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  • Getting real "That happened" vibes here.

    • i live in homeless land and im pretty sure this didn't happen but it's nice to give $15

    • Who cares? Just enjoy things for what they are. Believing this isn't tantamount to saying the sun revolves around the earth and we dunno if it is fake or not.

      Just be, my guy. It doesn't add anything to the conversation, it doesn't build on anything, it just tears down and is deconstructive over a funny post for no reason whatsoever. It's just you personally rolling up, pointing and going "FAKE." You appear to be new here so lemme just say to leave this type of toxic and unhelpful garbage on reddit.

      • I feel like things being real or true matters. Maybe that's just me.

        You talk to people about your astrology sign without really believing in that shit too?

        • Astrology is just a compendium of story tropes than can help people find advice for themselves in a fun and engaging way. That's how I see it, and that's how I use it. Truth and reality aren't as easy to define and you might think they are.

          • I agree that truth and reality aren't easy to define, and I think astrology is fairly harmless, despite being untrue.

            But on the other hand we can't just ignore reality and pretend that anything could be true. The whole course of human history has been a slow and painful journey towards a more accurate understanding of the universe. That's how we've been able to invent and discover all of the things that make our lives so much easier (in theory), by trying to figure out what reality is and how it works.

            To discount the importance of truth is to embrace nihilism, and that doesn't seem like it benefits anyone imho.

            In the specific context of this thread, reading made up stories on social media has been proven to cause people to become severely detached from reality. This is one of the major reasons why millions of people refused to get vaccinated against Covid and subsequently died from Covid. So I think it is important to call out made up stories when we see them, because it's hard to know the downstream effects of what will happen when people's perceptions of reality get warped by reading things on the internet.

            Of course it's impossible to prevent entirely, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to seek the truth when possible as a general principle of being a responsible adult and cultivating an online environment that values truth and quashes misinformation.

            @Stamets@lemmy.world @HalfSalesman@lemm.ee @WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works

        • I feel like things being real or true matters. Maybe that's just me

          So you don't watch any fictional movies, don't watch stand up, don't read books, none of that? Or are you just drawing an arbitrary line?

          Moreover, you do not know if it is true or not. You are making an assumption and then insisting that assumption is reality. So why should we trust you? Or even her? We shouldn't. We should do what I said. Just live your life and stop getting hung up over policing the reality of someone elses world based off of an assumption you've made.

          This is just sad. If you were going through your own life going "Fake" that'd be one thing. But you're just actively jumping into a comment section to throw shade and question a post. You are actively using more effort for something you don't think is real than the thing that happened. You could do what the rest of us do and just move on considering this isn't remotely important and the veracity of it doesn't make any difference. Also because it's a funny story and generally the majority of us don't start questioning peoples funny stories.

          Like... do you do this at parties? Or is it only acceptable because it's online?

          Grow up dude. Seriously. This is some just childish behavior with a good helping of narcissism. I'm just gonna go ahead and block you now because if this is the type of content you're just putting out there immediately then I seriously doubt you're going to have anything to contribute later that will be constructive.

        • I know nothing. There is not a single fact in this universe that I can state is unequivocally true. Even the most established laws of physics are just our best explanations of our observations to date. They're held up pretty damn well so far, but we don't know why they are the way they are. For all we know they could be part of some larger pattern we cannot see the whole of. It is entirely possible for the laws of physics to change tomorrow. Tomorrow the universe could change state, and suddenly astrology would actually work.

          There is no such thing as an absolute truth. There are only things that explain, to greater or less reliability, all the things we observe. And it is not necessary to have the same level of proof to accept all propositions.

          If you want to convince me that astrology now works, I am going to need a whole lot of evidence. If you want to convince me that the universe has reordered itself, and that planets now go around the Earth, I'm going to need a ton of evidence. But the reason I demand such evidence is that these are very consequential things. The order of the universe and our place in it is one of those Big questions with a capital B. And the laws of physics matter. My background is in structural engineering. If the laws of physics are changing, I damn well need to know about it. But I'm going to demand quite a lot of proof for that.

          But some things? They are simply not worth the effort to question the veracity of. Whether this story is true or not has zero impact on my life. I can assume it's true, and if it's not, oh well. We can never be certain of anything, and the level of certainty we can achieve on anything is a function of the amount of effort we put in to assessing its validity. And for casual stories? There simply isn't need to drill deeper.

          The only time I feel it worth to drill into the truth and question such a story is if it's a story potentially being used to target a marginalized group or community. Hate groups and individuals sometimes deliberately spread numerous negative casual stories about members of marginalized groups, simply to associate that group with negative things in the public consciousness. If this story mentioned the race or sexual orientation of the homeless guy, I would be a bit more suspect and skeptical.

          But otherwise, what's wrong with a little willful suspension of disbelief? There is ultimately no such thing as a true thing or a false thing, just a sliding scale of truthfulness. Not even the laws of physics are absolute. You cannot determine the truth or falseness of anything. You can only determine how much effort it is worth to put in to investigating a thing.

          • You put a little more effort here so I'll respond directly. Just because human beings don't fully understand reality doesn't necessarily have any bearing on whether or not reality exists.

            You claim that tomorrow the universe could change state and astrology would suddenly work. I disagree with that claim, because there's at least a few thousand, if not a few billion years of evidence that would indicate that physics, chemistry, biology, etc have been functioning according to the same fundamental laws for a long time.

            I don't think there is any argument that would convince me that such laws could simply change randomly, having been so consistent for so long. And you seem to generally agree with me based on what you say after your introductory paragraph.

            But then in your final paragraph you get back into this arbitrarian mindset. If you actually believed the laws of physics weren't absolute, then you would surely be in constant suspense that you might die at any moment. Whether gravity were to stop working, or inertia, or the strong nuclear force, the consequences would be immediate and dire. If a single law of physics were to stop working for an instant, the entire universe as we know it would cease to exist, or at least be thrown into absolute chaos. Which is perhaps the strongest argument for their validity, because we can observe 15 billion years of history where that doesn't seem to have occurred.

            With regard to this story, I mentioned more about misinformation on the internet in my other comment. Basically, people telling lies on the internet caused a lot of people to refuse the covid vaccine and die from covid. That's the most obvious example, but there are many more insidious example that are harder to definitively quantify.

            Finally, and perhaps most emphatically, I'm going to have to disagree with your take on homeless people. I would argue that homeless people are almost the prototypical example of a marginalized group or community. There are many people who are LGBTQ and/or part of racial minority groups that are rich, successful, prominent, well respected members of mainstream society. The same cannot be said about homeless people.

            As for how the consequences of internet misinformation relate to this specific story, I can't really say. I just think it's impossible to know what the ultimate effects of misinformation will be, and thus it's best to avoid whenever possible.

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