of cognitive dissonance. What does this mean in terms of the cycle I originally presented? It simply means that because we chose to be ignorant of our animalistic nature, we constantly overestimate ourselves in seeking idealistic highs, and thus end up falling into the cycle of idealism and hedonism when our animalistic subconscious comes creeping up on us. As long as we stay blind to our hedonism, we will continue to suffer indefinitely.

Faith is experiential. It isn't about throwing blind hope into the air. It's a two-way process. You do x, you receive y. But you don't know you receive y until you give x.

So you didn’t answer my question then tried to get snappy. Awesome job 👏

Not really, it was a description of selflessness, mercy. Judging by your tone I'm not sure you can relate.

Was that supposed to answer my question?

“Defend Kierkegaard’s critique of Hegel” or “your mum” - you can pick which response is on your level…

Kierkegaard is not so anti-rationalistic as people think. He only says reason has a negative role: it finds problems in what we do. Faith has a positive role. If you ever want to do something and stick to your decision no matter what you need faith.

Thinking about whether u are right on engaging with philosophy or not is a form of philosophical thinking.So i cant find a reason for not having this post there

I don't think there have been very many (if any) human achievements were achieved by people that thought they were impossible/uncontrollable. Very difficult,almost impossible sure, but not impossible.

To give an example: People have been working on nuclear fusion for many decades without any real success yet. So it's surely one of the, if not the hardest problem humans have ever worked on. However, I highly dought anyone working on fusion genuinely thinks it's impossible/uncontrollable. Just very very hard.

If their epistemology is "warped", what's a non-warped epistemology, and where do we find it?

Thinking about recent news as an example, allegedly a tweet by someone with a $8 checkmark calling insulin free dropped the stock price of a pharma company. There was a graph and everything. This is a thing many thousands or millions of people now believe.

However, if you look at it carefully, you might discover that the most often used graph's y-axis is misleading, and it was only a 2% drop made to look much bigger. Or that the dip actually started a day before the tweet. Or that many pharma companies also dropped at the same time. Or, if you're brave enough, that the primary cause of high insulin prices is the FDA.

Believing in the "conspiracy theory"-like set of thoughts that journalists tell stories they like, journalists distort the facts all the time, and journalists hate Elon Musk can be highly predictive: It told me that something is off with this story and I shouldn't take it seriously, before I even had to check. Correctly so.

What was the reaction on popular subreddits instead? Immediate acceptance. Discussion of how this came to be. Calling stock valuations entirely fake. Vague death threats against Musk, Big Pharma executives, capitalists in general. Blaming the right wing. Predicting the fall of Twitter and legal action for this. Lamenting how easily large mobs can believe such brazen lies, ironically.

Anyway, if you can't trust Forbes, Fortune, Snopes, Business Insider, The Independent, Financial Times, all of whom wrote suggestive articles linking the tweet with the price dip, but never mentioning or downplaying any of the pertinent facts that are one google search away that clearly show this is mere coincidence, whom can you trust? And if someone says this is probably coordinated action instead of sites just copying each other - given that the existence of groups like JournoList where journalists collude with each other has leaked in the past - is he a "conspiracy theorist"? And if there are no trustworthy sources anywhere, how do you learn anything about the news?

Fret not: This is still useful information. When you know what liars want you to believe, you can get often indirect knowledge of that the truth must have been. If someone has a coin and wants you to believe it is biased, "this coin is clearly biased, I got 5 heads in a row" without specifying e.g. "5 heads in a row in the first 5 flips" tells you that the longest streak he could manage was 5 heads in a row, which means a pro-head bias can't have been very high. It also tells you that he had no easier/more convincing method to show bias, so it involved the hard work of flipping a coin (an expected number of) 62 times, and reporting the longest streak instead of the average. It's hard work to do the Bayesian updating math, but it tells you that you should consider it more likely that the coin is fair now, not less.

What conspiracy theorists often do is approximate this sort of thinking. When journalists tell them X is true, they look for reasons why X is false, or reasons to falsely report X is true now instead of earlier or later, and usually find some fairly clear-cut ones. Are they wrong to do so? They're in an adversarial environment. Such an epistemology makes sense.

Is there no stage director? Then to whom shall I direct my

Edit: I remembered the quote wrong.
“ Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?”