Given all the misinformation that gets peddled by people how am I supposed to believe anything...

Given all the misinformation that gets peddled by people how am I supposed to believe anything? How am I supposed to believe in any major religion or political theory when both sides to every question lie in order to make you believe their version of things? Everything is a narrative to further an agenda and nothing tells me this wasn't the case before the web. Our entire understanding of human history is based on speculation, and "educated" guesses. Hell we think the world is over 4 billion years old but than humanity came around in the past 6 million years. Humanity could've gotten past our technological point a billion years ago and left this planet for the stars with advanced tech never looking back at earth, assuming it stayed inhospitable.

What Im asking is how do you believe anything? How do you have complete confidence in your world view when even the small facts you learn day to day are lies built on lies and rumors? How can you have a stable mental foundation when you build it on this fabricated reality?

believing is for idiots. use your own mind to think rationally.

So what your saying is believe nothing outside of wheat you can physically confirm to yourself?

Wheat= what

no, I'm saying you need to use logical reasoning to figure out whether a claim makes sense.

empirical evidence can be useful, but if an empirical study returns a result that conflicts with logic, I recommend questioning the empirical study first.

Not everything is a complete fucking lie. Most of it is probably "close to the truth" or "distorted truth".
You can't expect people to give you the most accurate information of everything. But you can try to check and verify what people say.

As for misinformation, do what you do on Holla Forums all the time: Wade through all the shit for those few golden nuggets. I basically assume that people aren't always looking for the truth because they assume they know it. Not that "everyone is a sheeple but me", but more like "people can be wrong" and they might reject some information that conflicts with an ideal/narrative they hold.

But even fact checking something isn't a sure way to KNOW something. "Facts" can be fake. The few golden nuggets you choose to believe (or have "proven" to yourself) are just the lies that feel the most true to you…

As far as religion goes, you're on your own. As far as ideology goes, those are generally founded upon irrefutable axioms.

"Good" and "bad" are effectively inventions of mankind as far as we know. As such, you can basically define for yourself what the intrinsic good is. Think about what kind of world you would like to see, develop a set of axioms which would result in such a world if they were followed by everyone, then take those axioms to their logical conclusion when deciding whether certain acts are good or bad.

Facts don't matter as much with ideology as much as you appear to think they do.

See I've been looking for identity for a long time and its drug me from the far right to the far left, to religion and atheism. I can convince myself of something only for so long.

Like how am I supposed to know wether the UN are good guys or not. For example what gives the international community the RIGHT to enforce sanctions on north korea for violating rules of an organization it isn't a part of?

Society tells me its wrong to impregnate women and leave them but I feel that its for the greater good of increasing the numbers of people like me.

I know this sounds stupid but how am I even supposed to believe in space, or the shape of the planet or that were even on a "planet" at all?

OP here:
What I'm getting at is how am I supposed to feel confident in my choices knowing my biases and subconscious are built on other peoples interpretations/ curations of information?

"logic" and "rationality" are just meaningless buzzwords touted by pseudointellectual morons. Nobody thinks of themselves as being irrational, so saying "just use logic" to define your world view is probably the most useless thing you can tell somebody. There is logic behind every stance, people don't just say "I think this because I'm a moron who can't think critically." Anyone who thinks anything is under the impression that their stance IS the logical and rational one.

As far as religion goes I can't see eternal damnation, that makes no sense. First I don't think you could cause enough pain to deserve an eternity in hell. Second, with all the religious and interpretations of them out there how could a god punish someone for picking the wrong one? Were only human!

Is it wrong to just build your own narrative? worship the physical world and your body as the manifestation of nature itself? Im no hippy but I'm starting to fall into a mindset of take them as they come and judge them by their character. Live at peace with nature and create instead of destroy. Worship your life and the natural world.

I'm pretending to be the person I've convinced myself I should be instead of being myself.

Ive been living for other people and desperately trying to convince myself of a narrative in order to fit in with a group out of loneliness. Ive been pushing propaganda on my own mind and believing things because they fit what I wanted to happen.

Technically, you can't "know" anything beyond the existence of your own perception. You literally can't know if anything outside of your senses exists because your senses are your means of experiencing the world and you can't know if they're telling the truth.

There are a set of assumptions you have to go by in order to function in the world you perceive no matter how you look at it. Frankly, just go with the assumptions that appear to work and see

I got so obsessed with politics in order to be part of something bigger than my ordinary life because my greaquiz fear is living a normal life

greaquiz

great-est

I think the internet is bad for mental health

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Fact checking increasing the probability that something you think is true. As you learn more, you're essentially updating probabilities. It's kind of like machine learning god fucking kill me for saying that.
You could also be aware that you might have biases that might cloud your judgement, and try to be aware of those biases.

Also how much does it really matter for certain things? For example, people used to think the world was flat, but how much did it really matter to them that the world wasn't? How in any way would that affect the world for them when most didn't even move far from their home town. Of course, with things more political in nature misinformation might be more influential, and I think the earth being a sphere did become political at a time, but if your a peasant in 700 B.C.E. what does it really matter?
Facts can be fake, but just because they can be doesn't mean they are. For things that matter maybe you do want to make sure your facts are correct, but you don't have to be certain about every single inconsequential thing.

that's the main problem with humanity, they all fucking want to group shit together, even the ones who claim to be against group think are group thinkers. and individual thinkers will get shat on for not aligning themselves to an ideology

What I'm saying is that the things we recognize as fact and have been building on for decades could also be lies. Im saying we could be at the spear head of 10'000 years of lies and misinformation and even major historical occurrences could've been altered in memory or fabricated entirely.

For all I know I'm living in the truman show by another name.

There IS a group which you are most closely aligned with, like it or not.
I had a similar discussion about this here if you wanna argue about it:


I shit on "individual thinkers" because they're pseudo-intellectuals obscenely prone to naive realism.

OP, I remember beeing a teenager too. It sounds like you just don't have enough confidence in your own common semse or ability to infer wither or not something is conjecture. These things come with experience

Mate I'm 26, I've been far left, far right, homeless, housed, addicted, sober. I can't stay anything for long because I see all sides to an argument and now I'm starting to see that all sides are wrong because there is no way to verify who is right. Even if there was what would right be? Whose version of right would prevail? There is no right or wrong, your conscience is a fabrication installed by societal pressure. Im at the point where I'm ready to move beyond left/right and start seeing the forest instead of each individual tree.

Some of it probably is a lie. Or just wrong.
You keep on using the word "lie" instead of "wrong". It's nitpicky, but "lie" implies some sort of grand conspiracy.

Like shit could be a lie, but what are the chances that "this specific thing is a lie?" Given what you can observe about the world, what are the chances that this thing is a lie?
If you're questioning your own senses then I don't really know what to tell you.
Also, even if you question what is "historical fact", you can still observe how the world around you operates. Even though that peasant can't tell "the world is a sphere", he can tell "society operates as if the world is flat". I honestly think that's pretty useful.


Why do you think that's more of a fact than your current reality? Can you even escape that reality if you want to?
There's no red pill to swallow

The "pendulum" is a fabrication, politics aren't organic they are scripted. Religion is a method of control far divorced from its roots. "Facts" are fiction.

Literally fucking everyone thinks they do. You're not special.

There are NO PILLS at all.

No everybody does but they ignore what doesn't fit in their narrative.

I didn't say I was, why was this comment necessary at all?

You are right to an extent. The issue is they often think they already have all the important information. When something comes along that goes counter to their worldview, they tend to do 1 of 2 things:
The thing is: can you accurately determine whether you fall victim to the same shit?
"My ideology has changed in the past" isn't a refutation of this btw. Most people's views DO change over time.

I'm this guy so, as you can probably tell, I often have a bit of a knee jerk when people try to claim objectivity.

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All sides are most definitely not the same. They're not even necessarily valid.

What I'm getting at is there IS "logic and reason" to all sides. Their stance wouldn't exist if there wasn't. So saying "logic and reason" as if it means anything is completely useless.

I'd say a lot of stances are based on emotion instead of logic

No I can't and thats why I'm falling out of my old way of looking at things. I know I'm only human and susceptible to lies and fooling myself.

This

I don't know whats real because I've spent my whole life CHOOSING what I WANT to believe. This is the problem I have with the internet, it has created too much information so now we are all just lost in the noise.

Depends what you mean by "based on."
The foundational axioms from which any ideology stands are inherently going to be emotional no matter what. Things like "equality," "liberty," "well being," etc. have no value whatsoever without some level of emotion being applied. I can firmly say that there is NO IDEOLOGICAL STANCE which is completely devoid of emotion because emotion is the only place from which these axioms could originate (if you think I'm wrong, please provide a counter example). The logic comes in when you apply these intrinsic values.

I'm talking about, for example, people who want a $15 minimum wage because it feels unfair that some people are paid less than $15, even though logic tells us that a minimum wage will hurt those who cannot produce enough value to be worth at least that minimum wage by making them unemployable

Then you simply don't understand the logic they're using. It's not just "waaaah I'm not making enough money!" though there certainly is a factor of that to it but a set of logical arguments that you would have already heard if you took 2 minutes to talk to someone about it.
1. There are places which already have high minimum wages which saw no ill effect
^that's not logic as much as trivia, but it's probably the first thing they'll tell you.
2. If people have more money, they'll spend more money, meaning the monetary impact on businesses which are forced to raise their wages will be minimal and therefore the impact on employment will be minimal as well.
^this is a logical argument i have heard somewhat rarely, but do be aware it exists.

I disagree with raising the minimum wage for the most part, but NEVER assume people who do want to raise it are just emotional retards. This goes for just about any other issue as well.

such as?

if people lose their jobs, they won't have more money

It's bullshit. Places which saw an increase in the min wage did see a drop in employment. The thing is, logic and facts are two different things. They have been exposed to false information which conveniently leads to the perfect refutation for:

If the minimum wage were to be raised, it would definitely need to come alongside other initiatives which increase the demand for employment in my opinion.

And on that note, im going to bed. I'll be back later but it's 4:00 AM here.

Im a west coast fag too

But I'm still up and drinking. I have no work today

search the truth.