What are your biggest scepticism fails in your life?

[somfoolishfoole]

First up I hope this is the right sub-forum. wasn't too sure.

As an INTP I think we like to pride ourselves on scepticism and accuracy of knowledge. I thought it might be illuminating to hear of some things that other INTP's have fallen for hook line and sinker with grand gullibility. Basically this is a thread on times in your past you have neglected to check your facts and proceed with sceptisism when you should have.

I'll go first.
I fell hook line and sinker for zeitgeist. zeitgeist is a series of 3 videos that promote the idea of a resource based economy and basically the aim is to remove the concept of money from the world and bring us closer to a utopia. It mentions a bunch of corruption that goes on in the world and yeah... google it if you want more.

zeitgeist turned out to be completely made up, almost every word was just fictitious. I even believed them when they mentioned this guy "horus" being the "sun god" of egypt. how did I fall for this? yu gi oh clearly tells us that RA is the egyptian sun god.
I followed zeitgeist as a belief system for several years till I got pointed to a debunking.


I fell hook line and sinker for the blood type diet. it stated that your blood type has relevance to what you should eat and you can really mould your metabolism to work for you and get really healthy this way. I followed it for years on and off. turns out its based on absolute bollucks, the science is wayyy off and a quick google pretty much destroys the concept in milliseconds.

I'm sure there have been others.. I'll mention them later in the thread if I think of them.

My goal in this thread is to hopefully avoid any fellow intp's falling for the same traps. You learn from my mistakes, I'll learn from yours, and we will save years of missguidance together

 

[just george]

I fell for the idea that if you studied and worked hard, that you would have a good life.

What a load of crap. The system is rigged beyond all measure.

 

[somfoolishfoole]

I fell for the idea that if you studied and worked hard, that you would have a good life.

What a load of crap. The system is rigged beyond all measure.

Hahahaha I love it. A bit too much truth there, I think life favours ESXJ. The closer you are to this, the better.

 

[Hadoblado]

When I was very young I believed in Santa Clause and horoscopes. I stayed up all night on Christmas eve to test the Santa hypothesis. As for horoscopes? Well 20 years later I'm sitting here on an MBTI forum...

Edit: actually, I think the biggest scam I've ever swallowed is the state. It took me until I joined here 2-3 years ago to even question it.

 

[doncarlzone]

When I was very young I believed in Santa Clause and horoscopes. I stayed up all night on Christmas eve to test the Santa hypothesis.

That's just brilliant.

When I was a kid, while rejecting religion, I used to still believe in life after death and I actually believed this show on TV about spirits/ghosts. They were trying to investigate cold murder cases and I remember being annoyed at the police for disregarding the leads received through the "spirits".

More recently, I have had to reconsider my political views. I used to almost completely reject the left wing in my country and found myself always taking sides in debates. The change has been quite drastic and I find almost disgust for some of the politicians I used to support. I should add that I'm from Scandinavia, so the right wing would be the equivalent of a communist party in the US. However, it's still a value change and my world is just not as black and white anymore.

Although it is scary to realize that you have been so wrong, it is also quite liberating. I'm looking forward to the next moment of enlightenment.

 

[Perfectly Normal Beast]

I should add that I'm from Scandinavia, so the right wing would be the equivalent of a communist party in the US.

wittily put,i literally lol'd

Edit: Oh, and i fell for the lie that adulthood would bring certainty about anything.

 

[Ex-User (5841)]

In 2008 I voted for Barack Obama.

I even believed them when they mentioned this guy "horus" being the "sun god" of egypt. how did I fall for this? yu gi oh clearly tells us that RA is the egyptian sun god.

Horus is/was the sun god of Egypt, some 3000+ years before that poser Ra showed up in 2494 BC.

 

[Lot]

In 2008 I voted for Barack Obama.

EW!

It's ok. I used to think George Bush was the shit. I once said, "History will look back on him as one of the greatest presidents."

I used to think circumcision was a great health choice. (I'm considering making a thread about this)

I once thought the barter system was a practical solution to the economic problems of the world. Then I learned about how and why monetary systems came about.

 

[John_Mann]

Christianity.

Women.

Study/work/pay-the-government way of life.

 

[redbaron]

My default mode is complete scepticism of everything, so besides the generic child things like Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy nothing really springs to mind.

If it does I'll post it here. I don't mind the idea of the thread.

 

[Latte]

Until I was 16-17 I held the impression that people with specialized educations were for the most part able to without bias apply rigorously logic thinking to their assessments within their field.

Circumstance would have it that this trust in judgement would cost me dearly.

 

[Cognisant]

I've always had the mindset that contradictory information ought to be sought, it's kind of like eating dirt to improve your immune system, even today I regularly seek out bullshit to inoculate myself against it, and because understanding why someone lies can be more insightful than anything they might say that's true.

Edit: The technological singularity maybe?
Although I never thought it would be clear single event, indeed by some definitions the technological singularity has already come and gone.

 

[Absurdity]

Identifying as an INTP and taking the MBTI seriously.

Thinking far-left politics/postmodernism/critical theory was super cool.

Falling for Obama's messianic pretensions in 2008 (I was too young to vote though).

Atheism.

Assuming most people at my "elite" university would be intellectually curious.

Believing I could plan my life.

 

[Jennywocky]

One thing for me was the assumption that people would not distort (passively or especially actively) information in order to support the POV they wanted to hold. I was always a "put all the info on the table and then pick the most accurate interpretation" kind of person even if I didn't like the answer, and it was surprising to realize people actively would stack the deck... or even just deny the most blatant answer. [I ran across this in organized religion first.]

In a related case, I believed life would always be logical or run by logic... but happiness has an emotional component to it generated more by resonance with personal preference, so I had to adjust for that. Not everything can be logic'ed.

 

[Cherry Cola]

Thinking that other people were in general honest and thought their views through before they cast judgement.

This was mainly an issue throughout childhood and adolescence, led to me being needlessly hurt and insecure because I actually thought that when someone got angry at me or put me down then I had reason to care.

 

[Pyropyro]

Cynicism - When I was younger I find cynics as people too cool for this pathetic earth and I strove to be one of them. They seem to know how to fix the world but The Man just oppress them too much. Unfortunately, it seems that they're just nothing more than Roosevelt's "cold timid souls". They continue to whine while the world moves forward and got nothing to show aside from the creases in their faces.

Not that I became Pollyanna. I think the evil and the good of everything should be considered before writing people and stuff off and not just because they don't fit your worldview.

So-called reformers - Fairy tales and shonen manga has conditioned me to believe that underdog heroes exist to topple tyrants. They do exist, but are very rare. Instead we get a lot of heroes that turn into the very tyrants that they deposed once they got a taste of money and power.

However, if said leader is still practicing their creed after years of being in power then I might actually consider their political and/or economic position.

 

[Jennywocky]

Thinking that other people were in general honest and thought their views through before they cast judgement.

This was mainly an issue throughout childhood and adolescence, led to me being needlessly hurt and insecure because I actually thought that when someone got angry at me or put me down then I had reason to care.

I experienced that too -- that when people said things, they were making seasoned judgments, but sometimes people blow off steam or say senseless things, and the best course of action is just to ignore it.

(iow, I can't interpret people as I would interpret myself.)

 

[Brontosaurie]

identifying with INTP

 

[Turniphead]

-- MBTI in general... it has been helpful, I never really considered it empirically valid. The problem is with how much brain space I have let it occupy.

-- That universal morals are something that should/do exist. I used to hold some very idealistic points of view that were based around the idea of right and wrong.

 

[ZenRaiden]

That other people would be skeptics as me.

 

[Ex-User (5841)]

Identifying as an INTP and taking the MBTI seriously.

<-Identifying as an INTJ and then an INTP and taking MBTI seriously.

Taking the scientific institution seriously as a pedagog of humanity.

 

[nexion]

I still want to believe that mostly all men are bound together and can have mutual respect for each other based solely on the fact that all men are subject to the human condition (this encompasses far more things than I care to write). I also want to believe that modern society (and perhaps society in general) doesn't revel in unfettered hedonism, debauchery, and push for novelty, all while under the pretenses of being civilized and respectable. And lastly, I want to believe that humans in general aren't susceptible and prone to fragmentation and isolation amongst themselves over things that don't really matter (which is to say, most everything).

In almost every case, all three of these are proven to be completely wrong.

 

[Brontosaurie]

<-Identifying as an INTJ and then an INTP and taking MBTI seriously.

Taking the scientific institution seriously as a pedagog of humanity.

sure u not ENTJ tho?

 

[Ex-User (5841)]

sure u not ENTJ tho?

Yup. Though I have rectified some degree of fascist philosophy.

 

[Puffy]

[1] Thinking far-left politics/postmodernism/critical theory was super cool.

[2] Atheism.

[3] Assuming most people at my "elite" university would be intellectually curious.

1) Presuming you're equating postmodernism with post-structuralism here? 2) agnostic or theist? 3) *nods*

Believing whatever BS (BS = Bull shit = Belief system) I have ever come out with has any necessary correlation with exteriority.

Confusing acts of hatred from others as acts of love.

I think underlying any anxiety I might experience is still a basically optimistic and probably naive nature (runs of luck, feelings of a guiding invisible hand, (over?)confidence in the attainability of my (lofty?) dreams) -- hasn't failed me yet and I can't say it will or I'd be betraying my basically optimistic nature.

/tonnes of others.

 

[redbaron]

The cake is a lie.

 

[Deleted member 1424]

The first 14.5 years of my life when I was deeply religious.
I was hardcore; hoping to die in the service of god.
I was quite unlike the 'lazy' more common types of Christians.
I doubt I'll ever have a greater personal shame.

 

[Grayman]

Religion

Follow your heart. (Believed it but wasn't sure exactly what...)

People who help others are being unselfish

That you have to learn it this way...

Listen to you elders they know what they are talking about

It is immoral to steal have sex or do drugs

Spllenig matetrs and is imroptnant

If you don't cut your grass you are lazy

 

[Reluctantly]

Letting people convince me of their bullshit because they seem so adamant that they know what they are talking about that I feel backed into a corner and go with it. Not smart, this causes a lot of shit.

Doing what other people want me to because they want me to; well fuck 'em if it makes me a little miserable because it doesn't really have any benefits. People just expect you to be a schmuck.

Following rules, thinking that in the long run I'll be better off. Now I've learned that if people like you, you can break rules and help them at the same time and that it's almost always a much better thing to do. No one really gets rewarded for following rules, they are merely a means of control and you lose in the long run.

 

[Starswirl]

Several years ago I thought that the anti-political correctness movement was just a right-wing fad that would go away soon (and, in addition, that PC itself was insignificant).

That turned out wrong...

 

[nanook]

paradigms that have costed me time were

- identifying with psychological diagnosis like social phobia, which distract more from authentic introspection (attempts to understand/fix the problem) than they ever help with it. let's see how i feel about typology, if i ever manage to transcend the paradigm.

- thinking that you can find your true self in terms of discovering or even growing a vision/dream out of your ass. you can find out about how the consciousness works, but growing a dream appears to be a metabolic process that comes from creatively participating in life, not from searching within.



concrete stuff:


- grocery stores: the idea that what they sell is actually food, just because it's legal and if you can't digest it properly or experience cognitive symptoms, there must be something wrong with your body, mwuahahaha. cutting out good foods that cause symptoms, rather than cutting out the stuff or preparation technique that breaks your digestion so that even okay food causes symptoms.

- dieting: the idea of weight being related to calories in/out and discipline about it. thinking about being fat in terms of too much food, rather than realizing that it's about too little proper nutrition. thinking that weight loss is about depleting the fat that you have, rather than creating the conditions in which your body doesn't care to maintain fat. thinking that loosing some pounds is a diet success (which causes you to imitate the wrong people), when the cause wasn't fixed and the weight will be gained back soon.

- the low carb / paleo diet which is a crash approach that ruins the body and can not cause permanent weight loss transformation either. the low carb theory about insulin is wrong, it's obvious but i missed it somehow. it's a bunch of circular logic and fails to explain the real root cause of the weight gain carb sensitivity spiral, which is the fat in carb meals, not the carb in fat meals. and that faulty thinking is connected to how they think about getting rid of (burning) fat instead of thinking themselves into what an originally lean body is all about. fighting against what is, instead of living for what you want. always fails.

- the idea that meat eaters are good body builders, when they are actually just on steroids. the idea that muscles depend on tons of protein, when they are actually energy hogs who compete with your brain for glucose, only in glucose abundance will your brain allow muscle growth or restoration of broken muscle. and calculate how much protein is in the muscles you could possibly grow in any amount of time and how much you need daily. it's tiny amounts.

 

[nanook]

a thread about the opposite would be interesting: when your 'scepticism' has prevented you from learning about the truth of a matter. but i don't care to open threads.

 

[Goddess]

Atheism.
But now it leads me to be more skeptic about many things.

 

[Seed-Wad]

In 2008 I voted for Barack Obama.

Horus is/was the sun god of Egypt, some 3000+ years before that poser Ra showed up in 2494 BC.

Yes, that debunk article you read was just the system trying to poison the movement

 

[Brontosaurie]

Atheism.
But now it leads me to be more skeptic about many things.

am i reading this straight?

:

you think NOT believing in some unprovable entity void of predictive power called a "god" was a failure to apply scepticism?

 

[Ex-User (5841)]

am i reading this straight?

:

you think NOT believing in some unprovable entity void of predictive power called a "god" was a failure to apply scepticism?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle ?

 

[Brontosaurie]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle ?

will you ever provide reasoning or just keep dropping tangentially related smart-ass shit?

and why are you defending an irrational stance? the atheism backlash is such dishonest hipster garbage.

 

[Cherry Cola]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

Why treat the matter of religion differently than any other matter? The fact that nothing is for goddamn 110% certain is true for everything, why would it need to be stated tenfold just because god is the topic?

 

[Brontosaurie]

maybe he's on our side though. smiley could indicate that.

you don't know with those Pe-doms. how charming. it reflects the swirling dynamic chaos of reality.

 

[Ex-User (5841)]

will you ever provide reasoning or just keep dropping tangentially related smart-ass shit?

and why are you defending an irrational stance? the atheism backlash is such dishonest hipster garbage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

Why treat the matter of religion differently than any other matter? The fact that nothing is for goddamn 110% certain is true for everything, why would it need to be stated tenfold just because god is the topic?

Perhaps I rely on thou's inferential skepticism too much.

Spoiler

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sch_A1P8-qc

 

[Cherry Cola]

or perhaps thou art unclear

 

[Brontosaurie]

why did i click that clip

must stop equipping my mental representations of people with fictitious charisma

 

[RaBind]

I always have the feeling that I'm missing something. This is likely coming from the fact that in the grand scheme of things, I know that my life and what I do is infinitely small and meaningless. Yet people around me seem to be living their lives without putting any thought or doubt into what they are doing. Do they have some answer that I don't? Do they know something that I don't? I cannot identify with them and their unquestioning nature. Yet I continue to do what they do and live my life, repeating each day, trying to blend in. This is largely because it's the only thing I know, and probably also because I want to believe that other people have answers that I don't, even though I know this is not true. My unwillingness to stand out and question things openly probably works to keep others like me, who also have doubts about life, in line and quiet. Because they too, like me, hope that I and everyone else around them, who go on with our lives with an unquestioning nature, know what we are doing and have an answer that they don't have. The thing is that I know that I'll probably become old and die, having become so much wiser and knowing so much more, than what I do now, but I'll probably only know more answers for the wrong questions.

Soft atheism. It's one of the beliefs that I've ended up at, by following reasoning and logic. Still I and every other atheists could still be wrong. Actually I hope that we are wrong and that there is a god. At that point it'll all make sense, because we'd know that nothing makes sense, and that it's meaningless to look for meaning. At that point the only sane people, on earth, will have everything they thought they knew shattered and we'll all become mindless zombies looking for patterns and meanings, where there are none, just like now.

 

[Goddess]

am i reading this straight?

:

you think NOT believing in some unprovable entity void of predictive power called a "god" was a failure to apply scepticism?

I was going to write Religion, but someone already got it up there.
It became paradox apparently.
My perception to the title is; what we used to be skeptic about and now is fail.
I used to be Not believing that God is Not exist.
I doubted the thought of the atheist. I used to think that all atheist are lost.
My belief to god's existence was so strong.
Now here I am with many atheist around.

I hope I don't bother anyone again this time.

 

[Brontosaurie]

I was going to write Religion, but someone already got it up there.
It became paradox apparently.
My perception to the title is; what we used to be skeptic about and now is fail.
I used to be Not believing that God is Not exist.
I doubted the thought of the atheist. I used to think that all atheist are lost.
My belief to god's existence was so strong.
Now here I am with many atheist around.

I hope I don't bother anyone again this time.

obviously this was a simple misunderstanding.

i'm sorry for the harsh tone.

i have to say i'm still a bit confused though. some kinda paradox, i'm inclined to agree.

 

[Goddess]

obviously this was a simple misunderstanding.

i'm sorry for the harsh tone.

No problem.

 

[TBerg]

I used to be a strong defender of leftist/progressive ideas and policies and would criticize the Democratic Party from a leftist perspective. After I learned more about how humans really relate to each other, particularly realizing that disadvantaged individuals are not always good objects of sympathy, I stopped blindly supporting wealth redistribution schemes. It made me less optimistic about making progress using a political agenda backed by moral realism. I used to think that you could just implement policies that would make everything better, basically. Now I know human nature is a ghastly complication.

 

[Ex-User (5841)]

I used to be a strong defender of leftist/progressive ideas and policies and would criticize the Democratic Party from a leftist perspective.

Now I know human nature is a ghastly complication.

I also used to be a leftist (before that a "libertarian"), and then commie, an-com, panarchist, and zen pacifist, in that order; over a span of 10 years. Now I've actually become a bit of a fascist... Dare I call it zen fascism?

 

[r4ch3l]

Now I've actually become a bit of a fascist... Dare I call it zen fascism?

Wut. Please explain.

 

[Polaris]

My perception to the title is; what we used to be skeptic about and now is fail.

That is how I understood it too. So when I started reading people's responses, I was like wtf.

Edit: should probably contribute.

As a child, thinking people were rational beings, capable of solving all problems.

I never believed in religious ideas or Santa Claus. The dude was simply too big to squeeze through the chimney hole. What a load of crap. But I pretended to believe it as my mother seemed to take great pleasure in the idea that I believed it. I couldn't understand how grown-ups, who were supposed to be smarter than me thought about telling me ideas of some dude in sandals walking on water. I mean, EVERYONE knew that was impossible! I thus started distrusting what grown-ups were telling me.

I did think I could fly like Mary Poppins for a while. It was that slight uplift I got when jumping off the balcony that encouraged me to try and design wings. I think that was more wishful thinking than belief though.

I must admit it took me a while to work out the Tooth Fairy, though.