science

14985 readers

675 users here now

A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.

rule #1: be kind

<--- rules currently under construction, see current pinned post.

2024-11-11

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

275

Many voters are willing to accept misinformation from political leaders – even when they know it’s factually inaccurate, if they believe the statements evoke a deeper, more important “truth.” (theconversation.com)

submitted 1 month ago by solrize to c/science

54 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Many voters are willing to accept misinformation from political leaders – even when they know it’s factually inaccurate. According to our research, voters often recognize when their parties’ claims are not based on objective evidence. Yet they still respond positively, if they believe these inaccurate statements evoke a deeper, more important “truth.”

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I hate myths, even ones with good intentions. Things like "Santa" are just teaching kids to be disappointed and that their parents are full of shit.

As a side comment, what in the actual fuck is the tooth fairy?

None of this stuff makes any sense to me, whatsoever.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It may be related to all the trolling we do to each other, such as deckpeckers, left-handed smoke shifters, snipe hunting and soft-punching contests.

It may not make reasonable sense at all, but humans are silly muppets.

It's why I hypothesize that teapots in space (between the Earth and Mars, orbiting the sun) would be almost certain evidence that time travel to the past becomes possible and cheap, and if we ever attain the capacity to detect distant teapots and don't find any, that may be evidence that time travel is not possible, or at least cannot be made cheap enough to be used for practical jokes.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

A hypothesis is absolutely fair game. I am not going to spend the time to prove it right or wrong in this case, but it's still 100% legit in my book.

(Just don't go telling your child spawn that space pot... err.. space teapots are definitely the reason that time travel could be possible.)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

The logic is that if we should be able to detect orbital teapots but can't find any that it may indicate time travel is not possible, or at least never readily available for MIT students to engage in practical jokes. Because they totally would.

Like Roko's Baskilisk it relies on a lot of presumptions that we cannot immediately make. We still struggle to detect teapot-sized satellites in the inner solar system. Time travel may exist but may never be freely accessible. There may even have been a task force to intercept all the teapot-placement missions before they launched, or a good reason not to frivolously drop objects into the past such as teapots. We might even have evolved to where we just don't consider trolling each other as appropriate behavior.

As with many of my hypotheses, it's more of a thought experiment than an actual conjecture of the real world.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Our culture is obsessed with lies.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

It's obsessed with fantasies as an escape from the dystopia it creates in reality. A better world is actually possible.