Fact vs. sentiment

[MikeyDB]

A significant and perhaps the single greatest contribution made to establishing societal dynamics is how we arrive at our perspectives and opinions. We were "informed" that the Saddam Hussein regime was sitting on stockpiles of WMDs....

We've been told that our beliefs require special and particular interpretation and translation by all our various religions "holy-men"

We've been conditioned to accept that our posessions and our life-style can be used as a gauge in determining our 'worth" as people. What kind of car we drive...where we live...how big our house might be...our designer fashions....

Media spends billions sculpting perception and thought....

Why is it do you suppose that even when we're "informed" that some event or some condition exists that we're loathe to test that "information".... Do conspiracy theories exist and survive because at some level we know that we consume lies and misdirection readily?

Why are a great many arguments based on presumptions, untruths and "perspectives" instead of fact and scientific observation?

I'd suggest to you that there is greater interest to the end of controlling thought and perspectives by feeding us lies and un-truth than the raw unvarnish truth could ever achieve.

Why don't people choose fact-based evidence and narrative as their guide but rather choose some line of varnished and re-worked "truth" that promises acceptance and inclusion?

Why is artifice the rule while facts are regarded as distasteful orts of a diminished capacity to intuit the truth?

 

[jimmoyer]

Great post MikeyDB. Great questions.

What's even more interesting is that people who disagree on the issues
will agree with your point in those questions. Ironic, isn't it ?

It's what I've posted many times, believing that our votes are emotional first.
THEN we look around for a rationale to back it up. We even tell ourselves we are logical.

But in reality our emotion is like a quick RAM random access going quickly to a point
rather than the slower cumbersome sequential nature of logic.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Really it's because we're not by nature rational creatures. We're capable of rationality, certainly, we even call ourselves homo sapiens, 'wise man,' which often strikes me as a huge excess of hubris. Emotional and magical thinking are a lot easier because they're often more satisfying and are easily twisted to suit our prejudices and desires. Logical, rational, skeptical, critical thinking is not something we're born knowing how to do, it's a learned skill and it's not easy. That's essentially why science is so difficult to do well, and why its procedures have such elaborate safeguards against fraud, error, coincidence, self-deception, misunderstanding, and all the other ways we fool ourselves into believing things that aren't true. It's not a natural talent that we have, it's a hard-won skill that takes years of practice to do well. I've spent over 35 years trying to learn it and do it well, yet still I manage to be completely wrong distressingly often. Just ask my wife...

But that's one of the essential features of logical, rational, skeptical, critical thinking: you must never lose sight of the fact that despite the most careful study and analysis, you might be wrong. That's why, for example, the strong atheist position, "there is no god" is indefensible. You can't possibly know that as a fact, and it doesn't allow for the possibility that you might be wrong. "I don't believe there is a god," on the other hand, the weak atheist position, is easily defensible, as long as you recognize that you might be wrong, which is more or less implicit in the statement. Even Richard Dawkins, probably the most aggressively atheist public figure in the world today, titled chapter 4 of his book The God Delusion as "Why There Almost Certainly Is No God." Even he is not prepared to categorically deny the possibility.

 

[El Barto]

I find that the idea of truth that is so hard to discard is the one first accepted by our virgin mind. What we are first told. That information set in a young mind is hard to shake free. How many fears and opinions that were set there that we carry with out knowing the impact of our thoughts. We are taught to accept authority as the word of god, never imagining that it could be wrong.
I remember history lessons of WW2 where the Germans were "evil" conquers. Reading up long after the lessons was why the war started. The treaties before , the economy of that country and so on.
I realised they weren't the so called evil empire as portrayed. Even had help from western countries.
to Quote a TV show "the truth is out there" and "trust no one"