What beliefs or hypotheses do you hold strongly despite not feeling confident that you can necessarily prove or evince it?
Let hear them conjects
When I started working decades ago, we were taught how to use bent bits of fence wire to find underground pipes before digging
I literally found scores of pipes that way, and saw dozens of other people do it regularly. It was even taught at a local agricultural college as part of the horticulture course
Then someone told me it was a myth and doesn't work, so I set up a blind test with a hidden bucket of water and I utterly failed to find it
I simply cannot explain this
I was taught this too growing up in rural america. Did it myself at some land my grandparents had.
Best explanation I've heard for why it "works" is that when looking for places to first install pipes the location tends to be obvious or intuitive, so then years later when someone needs to find it again we naturally trend to the same rough area, pull out those stupid rod things and when they randomly cross there's a pipe there cause we're already standing in the general right spot. Get a high enough success rate and our brains start to think there is causation to the correlation.
It's called Dowsing
Dowsing is a type of divination employed in attempts to locate ground water, buried metals or ores, gemstones, oil, claimed radiations (radiesthesia), gravesites, malign "earth vibrations" and many other objects and materials without the use of a scientific apparatus.
I had the opposite experience. Consistently derided and dismissed it as woo. Went to my parents' land a couple of years ago and my dad told me to try it. I didn't want to, that's how ridiculous I found it. But those things were moving in my hands in a way that had me halfway believing.
It's because the water does not flow in "pipes" underground. It is nearly everywhere, and so you have "found" it most times.. You just don't know at what depth you will find it - until you ask your neighbor :)
There's a part of me that believes that magic/psyonics/spirit whatever intentionally and willfully does not respond to the scientific method.
Whatever entity is behind it refuses to be subjected to scrutiny and furthermore refuses to be turned into a machine with an on-off switch.
You can have your magic or you can have your proof that magic doesn't exist but you can't have proof that magic exists and magic at the same time.
If something is tested and proven, it falls outside the realm of magic and just becomes normal everyday science or technology. It's like the saying about alternative medicine. Anything that is proven to work is just called medicine.
Fascinating twist. Its like it was a subcultural mass delusion
Clearly it only works if you believe ;)
People are basically good
We are social animals that evolved to work cooperatively. We have deeply ingrained mechanisms that encourage pro-social behavior.
I agree. People are by default "good" and want happy lives within their communities. It's when tribalism steps into the scenario that most problems arise.
Thing is, that tribalism is what drives the good parts.
It falls apart with distance or numbers, though.
Yes! Cooperative behavior can that result in kin selection, where the individuals of the community have similar fitness. However, selfishness and deception are exceptionally beneficial behaviors for increasing the fitness of a particular individual. That is just within the same species. Perhaps tribalisms are another form of kin selection?
Yeah, I believe that too. As an actual proportion of all living people, actually (as in from birth, with a pathological lack of empathy or similar) bad people are most likely a very thin minority.
The rest come from nurturing (friends, family, economic situation), political choices (affordable healthcare, housing, food safety), and bad luck.
We are also gullible and ignorant most of the time, which probably doesn't help either.
Weird. I think the opposite.
People are basically good, but criminally ignorant on average.
Just look at Asmond Gold's recent ban. I doubt the dude would ever even think about shooting a Palestinian himself, but boy will he happily dehumanize an entire culture as easy as taking a sip of water!
Do you think (on the balance) its more nurture than nature to be shitty to other humans?
I definitely do. Those who act the worst towards others were usually raised that way, or encountered some kind of struggle that made them bitter.
I strongly believe that if everyone was raised with compassion, and if everyone was supported and had their needs met, then we would see very little evil in the world.
Our society seems structured to bring out the worst in us, and rewards those who behave unethically. A better world is possible though.
This question has gone back and forth a lot, and the data says: both! The overall development of organisms depends the sum of the effect of the genes, the environment, and the gene-by-environment interaction. In conclusion, to predict human behaviors and personalities, we need a new zodiac system that accounts for multiple hemispheres, precipitation, elevation, socioeconomics, pandemics, popular movies, climate change, and the genome.
"I was a Porky's kid, born in the southern hemisphere, I ate well, was raised in good home, I had access to education, and it was back when climate change was still deniable. Most people did not know what a pandemic was. I'm genetically predisposed to hair loss."
"Ma'am, you are, what we call, a Jaguar-5-hypercrab-superbear, and I'm going to have to ask you to go with the nice officer now."
"Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most.
That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love... true love never dies.
You remember that, boy. You remember that. Doesn't matter if it's true or not.
You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing in."
I believe that the reason why so many people are going crazy in America at least is because they are approaching the end of their life and they have been told the whole time they've been alive that they would be living through the end of times, and if it becomes true then their lives have not been wasted but if it is not true or if it doesn't happen until after they die then their lives have been wasted and it's driving them crazy.
"Christianity is a death cult," essentially. Why bother to make it better here when paradise is guaranteed?
I heard "the moment you start praying is the moment you've given up trying" the other night. I almost spat my tea.
That P != NP.
Also, that all non-trivial Riemann zeros in the critical band are at 1/2.
My BS, unprovable hypothesis: The Golden Age of Piracy was actually a successful Socialist movement, with Nassau being a disruptively successful enclave of Socialism in action. The pirates deeply threatened the budding power structures in the US (not conjecture) and the entrenched powers in Europe. While some powers, most notably royalty, were willing to use pirates as mercenaries (privateers), there was an excess of democracy and human concern (somewhat my conjecture) among the Nassau pirates. The Nassau pirates had pensions, a form of worker's comp, disability, democratic command structures at sea, and healthcare (such as it was given the era). According to the historical texts on the Nassau pirates, there were almost no written records, which strikes me as especially odd since they had so many long-running financial and governing processes.
That global democratic socialism can work. Currently the only states successful in implementing it are oil-rich nordic countries, and I want to believe it can work elsewhere but it'll be hard to prove.
No, Norway is social democracy.
Sweden and Finland have no oil, and if anything are even more "socialist" than Norway.
Back to the drawing board on your premise.
Sweden is fairly unique as it's economy wasn't destroyed by WWII, and it's stance on banking, foreign exports, and foreign ownership has enabled it to make massive profits. But the economy is seriously struggling today. The average home loan takes 100 years to pay off.
Finland economy replaces oil with timber and an extremely educated population. Both of which are not sustaining the model well as the country is in recession. The timber industry isnt producing sustainable profits like it used to. The debt-to-GDP ratio is extremely high. The highly educated population is leaving and people don't typically immigrate to Finland.
So arguably the model isn't working anymore, without something like oil to fall back on.
The point I was trying to convey is that the only democratic socialist countries that I'm aware of are rich off of either abundant natural resources or rent-seeking from more exploitative countries like the US. Is it a sustainable model for poor countries too? Historically they've fallen into autocracy. I want it to work everywhere because I believe in justice, but I can't prove it with math or precedent.
I think the problem is that no system that gives equal weight to everyone's opinions can survive a population that does not have a majority of good opinions. And if the populace does agree on most things, then it doesn't matter much what system is being used. The best the system can do is incentivise certain behaviors.
The Pizzagate conspiracy was created to cover up any media coverage of the police reports from the early 90s when Trump was hanging with Epstein and dumping 'used' underage girls at a pizza parlor the next morning.
The Piazzagate conspiracy theory was created by bored 4channers to see how ridiculous a story they can invent and how many people will just believe it. I don't think anyone realised it would get as big as it did and then they did it again with Q.
Was it really a bunch of bored nerds, or did a PR agent make an anonymous post to start the rumor mill?
Either greed or religion has killed the most people before their time. One of them has to go.
Can we get rid of both?
How about god complexes? Should those be on our radar?
That might be provable
When we die, we're recycled. There's no Heaven, Hell, Rainbow Bridge, Valhalla .etc Because those are man-made constructs to give people a sense of belonging based on what you did in life. Someone talked to me about the Egg Theory and while I have a bit of skepticism towards it, I do understand a plausibility about it.
And if anything from the Egg Theory is true, then cool, I'd love nothing more than to be recycled and born into a life from the past to live it out again.
What we know about the age of the human species, and other life, the earth, the universe etc. depends on so many guesses that we know essentially nothing.
Specifically, I think that elements and materials may have changed some of their properties and behaviour at some time in the past.
We do not know that. Most people just assume they have remained constant at all times. And we build quite many of our guesses on this assumption.
If, for example, C14 has changed it's disintegration rate at some time, then quite many of our guesses would be very wrong.
I don't think it's documented as happening to an element, but some compounds have changed their properties due to disappearing polymorphs.
Holy shit what that's so cool! Reminda me of both low-background steel and the theoretical strange matter chain reaction.
Inductive reasoning. I don't have any non-circular reason to believe that previous experience should predict future events. But I'm gonna believe it anyway.
That's... huh. Yeah I guess you're right
That I'd be a fool to strongly hold a belief without equally strong evidence.
Did this man just call himself a fool?
Everyones a fool and knows nothing :)
I'd argue we have lots of evidence that people who believe things strongly without evidence are dumb.
I've mentioned them before and they're semi-related, in a broad sense:
I believe the Congressional baseball game shooting was likely intended to benefit Trump.
I believe it's likely that the Russian government has knowingly promoted interracial cuck porn, in some capacity.
Most of my moral convictions aren't provable because the most basic ideas are simply axioms. "You should be a good person" cannot be justified in a way that's non-circular, and defining "good" is also similarly arbitrary. The only true "evidence" is that people tend to agree on vague definitions in theory. Which is certainly a good thing, imo, but it's not actually provable that what we consider "good" is actually the correct way to act.
I have started creating a moral framework, though. I've been identifying and classifying particular behaviors and organizing them in a hierarchy. So far it's going pretty well. At least my arbitrariness can be well-defined!
You should watch The Good Place and/or read the book How to be Perfect by Michael Schur. He made the show too.
He starts from the same standpoint as you and then explores moral philosophy to find answers.
I think it is easy enough to argue without making it circular. As for "good", I don't think an objective absolute and universal definition is necessary.
The argument would be to consider it an optimization problem, and the interesting part, what the fitness function is. If we want to maximise happiness and freedom, any pair of people is transient. If it matters that they be kind to you, it is the exact same reasoning for why you should be to kind to them. Kinda like the "do unto others", except less prone to a masochist going around hurting people.
If we want to maximise happiness and freedom
But that's what I'm saying, that choice is axiomatic. I think most people would agree, but it's a belief, not an unquestionable truth. You're choosing something to optimize and defining that to be good.
If it matters that they be kind to you, it is the exact same reasoning for why you should be to kind to them
Only if you believe that everyone fundamentally deserves the same treatment. It's easy to overlook an axiom like that because it seems so obvious, but it is something that we have chosen to believe.
I believe that there are metaphysical aspects of reality and unfalsifiable truths science and mathematics will never be able to prove.
I know that this isn't what you mean, but paradoxically mathematics has been used to prove that it can't prove everything: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems
Gödel's incompleteness theorem is one of the main things that I like pointing to when talking about stuff like this, thanks for bringing it up. Its a good supporting piece that helps show there are limits to logic and knowability. I think physics models will eventually have their own version that puts theories of everything in jepoardy.
Like such as?
Like consciousness being greater than the sum of its parts and there being spiritual aspects to the universe. Like emotions existing as non localized complex energy frequencies, and karma existing.
I used to be a hardcore scientific determinist athiest. The scientific method, mathematical logic, and unfalsifiablility were collectively my God. My version of the universe was a mechanical box our fates predetermined by an uncaring system. There was no room for magical thinking or maybe invisible unicorns. Thing either existed or they didn't, yes or no, 1 or 0. Everything not absolute verifyable truth was worthless.
Then I had a psychedelics phase, astral projected, experienced ego death, had telepathic communications with divine / cosmicbconsciousnesses using plants as mediums, looked at myself from third person with nonexistent eyeballs, ect, ect.
I will never be able to prove to anyone my experiences are real, but what I experienced was real to me from my subjective reference frame in every way that matters.
I think our model of cosmology is likely way more wrong than we think. I LOVE it when we get new data that challenges our accepted notions, which is why I'm loving all the "how are these ancient galaxies so big" stuff coming out of Webb.
My running theory is that what we call the universe is an inverse version of what we would consider to be the real universe, were we not stuck in this crummy inverted one.
The reason John Mulaney got divorced was that after getting off cocaine he realized that he did actually want kids but Anna didn't
Once I got sober I realized immediately that I married the wrong person. Part of that was her absolutely not wanting to have kids, whereas I just wasn't ready for them yet.
We likely live in a simulation.
Assuming it's possible to create a simulation, the odds of us being in a simulation is 50%
But if you can create one simulation, maybe you can create 1 million. Or maybe you can create nested simulations.
So even if the chance of creating a simulation is 1%, but the creation of one simulation means millions are created, the odds of us living in a simulation are above 99.99%.
Another theory is the Boltzmann Brain. Basically the idea that a brain can spontaneously appear in space:
By one calculation, a Boltzmann brain would appear as a quantum fluctuation in the vacuum after a time interval of 101050 years.
Which means if the universe lasts forever, but has already reached a point where worlds can't form, there's infinite time for something as complex as a brain to suddenly spawn. Which also means it's more likely that you don't exist and are just a brain that will last for a nanosecond before disappearing, and none of this is real. In fact, in a universe that lasts forever, the fact you are a brain that will disappear in a nanosecond is more likely than you being a human with a real past.
It's been a looooong nanosecond.
That's what you think!
That consciousness is real and not an illusion
But reality is just experienced through consciousness so what would that reality be?
Even though I feel like I might ignite, I probably won't.
That humans are apex predators, and we have been so for upwards of 2.5 million years. Following from this, I believe that most chronic illnesses that we have today (e.g. obesity, diabetes, mental illnesses, cardiovascular diseases, arthritis, PCOS, etc.) are caused by us straying from eating diets with lots of fatty meat.
Does being religious count?
I'm going to ask you to limit it to more material claims if thats ok ☺️
The reason for the common cold being so prevalent in cold weather is because of the cold.
My theory is that cold temperatures best suit the incubation of the germs. You are especially susceptible at night, when you can't control your breath enough to keep your nose/nostrils warm. Warm face/nose at night = you won't catch a cold.
I'm absolutely convinced of this theory. I've tested ways to keep my face/nose warm at night, and it seems to test very solidly (and I get sick very very easily). Once my room gets too chilly, I'll inevitably wake up with a cold.
EDIT: let me have the smallest conspiracy theory in the world, thank you.
Hmmm, not sure why you're getting the downvotes, but your idea is not far-fetched. There have been multiple studies showing things like viruses living longer and traveling farther in cold dry air than in warm humid air, and also about the cold having immediate negative effects on certain aspects of immunity. The studies I've seen have usually been about the flu virus instead of cold virus, but some of it would transfer over, like the ones about immunity.
What's weird is that for years (decades?) doctors / public health / scientists etc swore up and down that it was a myth that cold temperatures had anything to do with cold infections. It doesn't surprise me now, after seeing the uphill battle it was to get the scientific community to finally, grudgingly accept that COVID is transmitted by floating around the air, sometimes over long distances. Many so-called "scientists" still don't seem to accept this, despite having aerosol engineers break it down for them.
I might believe this. Temperature is an important part of our environment and I'd be surprised if it had no effect on any diseases that may be floating around
The reason my memory seems to be fuzzy at times, even for some things that happened recently, comes down to the fact that I was put under for surgery back in 2011 and was under for longer than they expected due to finding something they didn't expect.
I believe in the afterlife.
I also believe that humans have the unconscious ability to influence their relative perception of time. Think of all the times that seemed to "fly by," or moments that "last forever." I think you do this unknowingly, and it's usually connected to a heightened emotional state, which means you have an increased level of some neurochemical. I don't think there's a specific one responsible for altering our perception of time, just that they correlate.
That we have the ability to alter our perception of time is what allows us to have an "afterlife."
What I believe, without evidence, is that when you die, your brain does a massive dump of all of it's dopamine and serotonin, as well everything else, that let's your final moment be one of peace and acceptance. Additionally, you will stretch your final moments till it seems a lifetime, all while hallucinating massively because of this huge dump of neurochemicals into your neocortex.
So during your final moments, whether you believe you're going to a heaven or a hell, you're right. Because that's exactly where you'll imagine yourself. If you think you'll bounce around a field of billowy clouds while visiting loved ones with all your pets by your side, then you will. If you think you deserve to drown in a river of hellfire while the world laughs, then you will.
As an athiest, it kinda gives me something to look forward to. One final hurrah before nothingness.
Bigfoot is real. Sasquatch, abominable snowmen, yeti have been spotted all over the globe. Coincidence?
When people are left to enter deals and economic arrangements as they see fit, it produces the most overall wealth, both for those at the top and those at the bottom of the economic hierarchy.
You're right, but we don't care because wealth has diminishing marginal returns on utility.
the libertarian pipe dream
I believe that life as we know it exists somewhere else in the universe .
Tied to this, I believe there is no intelligent life close enough to ever reach us physically (short of freezing themselves and traveling millions of years, but we really aren't worth that trip lol) I don't believe faster than light travel will ever exist.
Yeah, I’ve lost my interest in their being other intelligent life in the universe. It’s pretty clear we’ll never be able to meet and quite likely never be able to even see the evidence for their existence. So, how does it matter?
Yeah, I don't think there's intelligent life in our galaxy. Life definitely, on the level of microbes. But probably nothing higher.
I believe the opposite.
I think there’s so much evidence of intelligent alien life visiting us that it takes a massive act of denial and self-delusion to ignore it.
In fact, I think the idea that alien evidence is all faked is a massively unbelievable conspiracy theory. The alien hoax would require a level of secret conspiracy that puts chemtrails or CIA mind control conspiracy theories to shame.
The organization necessary to produce the constant stream of alien evidence would dwarf the Manhattan Project.
Has anyone calculated like "the odds" of it probabalistically?
If you take standard cosmological assumptions (the universe is infinite and homogeonous) then the odds are 100% as everything that is physically possible happens infinite times.
unless you mean the observable universe, in which case we dont know, but given the vast scale of it is likely very close to 1. We cant calculate it without knowing how likely life is to form in the first place.
I'm not sure exactly how else you might calculate it, but, we know life is possible, so in an infinitely large universe, containing infinite stars with infinite planets existing for an infinite amount of time, the odds of life existing on another planet can't be less than 100%.
We don't have enough data about the frequency of life to say for sure, since we only have one data point (our planet). If we knew more about how life can arise originally, then perhaps we could make a prediction.