So the people who lampoon "the crazies" on YouTube (for profit) are guilty of the same thing as the politicians who stoke people's stress and fear to gain a following?
> Calling their beliefs delusional is not a neutral description of the features of their beliefs, but a judgement that, if they hold those beliefs, then they lack the capacity to produce and share knowledge.<p>Hardly! I know plenty of conspiracy believing nutjobs who could teach me a thing or two about cooking or even philosophy.<p>> we can stop assuming that they are where agency goes to die<p>Being willing to listen to just about anyone, yet filter what I want for myself does not mean I have taken away their agency. It just means I don't trust their every word, and rightfully so. That's basically the definition of being rational.<p>Those with authority may say or do agreeable things I know to be false in subtle or not so subtle ways. I know their authority does not come from individuals, but crowds. I'm either in or out. The ones with the least agency are the rest of us who care more about truth than clout.<p>I think this article was interesting, but misguided. Crowds are ephemeral and already made up their minds long before anyone they gave authority was before them. They're not going to be convinced by mere opinion pieces. Their beliefs came from their own thoughts validated by others and long before anyone embodied it. This validation process is often random and meaningless. What matters more is that enough people arrived at the same thoughts independently and usually from gentle suggestion building off previous authority. Filling that void by becoming that icon is how most con artists operate, and great artists steal.
Gets back to the old questions, 'the cave', 'Noumenal/Phenomenal'.<p>Humans construct an internal Bayesian like model of the world, that is not itself the 'Real' world. It is a 'Delusion'.<p>And since our brains are just pattern matching, on best guesses.<p>If you feed people a lot of garbage 'IN', it is possible to get people that only spew garbage 'OUT'.<p>Eventually your internal model can be so off base, that others think you are crazy, or living in an 'alternate reality'. You were fed so much garbage your internal state has hard time interpreting anymore.<p>But, it is for everything. What we call 'garbage' changes with time. We no longer think the sun revolves around the earth, but was it 'garbage' back when everyone believed that.<p>Part of our internal model update functions, is trying to adapt to everyone else's internal models. There are very few 'facts' in the world, far more interpretations, and those are all subject to this 'delusion'.<p>(I think what the article is actually saying, is yes, all humans live in an 'illusion', so we should stop saying the word 'delusion' since it is viewed as derogatory for something that happens to everyone. We pick and choose who we say is 'delusional' and stigmatize them, without realizing everyone is in an 'illusion'. And this framing is preventing reaching them to help update the 'delusions').
I’m of the opinion that delusional beliefs are a natural consequence of creativity and imagination.<p>There may yet be a correlation beteeen genius and madness.<p>Take Tesla’s Wardenclyffe experiment. Assuming we don’t believe he would have succeeded, it was a delusional dream. He had spent his life thinking radically and having it align with reality, so he didn’t doubt his hunch about wireless power.<p>Perhaps delusional thoughts are a result of accurate guesses growing up which don’t compensate for mental faculty decline. This brings fear and defensive attitudes and ultimately leads to a thick headed belief that is static.
> Remaining curious about the speaker’s perspective, where it comes from and what it means to them, is always the best policy.<p>I wouldn't advocate that people with delusional beliefs should be ignored 100% of the time, but it's hard to remain curious in the face of a lot of delusional beliefs that you've heard a hundred times before. Yeah, sure, 5G gives you Covid. That was a fun one to unpack the first time - definitely worth being curious about where <i>that</i> came from. But eventually you start to recognize patterns of nonsense, and it just becomes boring, so we arrive at dismissal as a time-saving heuristic.<p>I’m all up for hearing some <i>novel</i> delusions.
> there is nothing in the way in which delusional beliefs are developed, maintained, or defended that can be legitimately described as a dysfunctional process<p>Seriously? Delusional thinking is a dysfunctional process almost by definition, since it produces invalid conclusions.<p>> these cognitive biases are a common feature of human cognition and not a dysfunction giving rise to a pathology<p>That’s like saying that cancer is OK because it arises commonly in many humans.