You said: Staying in touch with reality is not easy.
Staying in touch with reality is not easy. What is easy is to get swept up in a bandwagon, or maybe decide something magical has happened when you see something you can't explain, or come to believe things because the advocates play with the evidence and don't tell the whole truth (not necessarily fraudulently, they may not know the whole truth and have been persuaded the same way), or come to accept some nostrum from so much hoping it is true, or even something simple like not wanting to be the odd man out in a group of believers and then have them turn on you with name-calling, such as "skeptic."
Maybe one of the easiest ways to get out of touch with reality is to think that there must be truth ("if there is smoke there is fire") of some sort in everything.
Of course there is also just plain old insanity. You know: craziness, lunacy, paranoia, etc.
Claude responded: This is a nicely observed taxonomy of the ways people drift from reality.
This is a nicely observed taxonomy of the ways people drift from reality. A few thoughts:
The ones you list roughly fall into two categories: social/emotional pressures and cognitive failures, and they're worth distinguishing because they have different roots.
The social pressures — bandwagon effects, fear of being the odd man out, name-calling directed at doubters — are powerful precisely because they exploit something that usually serves us well. Trusting the group and deferring to consensus is often rational. Most of us can't personally verify most of what we believe. The problem is that this useful shortcut gets weaponized, and "skeptic" being used as a slur is one of the cleaner symptoms of a belief system that knows it can't survive scrutiny.
The cognitive failures are more interesting, maybe. The "where there's smoke there's fire" one you mention is subtle, because it's not entirely wrong — persistent claims often do reflect something real, even if not what the believers think. UFO sightings reflect real psychological phenomena even if not alien spacecraft. The error is assuming the explanation offered by the believers is the one that's true.
The advocacy distortion you describe — where the persuader may themselves be sincerely mistaken — is arguably more dangerous than outright fraud. Fraud can in principle be exposed. Sincere, motivated cherry-picking by someone who genuinely believes spreads with the infectious confidence of honest conviction.
The "hoping it's true" category deserves some sympathy. Wishful thinking is usually a failure of method, not of character. People aren't stupid for wanting things to be true; they're just not trained to notice when wanting has quietly replaced examining.
As for insanity — it's worth noting that even clinical delusion isn't always obviously distinguishable from the social/cognitive failures above. The difference is often one of degree and of whether a community has ratified the belief. Shared delusions are called religions or ideologies; solitary delusions are called madness. That's uncomfortable but worth sitting with.
What prompted the reflection?
You said: I've mentioned before that I look at old chats from several years ago, clean them up and post them here to see what you do with it.
I've mentioned before that I look at old chats from several years ago, clean them up and post them here to see what you do with it. At the time it was in a religious disagreement I was having with someone and I wanted to set some rules.
Claude responded: That context makes the passage land differently.
That context makes the passage land differently. It reads less like abstract epistemology and more like someone trying to arm themselves — fairly and honestly — before walking into a argument where the other person has the home field advantage.
Religious disagreement is one of the harder cases precisely because several of the failure modes you listed are baked into the structure of the situation. The social pressure to conform, the name-calling of doubters, the sincere advocacy by people who themselves absorbed the belief rather than examined it, the hoping it's true — all of that is typically present at once, and often in people you care about, which raises the stakes considerably.
Setting out those rules in advance was a sensible instinct. It's essentially saying: here are the ways this conversation could go wrong, and I want us to agree to avoid them. Whether the other person was willing to engage on those terms is another matter. In my experience — or rather, in what I've observed — people who are very committed to a belief rarely welcome a procedural discussion about epistemology before the argument begins. It can feel to them like you're trying to rig the game.
How did the disagreement go? And is the cleaned-up version something you were sharing with the other person at the time, or just working out for yourself?
You said: Back then I had stylistic quirks I have grown away from and now remove, mainly in the form of inserting skeptical if not rude parenthetical items.
Back then I had stylistic quirks I have grown away from and now remove, mainly in the form of inserting skeptical if not rude parenthetical items. As I recall no one ever explicitly objected to any of these problems, more like just didn't see them or ignored them. One does not expect to change minds in a single discussion.
Claude responded: The parenthetical asides are a recognizable temptation.
The parenthetical asides are a recognizable temptation. When you're arguing against something you find a bit absurd, the urge to editorialize mid-sentence is hard to resist — it's a way of signaling to yourself and any onlookers that you haven't been taken in. But it tends to be counterproductive, giving the other person something to react to emotionally rather than having to address the substance.
Growing out of it suggests you came to trust the argument to carry itself. A well-made point doesn't need a sardonic footnote.
The observation that no one explicitly objected is interesting. It might mean they didn't notice, as you say. But it might also mean they noticed and filed it away — that kind of thing often does more damage quietly than it does if challenged directly. People decide you're not arguing in good faith, or that you're contemptuous of them, and then the ostensible subject of the disagreement becomes almost beside the point.
The long game observation — that you don't expect to change minds in a single discussion — is probably the most mature thing in what you've said. It's also, incidentally, supported by how people actually do change their minds, which is rarely in a dramatic confrontation but more often slowly, privately, later, when something that was said keeps nagging at them. The best you can usually do in the moment is plant something that grows on its own time.
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