[ SECRET POST #2075 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2075 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


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02.


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03.


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04.


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05.
[Twilight]


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06.
[Christian Bale, Scott Disik]


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07.


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08.


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09.


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[ ----- SPOILERY SECRETS AHEAD ----- ]












10. [SPOILERS for Misfits]



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11. [SPOILERS for A Song of Ice and Fire]



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12. [SPOILERS for the Vampire Diaries]



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[ ----- TRIGGERY SECRETS AHEAD ----- ]













13. [WARNING for rape]



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14. [WARNING for suicide]

[Truffaldino from Bergamo (1976)]


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15. [WARNING for pedophilia, rape]

[DC Comics]


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16. [WARNING for depression]

[Zac Little/AngryFilmsProduction (YouTube)]


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17. [WARNING for child abuse]















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 000 secrets from Secret Submission Post #296.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I think you might not be using quite the same definition of 'believe', is the problem.

According to the nearest dictionary, we have

1 accept (something) as true; feel sure of the truth of
2 [with clause ] hold (something) as an opinion; think or suppose

Maybe you're using believe as 'feel sure of the truth of', while others are using 'accept (something) as true'? Feeling isn't something you can control, but accepting is... certainly more controllable.

In some usage, if something is supported by all the evidence, you don't need to believe it, you know it.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

No, I mean "accept (something) as true." I do not experience my acceptance or rejection of a claim's truth value as a choice.

As an example, let's take ghosts. I think ghosts are pretty cool. I LOVE ghost stories, and I'm fond of the idea of being able to hang around and watch your loved ones after you die. I would really like to believe in ghosts. But I've never been able to find any reliable research showing evidence of ghosts, so I don't believe in them. There was no choice involved. I cannot even begin to fathom how I would go about choosing to believe in ghosts.

How do you choose to believe something in the absence of evidence? Could you maybe give an example of something you've chosen to believe?

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

I choose to believe that most people in the world are basically decent and want to do good things.


That's about it. I'm not very good at belief.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

Okay, so if you hypothetically wanted to believe that that most people weren't decent and didn't want to do good things, are there steps you would take to change your belief? Or would you just be like "well, today I'm going to believe people are basically douchenozzles"?

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

Hmm, I'm not sure. Watch lots and lots of news coverage? Unleash my cynicism and let it rip? Start treating the thought like I do other unwelcome irrational thoughts (attempt to squash when detected)?

I'm not very good at this.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

See, to me that isn't choosing to believe. That's choosing to try to convince yourself. I can definitely choose to try to convince myself of something, but I don't really have a lot of control over whether it works. That's all dependent on whether the evidence I find when I go looking is convincing.

Take my ghost example from earlier. I have tried to convince myself that ghosts exist. I've read first-hand accounts of ghost encounters and thought back to all of the creepy unexplained things I've experienced in my life and talked to my friend who is a paranormal investigator and completely believes. And I can choose to do all of those things, but I can't stop the part of my brain that analyzes the information I'm gathering, and that part of my brain has always eventually spat back out some version of "yeah, but aren't X, Y, and Z mundane explanations far more likely?"

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

I got nothing.

I think some of us are skeptics by nature and find it difficult/impossible to believe... whatever. But I'm pretty sure some people are better at it.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

Oh, I'm not by any means trying to imply that other people don't choose their beliefs. I'm just trying to understand how they choose belief, because it's not a skill I possess. So many people seem to think it's this obvious thing that everyone can do that it makes it really hard to communicate sometimes, because I'm missing this apparently really fundamental context that nearly everyone around me seems to share.

[skinst_bomb]

It's called thinking about things too litterally.