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> Beliefs are the same, and a relation to "facts" or "truth" is not a requrement for their utility.

If your beliefs about the world are entirely false then you are going to have a bad time.



Or a very good time. One's circumstances are seldom that much dependent upon their beliefs about the world.


> One's circumstances are seldom that much dependent upon their beliefs about the world.

You are interpreting belief in a very narrow and mysterious way. If you believe that poison is food, or that bus impacts are healthy, then you are going to have a bad time. There are many beliefs that must be correct in order to ensure survival. It isn't all relative.


>There are many beliefs that must be correct in order to ensure survival

Or you could say, you know, that beliefs must hold some utility. There are a lot of utilities that we need from our beliefs. I believe that the front of the bus is a portal to hell that threatens to damn me to eternal suffering, so I'm quite terrified when it approaches to engulf me. This shares utility with realizing that an impact with a bus can result in awesome momentum transfer, causing a sudden acceleration preventing my soft body from containing my precious bodily fluids. The point is the utility, not the rationalization (this term is loaded pretty heavy at this point, sorry).


>If you believe that poison is food, or that bus impacts are healthy

That's more about being crazy than about having false beliefs in the casual (and not "narrow and mysterious") sense of the word belief.


I would argue that most religious people technically have a belief about the world that is false in the usual definition, and many of them are having a great time, especially since their religion gives them a nice little life manual.




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