However I am very entertained by these stories being debunked. Some people are more entertained by the 'fantastical' stories themselves. I am curious is there any good research or videos that explores the difference between people that like/are entertained by these stories vs people that are entertained by proving them false.
Those two positions are too polarized for me to fit into. I'm interested in learning the truth, regardless of what that may be. I'm not especially interested in debunking, if what you mean by that is exposing hoaxes, because hoaxes annoy me. But, if that plays into revealing the truth, then yes, I'm interested.
There's far too much we still don't know or understand, and history is riddled with examples of things we once thought we knew, and were commonly accepted as truth, that have been proven to be wrong. Most people thought the earth was flat and that the sun revolved around the earth. Those who knew and said otherwise were ridiculed. Now we know they were right. It wasn't long ago when scientists thought mountain gorillas were merely a myth, and now we know better.
So, for me, I like to keep an open mind and gather information, if and when I can.
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saviodium (500)
7 years ago
Well debunking I would more attribute to learning or revealing the truth of something. But it seems that a huge part of the population is entertained by the supernatural stories, I wonder what makes them psychologically different from those that are more entertained by the supernatural stories being proven false. there has to be a difference I would think.
"There's far too much we still don't know or understand, and history is riddled with examples of things we once thought we knew, and were commonly accepted as truth, that have been proven to be wrong."
part of the problem is a lot of people it seems can't distinguish between truth and facts. I have had many arguments about this difference.
" Most people thought the earth was flat and that the sun revolved around the earth."
Well this is actually a false assumption. Very few people actually thought the earth was flat. This was a myth that became popular in the early 1800's which was trying to suggest that people in the past were dumb and ignorant. It has since been proven that very few people in medieval times thought the earth was flat, almost no educated person thought this. Only very poorly educated 'commoners'. I do not think that Columbus and the vikings before him would have sailed across the ocean if they thought they would fall off the end of the earth. But this is an example of what I am talking about. Proving the myth wrong is more interesting to me than the myth itself.
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Catbookss (13664)
7 years ago
From a Newsweek article:
“A round Earth appears at least as early as the sixth century B.C. with Pythagoras, who was followed by Aristotle, Euclid, and Aristarchus, among others in observing that the earth was a sphere.” By the first century A.D., “the sphericity of the earth was accepted by all educated Greeks and Romans.”
That's very interesting. I never got the memo ;), but thanks for delivering it. Dumb isn't the same thing as ignorant. There were plenty of things that were unknown in the past (ignorance), and it would be unreasonable to assume there aren't still now.
However, your post doesn't discount my earlier comment: "There's far too much we still don't know or understand, and history is riddled with examples of things we once thought we knew, and were commonly accepted as truth, that have been proven to be wrong."
Reminds me of that story of the wise men who were lead to various parts of an elephant and asked what it was they were touching. First one felt the trunk and said it was a snake. I forget what the others said, but it was a fact to each of them that the animal *appeared* to be a snake and whatever the others were, but it was not the truth that it was any of those other animals.
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saviodium (500)
7 years ago
"That's very interesting. I never got the memo ;), but thanks for delivering it. Dumb isn't the same thing as ignorant. There were plenty of things that were unknown in the past (ignorance), and it would be unreasonable to assume there aren't still now."
Oh I agree. plenty of smart ignorant people out there. I actually regularly make an argument people in the past were smarter but less knowledgeable then us. We have such ease of access to information we really do not need understanding to get the info. This makes us more mindless and careless.
"However, your post doesn't discount my earlier comment:"
I was not trying to discount it, I was mostly agreeing.
"Reminds me of that story of the wise men who were lead to various parts of an elephant and asked what it was they were touching. First one felt the trunk and said it was a snake. I forget what the others said, but it was a fact to each of them that the animal *appeared* to be a snake and whatever the others were, but it was not the truth that it was any of those other animals."
see even you seem to not get the difference between fact and truth. For each wise man what they said was their truth. The facts were; the one touching the trunk was touching a rubbery long cylinder like shaped animal that resembled a snake. That was facts. The truth he came to was it was a snake, which was not the factual 'truth' which that it was the trunk of an elephant.
Truth is our interpretation of the facts, which means it is subjective to our interpretation. The facts are just data these can't be argued, only our interpretation can be argued.
Even Sam Harris whom I respect greatly could not distinguish this properly, which him being a nueroscientist surprised me.
It reminds me of a quote by Marcus Aurelius "Everything people say is opinion not fact, everything people see is perception not truth."
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