#alethiology

[cupidtrait]

elsie considers daisy her daughter okay i don’t make the rules

[misterparadigm]

The Age of Fact-Checking: Context All The Way Down

If you want to understand why Americans have polarized on either the direction of fanaticism or the dirge of faith in their government, I believe it's because we either stop digging when it's convenient, or we discover that every time we dig further, we find details that rip any reasonable person violently back and forth across the partisan line.

Modern American politics is context all the way down.

If we're effectively vigilant in researching claims and positions, we'll find ourselves batted back and forth, finding one claim from one party against the other and discovering that it's not that simple, being pushed toward the other party, then discovering it's even less simple and further context neutralizes the sense of good and evil between them--a sense so many use to make voting decisions these days.

People like simple answers. They tend to stop researching when they hit the treasure they were looking for--if they ever research it at all. Once the cognitive ease is satisfied, that's the end of research; but it's not the end of the truth. The problem is that people aren't looking for the truth, they're looking for stability. They're looking for quick validation that the world is indeed ordered as their preconceived model suggests.

We'll tolerate falsehood before we tolerate chaos, and in the race between them, the truth is a convenience.

[misterparadigm]

Seeking Truth: The Tools and Complexes of Alethiological Exploration

We're built to survive, seek pleasures, and secure those pleasures. This is how the wiring operates as a baseline, and it takes work and obscure suffering to reach beyond it. This seems to have been the purview of religion for most of human history. Billions of people have lived, all with variables which make their matrix of obstacles unique in regards to seeking whatever truth there is beyond them, if they even prioritize it. The truth, as a thing-in-itself, can only exist singularly. And so there is an infinity of ideas which are not true, and a singular--but robust--situation of truth. Billions of people have walked this path against staggering odds, and perhaps even more have walked against it for myriad reasons associated with that baseline above. It seems likely that as we mount more and more false perceptual schemas (those are the odds, after all), secured by rationalized arguments and emotional rhetoric, the task of cracking these foundations is the defining conflict of progress. And I think the problem we face over and over is that we don't know which tools to use between science, faith, and philosophy. And people get so worked up over this question that they pathologize their answers, further hardening those foundations which need cracking.

[cupidtrait]

this fox really tried it

[cupidtrait]

🥺 bunny

[cupidtrait]

oh to be a tiny turtle sitting in the sun on a mossy log in a pond

[periipatetic]

With @alethiology​ from here [x]

    Luka blushed crimson as the other male signed at him, now thoroughly distracted. Because of his almost completely deaf status, he had to sit on a special table and chair which was pulled forward beyond the other rows, so he could always see the teacher’s mouth when he spoke. It meant the guy, who was behind him, could see everything, as he tended to tuck one leg underneath himself and lean forward. Filthy shit, he signed, laughing softly. Meet me in the locker room in ten minutes. he added, starting to pack up his bag as the bell rang and the light above the clock began to flash.

The only reason that Ink could sign so fluently was because his baby sister had been born completely deaf. He’d only been a baby himself, they had different mothers, just seven months between them. But it meant that his parents had been able to teach sign to him, and then use those same learned lessons on Magrette. As they aged, they had learned together and surpassed their parents and tutors easily, though not their sign teacher/interpreter. It had been the thing that brought them together, the child of the old Mrs Marburg and the child of the new Mrs Marburg. This was the first time that being able to sign might just get him a guy, rather than in trouble or out of trouble. Licking his lower lip, he sucked it into his mouth and smirked around it, signing ‘see you there’ and making sure it was seen before he tossed his few things into his bag and slung it across his chest. The moment that the bell went, he hopped up and headed off, texting his friends that he would be late to meet them. He didn’t hurry as he made his way to the locker room, but he was still there before the ten minutes were up. He tossed his bag onto the bench and stripped off his hoodie and t-shirt with a sigh, already hunting through his locker to grab his leather jacket. He hated covering up in a bulky hoodie instead of his leather, but his tatts weren’t exactly appropriate for a learning institution or some bullshit and he hated the way people stared even if he didn’t care what they thought of him. 

[periipatetic]

@alethiology​ asked:  “i must apologize for trying to bite you so often.”

Leaned in the window of their dorm room, Tony laughed out smoke at the drawled words. “Nah, you should, Frostie, but you won’t. Because you aren’t sorry for all the nibbling and you know I’m not looking for an apology because I like it. Stop listening to idiots, it’s a waste of time.” He grinned, brown eyes almost gold in the light from outside and the only light in the room coming from a few of Loki’s weird trinkets and Tony’s current holo-project.