Uh... Ask, I guess?
this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2024
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No Stupid Questions
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No such thing. Ask away!
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Asking that makes the conversation awkward. So that isn't gonna fly. And it's basically beside the point anyway. What we really care about is what the person said.
And people say stuff all the time on Lemmy (reddit, twitter etc). It's an endless river of the stuff.
And it matters because that's 2 completely different levels of truth.
"I TASTED AN ORANGE AND IT'S SOUR" vs "I READ ABOUT THIS GUY WHO TASTED AN ORANGE AND HE SAYS IT'S SOUR"
If we're talking about what somebody said about what somebody said about what somebody said. And we have no way of knowing whether we're talking to the first guy in the chain or the last...
Then the conversation you're having might be way more insane than you think.
Unless they write it clearly like your examples there's no way to know without asking.
Even if they did it personally that's still selection bias and doesn't necessarily change how valid their statement is.
If you just want to know, without further investigation, that's going to be very hard. People say a lot of things, and often aren't clear themselves if it's something they actually know, or just something they've heard. All that's happened is that something interesting / helpful has popped into their mind and they've shared it.
If you are willing to discuss it, but don't want to be rude by asking "do you actually know anthing about this?" you can just ask follow up questions, asking for more info / details. That way people who really know can answer, and people who don't will probably just not answer or say that they just read it somewhere (often they're not trying to deceive, just sharing something interesting they heard about).
But as others have said, just be sceptical of stuff you read, especially on the Internet. Lots of people have first had experience of something and still have unhelpful or strange takes on things. People massively over estimate how representative their experiences are, and if you get two experts in a room they'll pretty soon be disagreeing about something they both know throughly.
You could ask the followup question "So you personally tasted an orange and it was sour?"
You should not believe firsthand accounts you find on the internet anyway. People are here for recreation, for starters, which does not set a high bar for accuracy.
For instance, if I said I tried a dragonfruit the other day and it tasted amazing, you would be somewhat foolish to assume that I actually did try a dragonfruit the other day.
If you follow the general rule of holding reasonable doubt about all firsthand accounts you read online, you will not fall into this trap. Note that the doubt does not need to be complete, just partial. This is sometimes described as taking things with "a grain of salt", and honestly, is a good idea irl as well.
You absolutely do not want to be one of those people that just believes everyone. That is extremely unhealthy, and will result in you being misled and/or scammed.
A good example would be user reviews, which are highly corruptible. If you go onto amazon, you will find a number of low quality, garbage products that are full of glowing reviews that have likely been solicited by the seller, in one way or another.
For instance, if I said I tried a dragonfruit the other day and it tasted amazing, you would be somewhat foolish to assume that I actually did try a dragonfruit the other day.
Why? It’s a fairly common experience to eat dragonfruit. Why should I be skeptical of people that say that did something common?
Should I call bullshit on people who say they drive a car? Say they watch a show in TV? Say they eat at a chain restaurant?
I mean, sure, they could be lying, but why?
So, thinking they are automatically lying is even worse than thinking they must be telling the truth. The position you need to hold is between the two.
The reason to hold it consistently is to take advantage of habit building and using how your brain works to your own advantage. You can try to calculate an independent "likelihood" for every claim if you want, but you'll frequently be wrong, just because you can't take everything into account. And it's a massive waste of energy.
As to why, it varies. Humans are very different from each other, so the reasons will be many and varied. But the important thing to remember is just how easy the lie is, and how there's really no consequences if someone does.
Very good explanation of why you should be skeptical online. I just wanted to chime in as someone who does eat dragon fruit regularly, that they are absolutely delicious when ripe. Although the red ones do stain quite bad.
Nice try. That other person told me nobody online has ever eaten dragon fruit.
And you just believed them?
Yes, take everything with a grain of salt.
In some areas of knowledge I have to act a little dumb and not flaunt my credentials, and in others just do more research to appear slightly more knowledgeable, to avoid revealing my real identity online.
Yes, and sometimes you have to throw in a real curve ball!
By the way, as head of quality at a saltworks in Europe, I should point out that there are as many shapes and sizes to processed salt as there are subtleties to their trace mineral concentrations. So "a grain of salt" isn't a well defined quantity.
And why should I believe you on that? You're just a random person on the internet... ;)
More importantly, does it matter? One of the biggest things separating humans from other animals on earth is our ability to learn from the experiences of others. I'm sure you learned lessons as a child watching someone else do something wrong but that's been so internalized now that you can't tell the difference. At some point other people's experiences become our own and we share that with the people around us
Heaps of other animals learn from the experiences of others.
Orcas have culture, crows in europe taught each other how to peck out just the liver of frogs and make them explode, capuchin monkeys make stone tools, even plants release volatile organic compounds to warn each other of attackers and disease.
I've turned a "my friend" story into my story on the Internet. It's just easier than adding "my friend's" in front of every other word. It doesn't change the point or value of the story, and for all you Internet strangers know, it could be him posting his own experience.
Some languages make a grammatical distinction between them, like there's a different affix or a different form of the verb or noun if it came from personal experience, a trusted source, a distant source, inference etc.
Ahhh I came here for this because I heard about it but don't remember which language!
I can't recall for certain but I'm pretty sure at least one of the far northern american languages has it. Like something from Eskaleut or Athabaskan. A quick scroll through their wikipedia pages didn't help, and I can't remember the formal name for this feature. If anyone else can chime in, that would be appreciated!