Comments by "" (@josephcoon5809) on "Why Do We Believe Things That Aren't True?" video.

0:01 Because people grow up with safety nets that allow them to think things they wouldn’t otherwise put into practice. The best way to prove to someone whether their ideas are true or not is to let them realize their own ideas. In other words, restrict their ability to force their unproven ideas on people they’ll never meet. This will force people to find like-minded individuals who will work towards the same vision, and it will deprive them of the excuse of “well, government didn’t do it right.” 1:30 What Dawkins failed to realize was that genes merely encode ideas which are passed on through replication. An idea is just meaning applied to a physical pattern. As such, ideas can be represented by DNA, neuronal groups, magnetic particles, transistors, or even grooves on a vinyl disk. DNA is a very stable bit slow form of idea storage and execution. Neurons are a more chaotic form of idea storage and execution. Genetic evolution occurs over centuries, while ideological innovation can happen in the blink of an eye. Most psychological disorders are the consequence of slow genetic evolution engaging in rapid technological innovation. Our bodies and brains do not keep pace with the technologically rapid evolution of the environment. We have a sweet tooth because high calorie foods were “good” when food was scarce. Now that food is plentiful and life is less active, high calorie foods are “bad”. Our sweet tooth is a consequence of our genetically programmed biology coding for a food scarce environment we no longer exist in. 2:00 Genes code for ideas. The idea of a larger claw, or stronger legs, or faster wings, or longer beak all existed before we had brains to virtualize those ideas for rapid simulation and adaptation. 2:45 The Free Market has replaced the Natural Wild. Genetic patterns evolve in the latter, and neuronal patterns evolve in the former. GOVERNment is the antithesis of evolution because evolution requires natural SELECTION and the freedom to make a selection as those selections compete with one another. GOVERNment removes selection and the competition that drives evolution. 5:50 Mass mailing ballots to people who normally wouldn’t vote was the actual fraud. The idea that America is supposed to be a democracy was the justification. Not only should ballots NOT have been mailed, but people should not be resorting to voting their ideas into each other as a FIRST resort. Voting should be the LAST resort. 6:30 When somebody signs an affidavit, they are under threat of punishment for lying. So, when you have one group of people believing hundreds of signed affidavits, and another group of people believing “unnamed sources” that say President Trump called veterans “suckers and losers,” I think I’ll stick with the affidavits. We can also toss in the fact that Soros installed DAs are responsible for handling voter fraud cases… so, there’s that on top of the same DAs playing catch-and-release with violent criminals. So, yeah. There’s a bit more to the “memes” than you are presenting.
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@Cherrysmith2809 No. “Evaluating sources” is emotional rhetoric leading to ad hominem. An idea is true regardless of WHO speaks it, WHY they speak it, or WHY they speak it. What you are complaining about is what leads people to accept bad ideas from people they like and reject good ideas from people they dislike. The source NEVER matters in a rational discussion. However, when you need to make a snap decision, the source is generally a large consideration for heuristic considerations. It all comes down to how much time you have to make a decision.
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@Cherrysmith2809 Pay attention, kid. If I am making a decision for myself, I will use heuristic methods like considering somebody’s credentials. When I am making a decision for the people around me (like voting), I will use pure reason which takes longer and is more thorough. So, yes. You can be a sycophantic zealot all you want, but it doesn’t make you rational in doing so. Just the fact that you considered a couple pages worth of text, “word salad” calls into question your ability to understand an academic paper anyways. I even used the most lay terms possible, and your eyes still glazed over. I can’t imagine you trying to read a paper with technical terms.
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@sohrab_solheim Do you understand how stereoscopic vision works? Two eyes produce two DIFFERENT 2D images that the brain learns to reconcile into a 3D understanding. It literally takes two DIFFERENT truths at one dimensionality to produce truth at a higher dimensionality.
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@hm5142 You don’t talk TO people like that. You talk AT them TO an audience. If you consider the time you spent arguing with someone closed-minded ‘wasted,’ why bother doing it? Masochistic optimism? Rarely does an object have a single purpose, and the same can be said for actions. Some alternative purposes for arguing wit someone willfully ignorant: as a fool for your arguments to an audience; as a way to understand a problem that another perceives so as to develop a solution you can sell to them; garner a new perspective to augment your own so as to attain a higher degree of understanding about reality. Of course, you can opt to go with the standard “to change their mind,” but how often do these people change their minds? How often do you change yours?
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@acctsys The best way to argue with people who won’t change their minds is to segregate them, and force them to exemplify their ideas. You don’t prove truth with words. You prove truth with example.
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@acctsys No. skepticism is always important. Anybody who utters the words “follow the science” or “experts say” doesn’t belong in a rational discussion.
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@acctsys “…never to mind their own business…” Do you vote? If so, you are just as guilty for not minding your own business.
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@Cherrysmith2809 First, neither statistics or consensus is science no matter how much a scientifically illiterate zealot wishes them to be. Second, I don’t know how many times somebody declared something as “settled science” only to provide me an academic paper they obviously didn’t read because the summary is full of words like “suggests” or “leads me/us to believe.” The “bias” of a source is irrelevant if the CONTENT is true. Credentials do not matter because people are fallible, biased, and corruptible, not to mention the accreditation process is just as fallible, biased, and corruptible. Anybody can be an expert in a subject regardless of a piece of paper stating whether they are or not. Matter of fact, the higher educational system people place so much faith in has a major flaw by integrating the educational process WITH the accrediting process. If somebody spent 4 years and $100,000 to achieve the same mastery as somebody who spent 12 years and $20,000, then a third party testing system will easily reflect this while scrubbing any bias a particular institutions certificate would provide. All you are doing is listing excuses to not think for yourself. 2+2=4 no matter who says it, what their bias is, what credentials they have, what methodology they used, or any of your myriad ad hominem based logical fallacies that you use to circumvent rational discourse. If you are going though all this trouble to decide whether something is true or not, you definitely shouldn’t be voting your unthought out ideas into other people. If you wish to employ heuristics to make decisions, make those decisions for YOURSELF; not for society.
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@acctsys “When someone earns a living saying what he does…” which would be every academic that does research. Besides, disregarding the source isn’t the same as skepticism. Disregarding the source is basic rational discourse.
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@acctsys I trust nobody. I trust critical thinking. “Basic knowledge may be the territory of academics…” Which, again, isn’t true or relevant. What is true is that people who do deal with policy, problem solving, and action appeal to the academics’ “authority on knowledge” to justify those policies, solutions, and actions. The problem is the mindless zealotry of the scientifically illiterate who just parrot the titles of academic papers because they don’t understand the paper itself. “I for one trust people in business more than academics, looking at what they do, not what they say, because they are incentivized to keep customers and clients happy.” Who do you think drafts our laws? What do you think “citizens” are to “government”? Customers and clients. When private business does it, it’s called profit. When government does it, it’s called surplus. When a business fails, it goes bankrupt… or should. When a government fails, they just raise taxes to “fix it.” Do you wanna see the result of a society that judges SOURCES before it judges IDEAS? Look up “chart of the century” and see what government regulations and subsidies (Red lines) do to industry versus what a free market (Blue lines) does for industry. What do you think about welfare? Because THAT is a prime example of useful idiots being fed statistics to make decisions which enrich the wealthy, erode the middle class, and creates more poverty. Tax revenue doesn’t come FROM the rich and go TO poor people. Tax revenue comes FROM the rich THROUGH the poor TO the rich. However, because The People relinquish their responsibility to build society from the bottom-up to a government that builds it from the top-down, they don’t pay attention to people they’ll never meet whom they vote for every four years to sign thousand page bills they’ll never read drafted by corporate lobbyists they’ll never see. The thousands of business and economics experts out there, and NONE of the more vocal ones explain any of this? It’s almost like the people who don’t want that basic knowledge own the information networks we use… oh wait. They DO!!! Over $700 BILLION in collective wealth by 10 people who own/run corporate social media convinced a majority of voters that President Trump was “racist.” THEN, they convinced those same people that mass voting by mail was secure even though it had NEVER been conducted in America before…but we got it right the first time. Right? If the state of politics is outside your realm of experience, we can discuss the obvious design obsolescence in solar panels, if you wish? Wanna discuss vapor deposition, band gaps, and perovskites instead? Or how about just the basic facts of efficiency regarding IR (heat) being 40% of the 1,000 watts per square meter bouncing right off the panels and back into the atmosphere; or how MOST of the spectrum produces excess heat because band gaps are defined by quantum mechanics meaning only ONE specific wavelength will be converted 100% to an electrical current while the rest of the spectrum either passes through to be absorbed by other materials and converted to heat or absorbed by the semiconductor and the excess energy converted to heat? Or, perhaps you would like to discuss just how little humans understand ALL the systems that contribute to the state of the climate? Wanna discuss how the CO2 from carbon emissions is doing nothing more than replacing the CO2 that was once in the carbon cycle in the first place? How about stomatal density versus CO2 concentration? Wanna discuss the effects of the Sun’s magnetic field on the Earth’s magnetic field which directly affects the ions in Earth’s mantle and outer core? Or how’s about something really basic like vaccines are therapeutic, NOT prophylactic even though part of the population was lead to believe that vaccines, somehow, prevented spread and contraction?
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@acctsys Incorrect. A government, just like a business, serves their clients. Politicians are SUPPOSED to be public servants. The problem is almost NONE of the public has an intimate relationship with their servants. The better path is to build communities of about 100 adults with a high degree of agreement on ideological concerns such that the five representatives they send to a higher order community of 100 adults composed of the representatives of the neighboring 19 communities actually represent their home communities. This higher order community is composed of 2,000 adults. 20 of those communities send 5 representatives to a third order community which constitutes 40,000 adults; 4th order for 800,000; 5th order for 16,000,000; 6th order for 320,000,000. In this more NATURAL organization, EVERY person (which includes an individual and all INCORPORATIONS of individuals; people make the mistake that corporations only involve private businesses) have a direct and intimate relationship with their representatives such that those representatives who spend 3 months of the year in congress with the representatives of neighboring communities spend 9 months living in their communities subject to the EXACT same policies agreed to in the congress. Those representatives are held in direct account because they eat, sleep, play, cry, bleed, sweat, live, and die with those they represent. Those representatives actually serve their communities rather than themselves. This is the best form of protection against corruption and:or ineptitude; far, far better than what we currently have, at least.
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@acctsys Let’s analyze the “live with the people you agree with” paradigm (the exact same one neurons utilize) from a different perspective: mass incarceration. An inmate is incarcerated because they broke a law. They broke that law because they disagreed with it. Had they lived with the people they agreed with, there would have been no law to break. In the paradigm I describe, you will have two towns that are differentiated by their belief about drugs (about 50% of all inmates are convicted on drug related charges). One town has no problem with drug use, and the other deems it bad. In today’s system, somebody caught using drugs in the second town loses 99% of their freedom; their families are broken up; they become non-productive; and worse they become a drain on the society incarcerating them. In the natural paradigm, somebody caught using drugs in the second town is exiled. This results in the “convict” losing 1% of the tie freedom; their family need NOT be broken up; they may become a productive member of a different society; and they definitely do NOT become a drain on the original society. More disagreements results in more laws results in more criminals results in more prisons where the ONLY winners are those running and participating in a system that thrives on unnecessary enslavement. Not only is ideological segregation more efficient (no loss of productivity AND no wasted resources for law enforcement, prosecution, conviction, and incarceration) it is far more moral (far less loss of freedom) than the forced inclusion being forced on society now. Laws should be more like house rules: you can come in, if you abide. If you break them, take a ride. Besides, living with the people you agree with also means taxes disappear. They become voluntary contributions. 😃
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@travcollier The brain is designed to execute the “scientific method.” The “scientific method” is merely deliberate natural selection which is quicker than natural selection because results can be communicated over longer distances. Nature exercises extreme parallel processing which will try more possibilities than humans ever could currently. Ultimately, humans invent very few things. They only label processes and inventions that have been around for billions of years before humans existed. Flagellar bacterial motors: rotary motors, Photoreceptors: solar panels, Consciousness: virtual reality/simulation, Natural selection: free market of ideas, The brain: libertarianism, Nature is fractal in that it repeats successful patterns over various scales of magnitude. The questions we have about society are mostly already answered by the society of cells and neurons that define who we are.
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@travcollier Our brains NATURALLY implement the scientific process. It goes through two main modes of operation: data collection (beta waves; conscious; prefrontal cortex) and data integration into information (theta waves; subconscious; subcritical regions). It is this back and forth between observation and implementation which forms the basis of “the scientific method.” As for “intelligent design”… If you knew anything about procedurally generated programming (Big Bang), the electrostatic force (collision detection), or neuroscience (virtual reality and simulation), you’d find the “intelligent design/happy accident” argument ultimately fruitless. If you think some biological system requires no designer, then what are we studying them for? Our modeling systems are based on the fact that a design is in effect. The problem with how humans apply the scientific method is that bias is almost impossible to factor out. Modern science tries to get around this with “peer review”, but how many high profile arguments allow for completely unbiased peer review funding? We basically have scientists for hire today; intellectual mercenaries trying to make a buck.
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@travcollier Besides, have you tried to prove yourself wrong about “intelligent design”? 😂
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@travcollier It sounds like you only went far back enough to explain how life could manifest based on the physical laws of Nature. What you didn’t address is how those physical laws came to be. So, if humans can design a procedurally generated program capable of manifesting self-aware subroutines, then those subroutines would have no possible way of interacting with the substrate of their existence. Even you have no way of interacting directly with the reality around you because “you” are a manifestation of neurological processes conducted by 100 billion neurons. The colors you “see” exist only as a symbolic language your visual cortex speaks to your prefrontal cortex to represent the wavelengths of light interacting with the the photoreceptors in your retina. Light is a vibration in the electromagnetic field; reality. Color is a representation of that reality; virtualization. We have no way of proving, one way or another, whether our reality is a single dimensional stream of zeroes and ones just as an avatar within a procedurally generated program that we create can prove that we exist. Ultimately, EVERY idea that you have exists in the same place that “god” exists: the metaphysical realm. The zeal with which “scientists” will pronounce that there is no intelligent designer obscures the simple fact that belief or non-belief in something that cannot be proven is not the issue. Zealotry is the issue, and scientism can produce just as many dangerous and scientifically illiterate zealots as theism can produce. Maybe if each camp kept their zealots in line, we could have better discussions… If not, I’ll enjoy every claim of “pseudo-intellectualism” from scientism zealots and “blasphemy” from theism zealots.
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@sohrab_solheim What you see is a virtualization of the vibrations in the electromagnetic field interacting with your eyes.
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