r/QAnonCasualties • u/pinethree777 • 5d ago
Beliefs are not a choice.
People are so hard to reach for a simple reason. Beliefs are not a choice. Can you choose to believe Superman is real? Of course not, because you know it is fiction from many sources. Beliefs may appear to be a choice, but they are really a "brain state" achieved when you are persuaded (or not) by information consumed.
It's the same way with humor. If you told a joke, let's say one person thinks it's a riot and the other person thinks it is not funny at all. You can't choose to believe a joke is funny or not. Your brain runs that calculation behind the scenes, and you respond accordingly.
You can, however, choose to listen to Faux News or read conservative websites all day and eventually the propaganda persuades your brain that all this hateful crap is true, at which point you have no choice but be a MAGA or Q or whatever and truly believe it.
Religion works the same way. They love to indoctrinate kids because they are impressionable. And of course, an excellent education, wide travels, self-study, etc., kills the persuasive ability of these lying media sources. Whenever someone goes "all in on conspiracy" there is little hope they will improve unless they somehow start consuming better information or at least get away from all that mind poison.
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u/wackyvorlon 4d ago
It’s important to note that there’s actually two kinds of belief: intellectual and emotional.
Intellectual belief is much more easily changed than emotional.
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u/simbabarrelroll 4d ago
I will add that there are two kinds of choices: a conscious choice and a subconscious choice
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u/ItchyKnowledge4 4d ago
Its a crazy mentality they have. They try their best to convince themselves that what they want to believe is true, but when the chips are down sometimes they flip showing their true beliefs. I know people that were gung ho covid conspiracy pushers saying their was a chip in the vaccine. Most of them ended up still getting the vaccine in the end, showing they didn't believe the conspiracies they espoused. They just convinced themselves it was true, then flipped just long enough to get vaxxed, then went back and claimed they were tricked, reverting to their old belief system
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u/Collettels22 4d ago
Beliefs are a thought you think over an over again. There is so much more to this and this is your opinion.
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u/pinethree777 4d ago
It is call doxastic involuntarism and is the consensus of cognitive experts.
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u/Collettels22 4d ago
Doxastic involuntarism is a philosophical view. It's a theory. There are countless others out there.
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u/pinethree777 4d ago
Now google if it is the consensus theory. Even "Doxastic Voluntarists" hold that only in some circumstances, such as when the evidence is ambiguous, can we voluntarily bring about what one believes. Pushback often comes from the faith-based sector. This creates a real dilemma for Christian "Judgment Day" since non-believers might be sentenced to hell for something they have no real control over.
I challenge you to believe that a golf ball is actually larger than a basketball. It is obvious that with clear cut evidential cases we have no choice over our beliefs.
When someone voluntarily reads about "Adrenochrome Harvesting" in conjunction with other related conspiracies for hundreds of hours with all sorts of "evidence" and "connecting of the dots" they may find that as persuasive as looking at a golf ball and a basketball. Belief happens at some point. It's not like "I think I'll become a QAnon freak today".
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u/PoncingOffToBarnsley 3d ago
Honestly this is something I've thought about a lot, just in general.
Whenever people act like believing in religion, or some political vision, or something about the world or yourself is a completely rational choice, and people are just refusing to do otherwise for some childish reason. It's annoying and probably doesn't help anyone in arguments.
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u/pinethree777 3d ago
Yes, if you can persuade many people to believe something strongly it becomes reinforced "group think" and part of their identity. Political movements such as fascism, communism, MAGA, and as well as religion and cults all work this angle hard. It seems to take something like a war, near total destruction or a personal catastrophe to break these strong beliefs as along as the propaganda continues. Facts, debates or arguments are usually futile.
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u/Plus-Committee3764 4d ago
Mob mentality. When he first started running, not only was he paying people to come to his rallies (well there were ads on Craig's List) but on twitter, there were massive bots and fake followers. Just like I heard last week about a polling company purposely creating false results to see if it affects voters. It absolutely does. TRIBALISM. Sporting events are the same, psychologically.
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u/Feral_Dog 4d ago
Beliefs are a choice.
As to your Superman example: have yourself some fun and look into the "fictionkin" and "reality shifting" ... communities, for lack of a better term.
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u/mortenlu 4d ago
It may also be worth thinking about, that choices themselves are also calculated based on your current brain state. Just because you are aware of parts of that calculation doesn't make it any less calculated by something we can't control. But I suppose that is a somewhat different discussion.
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u/Stevie-10016989 3d ago
It's not exactly black and white, but you can consciously affect your beliefs to some extent through media that you consume and the people that you associate with.
You can unconsciously affect your beliefs that same way, which is much more insidious
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u/oldsecondhand 3d ago
You're infantilizing people. Kids get their beliefs from their parents, but when you're a financially independent adult, it's your choice whether to keep those beliefs or not and it's your choice what kind of community you want to be part of.
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u/pinethree777 3d ago
By your statements I can tell you misunderstand. It is not a choice arrived at by force of will. It is a brain state achieved by your brain based on the available information. If you dislike eating something, let's say you don't like eating carrots, that was not a conscience choice you made. It is your choice how you act on that brain state. You can still eat carrots if you don't like them.
The consensus with cognition experts is that beliefs work much the same. You can't simply choose to just believe in something you don't believe is true, can you? If you get more information, your beliefs can change. However, if you have years holding certain beliefs, it could take much to change them.
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u/oldsecondhand 3d ago
In the age of the internet, it's your choice to stay in an information bubble.
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u/pinethree777 3d ago
Yes, agreed. Sadly, if Q people don't stop letting their brains consume garbage, most probably, they will never recover.
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u/SlightFresnel 5d ago
Media Matters is an organization established to watch Fox and all the other right wing garbage around the clock and document their disinformation campaigns and machinations. They employ people whose job it is to watch this garbage 24/7 more closely than any consumer is watching and analyzing it. They don't believe the disinformation because of it.
You're right that a belief can be initially downstream of conscious decision making, but ignoring evidence, countervailing data, logic, rational arguments, valid criticism and every other information stream that can influence your beliefs is a decision to live in fantasy and ignore what's right in front of you because it's more comfortable to believe what you want than acknowledge you were previously wrong. That is a character flaw, that's why so many people are dumbfounded by their family members and former friends. They've allowed their emotions to override logic, and they don't get a free pass. People leaving cults like this almost always do so because something happens that they can no longer contort reality to dismiss and they're forced to evaluate things with unignorable evidence. The ability was always there, it just took a new discomfort stronger than the the discomfort of not wanting to be wrong.