#belief — Public Fediverse posts

When Britain Loved Being Fooled.

There is something wonderfully human about a good hoax.

Not fraud, exactly – fraud wants your money. Forgery wants you to believe that something newly made is old, valuable, or authentic. A practical joke wants a laugh, preferably at somebody else’s expense.

A hoax wants something slightly different.

It wants you to believe. For just long enough.

It is a woman who claims to have given birth to rabbits. A mysterious foreign princess who appears from nowhere speaking a language nobody recognises. A newly discovered document written by one of the greatest names in English literature. Or an advertisement promising that, on a particular evening at a particular theatre, a man will climb into an ordinary wine bottle.

All you really need is somebody prepared to tell the story.

And somebody prepared to believe it.

Britain has always been rather good at providing both.

The word hoax itself seems to have appeared in English towards the end of the eighteenth century and is probably related to hocus or hocus-pocus – the language of the conjuror, the juggler and the trickster. But before hoax became fashionable, there was another splendid word for much the same thing:

humbug

recorded in the middle of the eighteenth century for a trick, deception or imposition.

The words may have changed, but the practice certainly wasn’t new. People have always lied to one another. What makes a hoax interesting is not necessarily the lie. It is what happens next.
Because the best hoaxes rarely succeed simply because the person behind them is an exceptionally talented liar. They succeed because the lie arrives at exactly the right moment, in exactly the right form, and tells its audience something they are already prepared – perhaps even desperate – to believe.

That is where things become interesting.

We sometimes look back at historical hoaxes with a certain amount of smugness.

How could anyone possibly have believed that?

It is an easy question to ask when you already know the answer. Strip away that hindsight and things become considerably less comfortable.

Imagine being presented with an object apparently dug from the earth, accompanied by a convincing story about exactly where it was found. You know that similar objects exist. You know that important discoveries are being made. Perhaps another respected expert has already expressed an interest in it.
Would you dismiss it immediately? Or would you look a little closer?

In Victorian London, two Thames mudlarks called William Smith and Charles Eaton – better known as Billy and Charley – discovered that there was considerably more money to be made manufacturing history than digging it out of the mud.

Beginning in 1857, the pair produced supposedly medieval objects in hand-cut moulds: medallions, badges, figures and other curiosities decorated with strange images and wonderfully garbled inscriptions. They then sold them as antiquities recovered during excavations at Shadwell.

There were clues. Quite a lot of clues, actually. Some objects carried dates written in Arabic numerals despite supposedly belonging to the eleventh century. The inscriptions were nonsense. The designs were peculiar. Yet the objects found buyers.

When archaeologist Henry Cuming publicly denounced them as forgeries in 1858, the resulting controversy even ended up in court. Remarkably, respected antiquary Charles Roach Smith remained convinced that the objects were genuine. Part of his reasoning was effectively that no forger would produce anything so ridiculous.

Unfortunately, Billy and Charley would. Eventually some of their moulds were obtained and displayed at the Society of Antiquaries. The game was up – although the pair continued producing their creations for years afterwards. They made several thousand objects in total.

Today, examples are held by the British Museum. I love that they are exhibited there… as fakes… A worthless fake made to imitate a valuable antiquity survives long enough to become a valuable historical object in its own right.

But Billy and Charley understood something important. People don’t simply believe objects. They believe stories. Give an object a convincing provenance and it changes. A battered piece of metal becomes something recovered from an archaeological excavation. A scrap of handwriting becomes a lost manuscript. A photograph becomes evidence. An ordinary woman in unusual clothes becomes a princess. Sometimes the desire to believe becomes powerful enough to overcome evidence sitting directly in front of us.

It happens to experts too. Especially to experts.

Expertise does not make someone immune to deception. Occasionally it can provide the very framework that makes the deception convincing. A successful forger learns what an expert expects to see and gives it to them.

Collectors can be particularly vulnerable because rarity creates competition. The British Museum notes that wealthy collectors and fierce competition for spectacular antiquities historically created precisely the sort of market in which fakes flourished. When spectacular genuine objects were unavailable, forgers copied them, invented them or even took genuine antiquities and “improved” them with modern additions.

And that brings us to one of the most important ingredients in any successful hoax.

Want. Someone has to want the thing to be true.

The collector wants the extraordinary artefact. The scholar wants the discovery. The newspaper wants the sensational story. The audience wants to see the impossible performance. The believer wants the photograph to show something extraordinary. And sometimes the person being fooled has invested so much – money, reputation, pride or simple emotional attachment – that admitting the truth becomes harder than continuing to believe the lie.

That is why the revelation of a hoax is often almost as fascinating as the hoax itself.

Some victims laugh or become furious. Some quietly disappear while others double down spectacularly. And occasionally the hoax escapes from its creator altogether.

A joke repeated often enough becomes a story. The story is copied into books. Those books become sources for later books. Details change. Names appear. Locations shift. Someone adds something they heard from their grandmother. Eventually the person who started the whole thing could stand up and announce that they invented it and somebody, somewhere, would probably accuse them of participating in the cover-up.

At that point the hoax has become folklore. That is why old hoaxes remain so fascinating.

They aren’t really stories about stupid people being fooled by clever people.

They’re stories about trust. About authority. About reputation. About fashion. About the things a society considers possible at a particular moment in history. And, most of all, about belief.

Over the coming week, Mysterious Times will be looking at some extraordinary examples.

There will be rabbits.

There will be Shakespeare.

There will be a mysterious princess.

There will be an allegedly impossible theatrical performance.

And before we’re finished, one unfortunate London address is going to have a very, very bad day.

Some of the people we meet will be fraudsters. Some will be practical jokers. Some will begin with a relatively small deception and discover, rather too late, that it has grown completely beyond their control.

And plenty of intelligent, educated and perfectly sensible people will fall for them.

Welcome to Fakes, Frauds and Fabulous Hoaxes.

And remember – before we laugh too loudly at our ancestors, perhaps we should ask ourselves one question.

If we’d been there…

would we?

A quotation from Abraham Fortas

Any departure from absolute regimentation may cause trouble. Any variation from the majority’s opinion may inspire fear. Any word spoken, in class, in the lunchroom, or on the campus, that deviates from the view of another person may start an argument or cause a disturbance. But our Constitution says we must take this risk, and our history says that it is this sort of hazardous freedom — this kind of openness — that is the basis of our national strength and of the independence and vigor of Americans who grow up and live in this relatively permissive, often disputatious, society.

Abraham Fortas (1910–1982) American academic, jurist, lawyer; US Supreme Court Justice (1965–69)
Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503, 508 (1969) [majority opinion]

More about this quote: wist.info/fortas-abe/13226/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #abefortas #America #argument #belief #Constitution #control #debate #disagreement #dissent #disturbance #firstamendment #freespeech #freedom #freedomofexpression #freedomofspeech #heterodoxy #majority #openness #opinion #popularopinion #SCOTUS #troublemaking #protest

A quotation from Abraham Fortas

Any departure from absolute regimentation may cause trouble. Any variation from the majority’s opinion may inspire fear. Any word spoken, in class, in the lunchroom, or on the campus, that deviates from the view of another person may start an argument or cause a disturbance. But our Constitution says we must take this risk, and our history says that it is this sort of hazardous freedom — this kind of openness — that is the basis of our national strength and of the independence and vigor of Americans who grow up and live in this relatively permissive, often disputatious, society.

Abraham Fortas (1910–1982) American academic, jurist, lawyer; US Supreme Court Justice (1965–69)
Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503, 508 (1969) [majority opinion]

More about this quote: wist.info/fortas-abe/13226/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #abefortas #America #argument #belief #Constitution #control #debate #disagreement #dissent #disturbance #firstamendment #freespeech #freedom #freedomofexpression #freedomofspeech #heterodoxy #majority #openness #opinion #popularopinion #SCOTUS #troublemaking #protest

A quotation from Abraham Fortas

Any departure from absolute regimentation may cause trouble. Any variation from the majority’s opinion may inspire fear. Any word spoken, in class, in the lunchroom, or on the campus, that deviates from the view of another person may start an argument or cause a disturbance. But our Constitution says we must take this risk, and our history says that it is this sort of hazardous freedom — this kind of openness — that is the basis of our national strength and of the independence and vigor of Americans who grow up and live in this relatively permissive, often disputatious, society.

Abraham Fortas (1910–1982) American academic, jurist, lawyer; US Supreme Court Justice (1965–69)
Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503, 508 (1969) [majority opinion]

More about this quote: wist.info/fortas-abe/13226/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #abefortas #America #argument #belief #Constitution #control #debate #disagreement #dissent #disturbance #firstamendment #freespeech #freedom #freedomofexpression #freedomofspeech #heterodoxy #majority #openness #opinion #popularopinion #SCOTUS #troublemaking #protest

A quotation from Abraham Fortas

Any departure from absolute regimentation may cause trouble. Any variation from the majority’s opinion may inspire fear. Any word spoken, in class, in the lunchroom, or on the campus, that deviates from the view of another person may start an argument or cause a disturbance. But our Constitution says we must take this risk, and our history says that it is this sort of hazardous freedom — this kind of openness — that is the basis of our national strength and of the independence and vigor of Americans who grow up and live in this relatively permissive, often disputatious, society.

Abraham Fortas (1910–1982) American academic, jurist, lawyer; US Supreme Court Justice (1965–69)
Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503, 508 (1969) [majority opinion]

More about this quote: wist.info/fortas-abe/13226/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #abefortas #America #argument #belief #Constitution #control #debate #disagreement #dissent #disturbance #firstamendment #freespeech #freedom #freedomofexpression #freedomofspeech #heterodoxy #majority #openness #opinion #popularopinion #SCOTUS #troublemaking #protest

https://theconversation.com/why-criminal-justice-shouldnt-just-be-about-what-punishment-people-deserve-290393; https://theconversation.com/people-in-the-uk-favour-harsher-punishment-than-norwegians-belief-in-free-will-may-help-explain-why-286169; https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/16/6/868 (open access). "The more strongly someone believes in #free #will, the harsher the #punishment they favour for #criminals." This is quite logical: if you believe that a #criminal act results from a free #choice, then you will believe the #person making that choice should be punished for making it. Our criminal #justice #system is founded on #belief in free will - but what if that belief is false?

https://theconversation.com/why-criminal-justice-shouldnt-just-be-about-what-punishment-people-deserve-290393; https://theconversation.com/people-in-the-uk-favour-harsher-punishment-than-norwegians-belief-in-free-will-may-help-explain-why-286169; https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/16/6/868 (open access). "The more strongly someone believes in #free #will, the harsher the #punishment they favour for #criminals." This is quite logical: if you believe that a #criminal act results from a free #choice, then you will believe the #person making that choice should be punished for making it. Our criminal #justice #system is founded on #belief in free will - but what if that belief is false?

https://theconversation.com/why-criminal-justice-shouldnt-just-be-about-what-punishment-people-deserve-290393; https://theconversation.com/people-in-the-uk-favour-harsher-punishment-than-norwegians-belief-in-free-will-may-help-explain-why-286169; https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/16/6/868 (open access). "The more strongly someone believes in #free #will, the harsher the #punishment they favour for #criminals." This is quite logical: if you believe that a #criminal act results from a free #choice, then you will believe the #person making that choice should be punished for making it. Our criminal #justice #system is founded on #belief in free will - but what if that belief is false?

https://theconversation.com/why-criminal-justice-shouldnt-just-be-about-what-punishment-people-deserve-290393; https://theconversation.com/people-in-the-uk-favour-harsher-punishment-than-norwegians-belief-in-free-will-may-help-explain-why-286169; https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/16/6/868 (open access). "The more strongly someone believes in #free #will, the harsher the #punishment they favour for #criminals." This is quite logical: if you believe that a #criminal act results from a free #choice, then you will believe the #person making that choice should be punished for making it. Our criminal #justice #system is founded on #belief in free will - but what if that belief is false?

https://theconversation.com/why-criminal-justice-shouldnt-just-be-about-what-punishment-people-deserve-290393; https://theconversation.com/people-in-the-uk-favour-harsher-punishment-than-norwegians-belief-in-free-will-may-help-explain-why-286169; https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/16/6/868 (open access). "The more strongly someone believes in #free #will, the harsher the #punishment they favour for #criminals." This is quite logical: if you believe that a #criminal act results from a free #choice, then you will believe the #person making that choice should be punished for making it. Our criminal #justice #system is founded on #belief in free will - but what if that belief is false?

A quotation from Orwell

The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time; the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against a solid reality, usually on a battlefield.

George Orwell (1903-1950) English journalist, essayist, writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
Essay (1946-03-22), “In Front of Your Nose,” “As I Please” column, Tribune Newspaper

More about this quote: wist.info/orwell-george/29647/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #orwell #georgeorwell #belief #cognitivedissonance #confirmationbias #facefacts #facereality #facingfacts #honesty #intellectualhonesty #realitycheck #selectivememory #selfdeceit #selfdelusion #truth #unreliablenarrator

A quotation from Eric Hoffer

The truth seems to be that propaganda on its own cannot force its way into unwilling minds; neither can it inculcate something wholly new; nor can it keep people persuaded once they have ceased to believe. It penetrates only into minds already open, and rather than instill opinion it articulates and justifies opinions already present in the minds of its recipients. The gifted propagandist brings to a boil ideas and passions already simmering in the minds of his hearers. he echoes their innermost feelings. Where opinion is not coerced, people can be made to believe only in what they already “know.”

Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, Part 3, ch. 14, § 83 (3.14.83) (1951)

More about this quote: wist.info/hoffer-eric/11263/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #erichoffer #agitprop #belief #confirmation #confirmationbias #conviction #disinformation #fear #ideas #justification #opinion #passion #predisposition #prejudice #propaganda #reinforcement #truebeliever

Do not believe anything. Only after contemplation and careful, logical consideration, should you make one’s own assertion / determination. Measure and discernment are essential for the understanding of and of the fundamentals of belief. #unqualified #assumltions #belief #philosophy

A quotation from John Quincy Adams

All men profess honesty as long as they can. To believe all men honest would be folly. To believe none so is something worse.

John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) US President (1825-29)
Letter (1809-06-22) to William Eustis

More about this quote: wist.info/adams-john-quincy/35…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #johnquincyadams #belief #blindfaith #corruption #credulity #faith #honesty #humannature #incredulity #trust #virtue #integrity

A quotation from Eleanor Roosevelt

Perhaps that’s what we all had to do — think out for ourselves what we could believe and how we could live by it. And so I came to the conclusion that you had to use this life to develop the very best that you could develop.

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) First Lady of the US (1933–1945), politician, diplomat, activist
Essay (1951-12), “This I Believe: Growth that Starts from Thinking,” on Edward R. Murrow, This I Believe, CBS Radio

More about this quote: wist.info/roosevelt-eleanor/82…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #eleanorroosevelt #belief #beliefsystem #besteffort #doyourbest #excellence #goodbehavior #meaningoflife #moralcode #personalcode #selfactualization #selfchallenging #selfcorrection #selfdevleopment #selfexamination #selfimprovement #selfquestioning #selfrespect

A quotation from Eleanor Roosevelt

Perhaps that’s what we all had to do — think out for ourselves what we could believe and how we could live by it. And so I came to the conclusion that you had to use this life to develop the very best that you could develop.

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) First Lady of the US (1933–1945), politician, diplomat, activist
Essay (1951-12), “This I Believe: Growth that Starts from Thinking,” on Edward R. Murrow, This I Believe, CBS Radio

More about this quote: wist.info/roosevelt-eleanor/82…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #eleanorroosevelt #belief #beliefsystem #besteffort #doyourbest #excellence #goodbehavior #meaningoflife #moralcode #personalcode #selfactualization #selfchallenging #selfcorrection #selfdevleopment #selfexamination #selfimprovement #selfquestioning #selfrespect

A quotation from Eleanor Roosevelt

Perhaps that’s what we all had to do — think out for ourselves what we could believe and how we could live by it. And so I came to the conclusion that you had to use this life to develop the very best that you could develop.

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) First Lady of the US (1933–1945), politician, diplomat, activist
Essay (1951-12), “This I Believe: Growth that Starts from Thinking,” on Edward R. Murrow, This I Believe, CBS Radio

More about this quote: wist.info/roosevelt-eleanor/82…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #eleanorroosevelt #belief #beliefsystem #besteffort #doyourbest #excellence #goodbehavior #meaningoflife #moralcode #personalcode #selfactualization #selfchallenging #selfcorrection #selfdevleopment #selfexamination #selfimprovement #selfquestioning #selfrespect

A quotation from Eleanor Roosevelt

Perhaps that’s what we all had to do — think out for ourselves what we could believe and how we could live by it. And so I came to the conclusion that you had to use this life to develop the very best that you could develop.

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) First Lady of the US (1933–1945), politician, diplomat, activist
Essay (1951-12), “This I Believe: Growth that Starts from Thinking,” on Edward R. Murrow, This I Believe, CBS Radio

More about this quote: wist.info/roosevelt-eleanor/82…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #eleanorroosevelt #belief #beliefsystem #besteffort #doyourbest #excellence #goodbehavior #meaningoflife #moralcode #personalcode #selfactualization #selfchallenging #selfcorrection #selfdevleopment #selfexamination #selfimprovement #selfquestioning #selfrespect

A quotation from Robert Ingersoll

And yet I am held responsible for my belief. Then why does not God give me the evidence? They say he has. In what? In an inspired book. But I do not understand it as they do. Must I be false to my understanding? They say: “When you come to die you will be sorry if you do not.” Will I be sorry when I come to die that I did not live a hypocrite? Will I be sorry that I did not say I was a Christian when I was not? Will the fact that I was honest put a thorn in the pillow of death? Cannot God forgive me for being honest? They say that when he was in Jerusalem he forgave his murderers, but now he will not forgive an honest man for differing from him on the subject of the Trinity.

Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) American lawyer, freethinker, orator
Lecture (1884-01-20), “Orthodoxy,” Tabor Opera House, Denver, Colorado

More about this quote: wist.info/ingersoll-robert-gre…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #robertingersoll #robertgreeningersoll #afterlife #belief #Bible #conviction #dishonesty #divinemercy #evidence #forgiveness #God #grace #hypocrisy #proof #reason #salvation #theology #trinity #understanding

A quotation from Eric Hoffer

Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.

Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
Passionate State of Mind, Aphorism 260 (1955)

More about this quote: wist.info/hoffer-eric/19134/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #erichoffer #agitprop #belief #bias #confirmationbias #disinformation #prejudice #propaganda #selfdeception #selfjustification

Living Waters (Christian Music) = Fresh worship music to uplift your soul ❤️ - #God #Jesus #TheLord #Praise #ChristianMusic #Bible #Music #Song #Faith #Hope #ChristianLove #Grace #Revival #Inspiration #Uplifting #Worship #SpiritualJourney #DivineConnection #Savior #Belief #BiblicalMessage #YouthMinistry #ChristianValues #Cross #EternalLife #ChristFollower #Enlightenment #SaviorsLove #Baptism #Redemption #Community #Discipleship - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKU2UpMIIJQ

If we want to improve the lives of peoples living with #opioid #addiction, we will need more evidence-based decision making instead of #ideology, #opinion, and #belief.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2844043

A quotation from Claude Bernard

Men who have excessive faith in their theories or ideas are not only ill prepared for making discoveries; they also make very poor observations. Of necessity, they observe with a preconceived idea, and when they devise an experiment, they can see, in its results, only a confirmation of their theory. In this way they distort observation and often neglect very important facts because they do not further their aim.
 
[Les hommes qui ont une foi excessive dans leurs théories ou dans leurs idées sont non-seulement mal disposés pour faire des découvertes, mais ils font aussi de très-mauvaises observations. Ils observent nécessairement avec une idée préconçue, et quand ils ont institué une expérience, ils ne veulent voir dans ses résultats qu’une confirmation de leur théorie. Ils défigurent ainsi l’observation et négligent souvent des faits très-importants, parce qu’ils ne concourent pas à leur but.]

Claude Bernard (1813-1878) French physiologist, scientist
An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine [Introduction à l’Étude de la Médecine Expérimentale] (1865) [tr. Greene (1957)]

More about this quote: wist.info/bernard-claude/81094…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #claudebernard #belief #bias #confirmationbias #experiment #observation #preconceivednotion #preconception #science #theory

A quotation from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Beliefs must be lived in for a good while, before they accommodate themselves to the soul’s wants, and wear loose enough to be comfortable.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894) American poet, essayist, scholar
Article (1861-04), “The Professor’s Story [Elsie Venner],” ch. 30, Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 42

More info about this quote: wist.info/holmes-sr-oliver-wen…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #oliverwendellholmessr #elsievenner #accommodation #belief #character #comfort #compatibility #opinion #sensibility

A quotation from Emerson

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
Essay (1860), “Worship,” The Conduct of Life, ch. 6

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/emerson-ralph-waldo/…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #ralphwaldoemerson #belief #believer #faith #humannature #truthseeking