#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

Beliefs don’t change, do they? You can believe in exactly the same things you believed in when you were ...

#Buddhism #Dhamma #view #Theravada #belief #Dharma

A quotation from Margaret Mead

The children must be taught how to think, not what to think.

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist
Coming of Age in Samoa, ch. 14 (1928)

More about this quote: wist.info/mead-margaret/85496/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #margaretmead #belief #education #orthodoxy #problemsolving #solutions #teaching #thinking #thought

https://youtu.be/vPS5Yw_YsHA

“To be the place the falling angel meets the rising ape”

#pratchett #hogfather #belief

A quotation from Montaigne

Why cannot we remember all the contradictions which we feel within our own judgement, and how many things which were articles of belief for us yesterday are fables for us today?
 
[Que ne nous souvient il combien nous sentons de contradiction en nostre jugement mesmes ? combien de choses nous servoient hyer d’articles de foy, qui nous sont fables aujourd’huy?]

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) French essayist
Essays, Book 1, ch. 26 (1.26), “It Is Folly to Measure the True and the False by Our Own Capacity [C’est folie de rapporter le vray et le faux à nostre suffisance]” (1572) [tr. Screech (1987), 1.27]

More about (and translations of) this quote: wist.info/montaigne-michel-de/…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #montaigne #belief #changeofheart #changeofmind #error #judgment #misjudgment #opinion #selfawareness

A quotation from Montaigne

Why cannot we remember all the contradictions which we feel within our own judgement, and how many things which were articles of belief for us yesterday are fables for us today?
 
[Que ne nous souvient il combien nous sentons de contradiction en nostre jugement mesmes ? combien de choses nous servoient hyer d’articles de foy, qui nous sont fables aujourd’huy?]

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) French essayist
Essays, Book 1, ch. 26 (1.26), “It Is Folly to Measure the True and the False by Our Own Capacity [C’est folie de rapporter le vray et le faux à nostre suffisance]” (1572) [tr. Screech (1987), 1.27]

More about (and translations of) this quote: wist.info/montaigne-michel-de/…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #montaigne #belief #changeofheart #changeofmind #error #judgment #misjudgment #opinion #selfawareness

A quotation from Montaigne

Why cannot we remember all the contradictions which we feel within our own judgement, and how many things which were articles of belief for us yesterday are fables for us today?
 
[Que ne nous souvient il combien nous sentons de contradiction en nostre jugement mesmes ? combien de choses nous servoient hyer d’articles de foy, qui nous sont fables aujourd’huy?]

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) French essayist
Essays, Book 1, ch. 26 (1.26), “It Is Folly to Measure the True and the False by Our Own Capacity [C’est folie de rapporter le vray et le faux à nostre suffisance]” (1572) [tr. Screech (1987), 1.27]

More about (and translations of) this quote: wist.info/montaigne-michel-de/…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #montaigne #belief #changeofheart #changeofmind #error #judgment #misjudgment #opinion #selfawareness

A quotation from Montaigne

Why cannot we remember all the contradictions which we feel within our own judgement, and how many things which were articles of belief for us yesterday are fables for us today?
 
[Que ne nous souvient il combien nous sentons de contradiction en nostre jugement mesmes ? combien de choses nous servoient hyer d’articles de foy, qui nous sont fables aujourd’huy?]

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) French essayist
Essays, Book 1, ch. 26 (1.26), “It Is Folly to Measure the True and the False by Our Own Capacity [C’est folie de rapporter le vray et le faux à nostre suffisance]” (1572) [tr. Screech (1987), 1.27]

More about (and translations of) this quote: wist.info/montaigne-michel-de/…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #montaigne #belief #changeofheart #changeofmind #error #judgment #misjudgment #opinion #selfawareness

A quotation from Terry Pratchett

   “I don’t hold with paddlin’ with the occult,” said Granny firmly. “Once you start paddlin’ with the occult you start believing in spirits, and when you start believing in spirits you start believing in demons, and then before you know where you are you’re believing in gods. And then you’re in trouble.”
   “But all them things exist,” said Nanny Ogg.
   “That’s no call to go around believing in them. It only encourages ’em.”

Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 14, Lords and Ladies (1992)

More about this quote: wist.info/pratchett-terry/8535…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #terrypratchett #discworld #lordsandladies #grannyweatherwax #nannyogg #belief #demons #existence #faith #gods #occult #spirits #spirituality #religion

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 Truman

The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence can live only as long as they are enshrined in our hearts and minds. If they are not so enshrined, they would be no better than mummies in their glass cases, and they could in time become idols whose worship would be a grim mockery of the true faith. Only as these documents are reflected in the thoughts and acts of Americans can they remain symbols of a power that can move the world.

Harry S Truman (1884-1972) US President (1945-1953)
Speech (1952-12-15), National Archives

More about this quote: wist.info/truman-harry-s/63640…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #truman #harrytruman #America #belief #Constitution #DeclarationofIndependence #idolatry #meaning #moralcode #patriotism #values

Tommaso Piazza reviews Gabriele Contessa's book Science Denial in SERRC, https://social-epistemology.com/2026/06/12/a-review-of-gabriele-contessas-science-denial-tommaso-piazza/

An eralier review was by Maya Goldenberg, https://social-epistemology.com/2026/04/29/science-denial-post-trust-and-epistemic-blame-a-review-of-contessas-science-denial-maya-goldenberg/

#science #tiede #denial #scienceDenial #epistemology #socialScience #climateDenial #pseudoscience #postTruth #truth #misinformation #trust #motivatedInquiry #evidence #reasoning #motivatedReasoning #harm #egoism #collectiveResponsibility #society #futures #planetEarth #resistance #belief #ideology #epistemicSecurity #psychology #philosophyOfScience #philosophy #filosofia

The States That Will Not Be Commanded

There is a class of human experience that answers to no direct order. You cannot tell yourself to fall asleep. The instruction arrives at a locked door. Sleep refuses the simple transaction of command and execution. Instead, it assembles itself once certain conditions are present, and those conditions include, strangely enough, the act of picturing yourself already inside the state you are trying to enter. Lying down begins it. Closed eyes continue it. Imagining yourself asleep, entering the self who has already arrived, completes the condition, and only then does sleep agree to appear.

This is stranger than it first appears. The imagination precedes the fact. A fiction makes the reality possible. Rehearsal of the self-in-the-state must happen before the state itself will consent to arrive. Once you notice this mechanism operating in sleep, you begin to see it everywhere in human life, running underneath experiences we mistakenly believed we commanded outright.

Aldous Huxley named the pattern in The Perennial Philosophy and called it the law of reversed effort, a phrase Alan Watts later carried into wider circulation. Viktor Frankl, working from the clinic rather than the lecture hall, called it paradoxical intention, and used it to treat patients whose anxieties had swallowed them whole. The insomniac who tries hardest to sleep stays awake longest. The speaker who strains to stop stammering stammers worst. Frankl’s counterintuitive instruction was to command the symptom itself. Try to stay awake. Try to stammer. The paradox broke the grip because it acknowledged a humble fact about voluntary will: the target state cannot be seized. It must be invited, imagined, allowed.

Taoists arrived at the same recognition two thousand years earlier and called it wu-wei, the action that is not action, the doing that happens when the doer gets out of the way. An archer who aims too hard misses. A calligrapher who grips the brush too firmly produces a dead line. Skill of that order lives in a zone the conscious will cannot enter, and the only approach is to imagine yourself having already arrived.

Consider sexual arousal. The physiological response is famously resistant to command. It answers to imagined scenarios, to remembered encounters, to anticipated scenes. Masters and Johnson built an entire clinical practice around this recognition, and their cure for performance anxiety, sensate focus, works by replacing effort with imagined sensation. A man instructed to perform often cannot. The same man, invited to picture the experience without obligation, finds his body following his mind into the state. Arousal answers to conjuring.

Consider crying on cue, the classical actor’s problem. Stanislavski solved it through affective memory. The tears come by indirection. You imagine the dog you lost when you were nine, and water arrives because the body has been invited to the feeling rather than ordered to produce it. Meryl Streep has described her process in interviews as a summoning of remembered feeling. Daniel Day-Lewis has described his as an inhabitation sustained across months. Neither description sounds like command. The actor imagines the self-in-grief, and grief supplies the water.

Consider the act of belief. Pascal, sitting in his Pensées alongside the famous wager, offered an argument about habituation that has been quietly underestimated for centuries. For those seeking faith, he advised acting as if they already believed. Kneel. Take the holy water. Say the prayers. Imagine yourself as a believer, and belief may arrive as a secondary effect of the performance. William James extended the line in “The Will to Believe” and argued that many truths about ourselves only become true after we have imagined them as true. Courage is one such truth. Generosity is another. Love, perhaps most of all.

Athletes at the top of their disciplines understand this mechanism as technical knowledge. Jack Nicklaus, in Golf My Way, said he never hit a shot, even in practice, without first seeing the ball’s flight in his mind. Swimmers rehearse the race in imagination with such precision that brain scans show neural activation patterns overlapping substantially with actual performance. The body runs the course in miniature before it runs the course in fact. Physical execution follows the mental simulation because the state has already been entered once, invisibly, and needs only to be entered again with flesh attached.

Hypnosis is perhaps the cleanest case. An unwilling subject cannot be forced into the hypnotic state, and even a willing one cannot seize it by direct will. The subject must imagine entering the state, going down the staircase, growing heavy in the chair, and that imagining is the mechanism itself. Imaging studies by David Spiegel and colleagues at Stanford, along with related work by Oakley and Halligan, suggest that hypnotic suggestion produces neural patterns distinct from ordinary pretending, patterns more closely aligned with genuine perceptual and motor processing. Imagination has done something to the body. Fiction has produced a physiological effect the subject did not will.

Creative inspiration operates by the same architecture. You cannot command an idea to arrive. You can imagine yourself as receptive, empty, waiting, and the idea tends to arrive into that imagined vacancy. Keats called this negative capability, the capacity to sit inside uncertainty without grabbing for resolution. A poet imagines the listening state, and the poem walks into the room. Composers describe the same choreography. Mathematicians describe it too, with Poincaré’s famous account of the solution arriving as he stepped onto the bus at Coutances. He had imagined himself receptive for weeks. The solution waited until it found him properly prepared to receive it.

Grief resolution belongs in this same family, though we rarely recognize it. Bereaved people move through grief by imagining themselves on the other side of it. Picturing a future morning when the first thought lands somewhere other than the absence. Picturing the moment when the dead person’s name can be spoken without collapse. These acts of imagination are how integration proceeds. George Bonanno’s resilience research and Pauline Boss’s work on ambiguous loss both describe this imaginative prefiguration as the actual mechanism of healing. The sequence matters here. Picturing a survivable future comes first, and resolution begins to assemble around the picture.

At the collective level, Benedict Anderson’s argument about imagined communities rides the same rail. A nation exists first as an imaginative act performed by millions of strangers simultaneously. Citizens picture themselves as a “we” before the institutional “we” coheres. American colonists had to imagine being Americans before they could act as Americans. Thomas Kuhn made a parallel argument about scientific revolutions. A new paradigm must be imaginatively entertained, played with speculatively, inhabited as a thought experiment, before it can be adopted and tested. Discovery through accumulation alone misses the interior work that makes discovery possible. Science imagines a world in which the anomalies make sense, and then searches for evidence that the imagined world is the actual one.

Here is the argument this pattern makes against one of the most persistent myths in the modern self-help industry. The doctrine of pure willpower, of steel discipline, of command-and-execute personal transformation, is largely false where it matters most. The states we most want to inhabit are precisely the states that refuse to be seized. Love, sleep, creative insight, courage, calm, sexual pleasure, athletic flow, artistic voice, faith, grief’s resolution, recovery from trauma, the dissolution of anxiety, the emergence of a new political identity, all of these operate by invitation rather than by conquest. A hard clamp on such a state accelerates its evasion. Accurate, patient rehearsal of the self already inside it increases the odds of arrival, because the state recognizes the address it has been given.

This observation is a claim about where real labor lives, rather than a brief for passivity. The imagination itself is labor. Stanislavski’s affective memory takes years to develop. Nicklaus’s visualization was the product of thousands of hours of prior experience that had furnished his imagination with accurate material to draw on. Negative capability, for the poet, demands a difficult kind of vigilance. Picturing a survivable future, for the mourner, takes courage most days. Real work is being performed in all these cases. That work simply lives somewhere other than where the popular literature keeps telling us to look. It lives in the imagining, in furnishing the mind with a vivid enough rehearsal that the body and the world will follow the script.

There is a political dimension to this that deserves attention. Populations that cannot imagine a different arrangement of their lives will not produce one. Authoritarian regimes understand this perfectly and invest heavily in controlling imagination itself, in prescribing what may be pictured, in criminalizing the mental rehearsal of alternatives. The censor knows the law of reversed effort by heart, and knows in particular that the imagined state of freedom must be interrupted before the political state of freedom can be prevented. Organizers and artists, working from the other direction, understand that their first task is to make the unfamiliar picturable. Once a people can picture themselves free, the mechanics of becoming free start to assemble around the picture.

The craft implication for writers, for dramatists, for anyone whose work involves summoning states in other people’s minds, is that we are running an imagination-furnishing enterprise whose surface resembles persuasion. A good novel gives the reader a vivid enough picture of the inside of another life that the feeling assembles itself inside the reader. A good play stages grief with such precision that the audience’s own grief, resting dormant, recognizes the invitation and walks forward. Argument alone has never moved anyone who was going to stay put. The form of the work becomes a staircase. Descent happens inside the audience’s own imagination. The hypnotic principle and the aesthetic principle are the same principle.

Which returns us to sleep, where we began. The oldest ritual of the human body is the rehearsal that makes becoming possible. Every night of your life you practice the technique that governs almost everything else you will ever want to enter. You picture yourself arriving, and arrival follows the picture. The repetition is so automatic it escapes notice. Seeing the principle for the first time reorders the interior map. The question that has held your energy for years, the question of how to force yourself into the state you want, reveals itself as badly posed. Sharper questions take shape around what you had been missing. What does the inside of that state actually feel like, in specific sensory detail? What would I need to picture accurately enough for my body and my circumstances to follow the picture into becoming?

Less effort, applied through better imagination, answers more of what we want in a human life than the heavier strategies that continue to dominate our self-improvement literature. That reweighting, once genuinely made, reorders a great deal.

"Let relentless optimism define your core!" - Futurist Jim Carroll

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Futurist Jim Carroll is writing a series, The Art of the Infinite Pivot, based on 36 lessons from his 36 years as a solo entrepreneur, working as a nomadic worker in the global freelance economy. The series is unfolding here, and at pivot.jimcarroll.com.
--
For those who might ask, I'm in California today, on stage at 9 am with a keynote for a packaging conference. if the weather gods are willing, I'll be landing back at YYZ about 910pm, and should see a splashdown at perhaps 1030pm. Traditions and all!
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On a milestone like today, you realize that the most important piece of "gear" you’ve carried through 36 years isn't a laptop or a library of data.

It’s your outlook.

In a world of relentless change, volatility, and a staggering rate of change that always seems to directly impact you, the most radical mindset you can adapt is to stay relentlessly optimistic.

Optimism isn't about being naive; it’s about being strategic. It's about making a conscious decision that you are always going to try to find the upside, instead of obsessing over the downside. You are going to find the opportunities rather than becoming distressed about the negatives. It means you are going to always act to keep moving forward, even though personal circumstances seem to be trying to drag you backward.

And it always involves thinking about a potentially better future. Look, if you don't believe the future can be better, you won't do the hard work required to pivot toward it. In my voyage, I’ve seen that the cynics are usually right in the short term, but the optimists are the ones who build the long term. Cynicism is a destructive force: optimism is a powerful flex.

This is the secret to longevity. When you choose optimism as your core, every disruption becomes an opportunity rather than a threat. Throughout my 36 years, the pivots that felt the most effortless were the ones fueled by a genuine excitement for what was coming next.

If you let fear define your core, you will build a career based on standing still.
Doing small things. Making small steps. Chasing small goals.

But if you let optimism define your core, you build a career based on possibility.

Big ideas. Big trends. Big opportunities.

As I stand at this milestone today, I’m not looking at the challenges that exist around me today.

I'm looking at what comes next and what I will do to be a part of it.

That being the case, think about this: the future belongs to those who are excited to meet it!

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Futurist Jim Carroll believes that optimism is at the core of all success.

**#Optimism** **#Mindset** **#Core** **#Positivity** **#Future** **#Outlook** **#Strategic** **#Possibility** **#Excitement** **#Growth** **#Pivot** **#Resilience** **#Hope** **#Forward** **#Freelance** **#Lessons** **#Longevity** **#Opportunity** **#Belief** **#Tomorrow** **#Attitude** **#Joy** **#Building**

Original post: https://jimcarroll.com/2026/04/decoding-tomorrow-the-infinite-pivot-series-13-let-relentless-optimism-define-your-core/

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 Emerson

   A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his.
   In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
Essay (1841), “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series, No. 2

More about this quote: wist.info/emerson-ralph-waldo/…

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A quotation from La Rochefoucauld

We are stubborn because we are narrow-minded; it is hard to believe what is beyond the scope of our vision.
 
[La petitesse de l’esprit fait l’opiniâtreté, et nous ne croyons pas aisément ce qui est au delà de ce que nous voyons.]

François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) French epigrammatist, memoirist, noble
Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales [Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims], ¶265 (1665-1678) [tr. Heard (1917), ¶273]

More about (and translations of) this quote: wist.info/la-rochefoucauld-fra…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #larochefoucauld #abstraction #belief #bias #bigotry #closedmindedness #comprehension #dogmatism #illiberality #insularity #intolerance #little #narrowmindedness #obstinacy #parochialism #scope #speculation #stubbornness #vision

A quotation from La Rochefoucauld

We are stubborn because we are narrow-minded; it is hard to believe what is beyond the scope of our vision.
 
[La petitesse de l’esprit fait l’opiniâtreté, et nous ne croyons pas aisément ce qui est au delà de ce que nous voyons.]

François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) French epigrammatist, memoirist, noble
Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales [Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims], ¶265 (1665-1678) [tr. Heard (1917), ¶273]

More about (and translations of) this quote: wist.info/la-rochefoucauld-fra…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #larochefoucauld #abstraction #belief #bias #bigotry #closedmindedness #comprehension #dogmatism #illiberality #insularity #intolerance #little #narrowmindedness #obstinacy #parochialism #scope #speculation #stubbornness #vision

A quotation from La Rochefoucauld

We are stubborn because we are narrow-minded; it is hard to believe what is beyond the scope of our vision.
 
[La petitesse de l’esprit fait l’opiniâtreté, et nous ne croyons pas aisément ce qui est au delà de ce que nous voyons.]

François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) French epigrammatist, memoirist, noble
Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales [Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims], ¶265 (1665-1678) [tr. Heard (1917), ¶273]

More about (and translations of) this quote: wist.info/la-rochefoucauld-fra…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #larochefoucauld #abstraction #belief #bias #bigotry #closedmindedness #comprehension #dogmatism #illiberality #insularity #intolerance #little #narrowmindedness #obstinacy #parochialism #scope #speculation #stubbornness #vision

A quotation from La Rochefoucauld

We are stubborn because we are narrow-minded; it is hard to believe what is beyond the scope of our vision.
 
[La petitesse de l’esprit fait l’opiniâtreté, et nous ne croyons pas aisément ce qui est au delà de ce que nous voyons.]

François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) French epigrammatist, memoirist, noble
Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales [Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims], ¶265 (1665-1678) [tr. Heard (1917), ¶273]

More about (and translations of) this quote: wist.info/la-rochefoucauld-fra…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #larochefoucauld #abstraction #belief #bias #bigotry #closedmindedness #comprehension #dogmatism #illiberality #insularity #intolerance #little #narrowmindedness #obstinacy #parochialism #scope #speculation #stubbornness #vision

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 Thomas Carlyle

No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, could ever compel the soul of a man to believe or to disbelieve: it is his own indefeasible light, that judgment of his; he will reign, and believe there, by the grace of God alone!

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish essayist and historian
Lecture (1840-05-15), “The Hero as Priest,” Home House, Portman Square, London

More about this quote: wist.info/carlyle-thomas/6667/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #thomascarlyle #belief #compulsion #force #freethought #freedomofreligion #freedomofthought #intolerance #judgment #orthodoxy #religiousfreedom #religiousintolerance #selfdirection #soul #theocracy

A quotation from Ambrose Bierce

TRINITY, n. […] The Trinity is one of the most sublime mysteries of our holy religion. In rejecting it because it is incomprehensible, Unitarians betray their inadequate sense of theological fundamentals. In religion we believe only what we do not understand, except in the instance of an intelligible doctrine that contradicts an incomprehensible one. In that case we believe the former as a part of the latter.

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) American writer and journalist
“Trinity,” The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)

More about this quote: wist.info/bierce-ambrose/1056/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #ambrosebierce #devilsdictionary #belief #Christianity #doctrine #God #incomprehensibility #incomprehension #mystery #theology #trinity #understanding

A quotation from Will Rogers

If some of those Birds would spend their time following His example instead of trying to figure out His mode of arrival and departure, they would come nearer getting confidence in their Church.

Will Rogers (1879-1935) American humorist
Column (1924-01-20), “Weekly Article: Send Mexico Our Wooden Ships, Too”
[58]

More info about this quote: wist.info/rogers-will/79044/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #WillRogers #example #Jesus #belief #Christianity #church #goodworks #theology #wordsanddeeds #works #organizedreligion #religion

All-new in SEP: Preference Logic

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-preference/

#sep #logic #logiikka #philosophy #filosofia #preference #belief #choice

Explore the internal struggle for control and the unwavering presence of God in this thought-provoking video. We delve into the feeling of divine connection and how God constantly answers and pays attention, even when priorities are mixed. Discover the constant response! #GodsPresence #SpiritualJourney #Faith #DivineConnection #InternalStruggle #ReligiousVideo #Christianity #Belief #Prayer #Inspiration

How can you write fiction about real beliefs in an authentic way? @wtalabi.wordpress.com knows: his novel Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obulafon won critical acclaim for doing just that, and he'll share some tips with the audience at Writing the Occult: Belief on 6 September. Meet Wole ⬇️

#writersofmastodon #writing #fantasy #belief #religion #orisha

A quotation from Robert Ingersoll

There can be nothing more utterly subversive of all that is really valuable than the suppression of honest thought. No man, worthy of the form he bears, will at the command of church or state solemnly repeat a creed his reason scorns.

Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) American lawyer, agnostic, orator
Lecture (1873-12) “Individuality,” Chicago Free Religious Society

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/ingersoll-robert-gre…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #robertingersoll #honesty #honor #resistance #belief #compulsion #creed #freedomofconscience #freedomofreligion #freedomofthought #profession #religiousfreedom #subversion #suppression #thoughtcontrol #value #worthiness

A quotation from Eric Hoffer

A doctrine insulates the devout not only against the realities around them but also against their own selves. The fanatical believer is not conscious of his envy, malice, pettiness and dishonesty. There is a wall of words between his consciousness and his real self.

Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
Passionate State of Mind, Aphorism 68 (1955)

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/hoffer-eric/16513/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #erichoffer #delusion #belief #conscience #devotion #doctrine #dogma #fanatic #selfawareness #selfdeception #shame #zealot

For me, everyday is a lil miracle. :)

https://fineartamerica.com/featured/have-faith-and-expect-miracles-sharon-cummings.html

#faith #faithful #miracle #miracles #inspiration #inspirational #inspirationalquotes #motivation #motivational #motivationalquotes #encouragement #encouraging #words #wordsofwisdom #flower #flowers #floral #spring #springtime #healing #healingjourney #belief #buyintoart by #SharonCummingsArt #art #artwork #fediart #mastoart

A quotation from Voltaire

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one.
 
[Le doute n’est pas une état bien agréable, mais l’assurance est un état ridicule.]

Voltaire (1694-1778) French writer [pseud. of Francois-Marie Arouet]
Letter (1770-11-28) to Frederick William, Prince of Prussia [tr. Tallentyre (1919)]

Sourcing, notes, alternate translations: wist.info/voltaire/4016/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #voltaire #belief #certainty #dogmatism #doubt #faith #truebeliever #truth #uncertainty

A quotation from Voltaire

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one.
 
[Le doute n’est pas une état bien agréable, mais l’assurance est un état ridicule.]

Voltaire (1694-1778) French writer [pseud. of Francois-Marie Arouet]
Letter (1770-11-28) to Frederick William, Prince of Prussia [tr. Tallentyre (1919)]

Sourcing, notes, alternate translations: wist.info/voltaire/4016/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #voltaire #belief #certainty #dogmatism #doubt #faith #truebeliever #truth #uncertainty

A quotation from Voltaire

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one.
 
[Le doute n’est pas une état bien agréable, mais l’assurance est un état ridicule.]

Voltaire (1694-1778) French writer [pseud. of Francois-Marie Arouet]
Letter (1770-11-28) to Frederick William, Prince of Prussia [tr. Tallentyre (1919)]

Sourcing, notes, alternate translations: wist.info/voltaire/4016/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #voltaire #belief #certainty #dogmatism #doubt #faith #truebeliever #truth #uncertainty

#ACGrayling - Diverse #Arguments for #God?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKBp-IkuFyY

#Philosophy #PhilosophyOfReligion #Theology #Theism #Worship #LifeAfterDeath #Belief #Faith #Logic #OntologicalArgument #ArgumentFromDesign #Design #Teleology #Anselm #Bible #CosmologicalArgument #Cosmology #FallacyOfComposition #Causality #Contingency #Science #Apologetics #Morality #ArgumentFromEvil #CloserToTruth #RobertKuhn

"Vakioruokalaani" SEP:yyn ilmestyi lokakuun alussa kokonaan uutena Mark Boespflugin ja Elizabeth Jacksonin entry doksastisesta voluntarismista, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/doxastic-voluntarism/

Kysymys on siitä, missä määrin tahdonalainen kontrollimme voi ulottua uskomuksiimme eli siihen, kuinka näemme jonkin asian olevan. Voin toki kuvitella melkein mitä vain, mutta uskoa tai "pitää totena"? 🤔 Ja missä määrin suotavuus tai muu pragmaattinen seikka voi tai saa tietämisessä vaikuttaa?

Kiistelty teema, jota artikkeli jäsentää mainiosti, ja mukana on linkki Andrew Chignellin niin ikään inspiroivaan entryyn uskomisen (jotain mieltä olemisen) etiikasta, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-belief/

#belief #ethicsofBelief #doxasticVoluntarism #epistemology #virtueEpistemology #viceEpistemology #philosophyOfMind #sep #new #uskomukset #etiikka #tieto #tietoteoria

#Books and vintage #SheetMusic shipping to new homes this morning.

#BookSelling #bookstodon #space #voyager #SpaceProbe #CarlSagan #nasa #philosophy #belief #WalterKaufmann #artists #ExhibitionCatalog #RichardMaury #painters #LizaMinelli #music

#JoshuaKnobe - What Do People Think About #FreeWill?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3tqKA_S3W4&ab_channel=CloserToTruth

#Philosophy #PhilosophyOfFreeWill #Will #Morrality #MoralPhilosophy #Wisdom #CommonKnowledge #Intuition #FolkKnowledge #FolkWisdom #Belief #FolkBelief #Aristotle #Determinism #CloserToTruth #RobertKuhn

#RaymondTallis - What is #Truth?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLhTG7etzlc&ab_channel=CloserToTruth

#Philosophy #Logic #PhilosophyOfLogic #Assertions #States #StatesOfAffairs #Belief #JTB #JustifiedTrueBelief #Pragmatism #Minimalism #Predicate #Predicates #Relativism #Noumenal #Ontological #Kant #Kantian #DingAnSich #CloserToTruth #RobertKuhn

A quotation from Swift, Jonathan:

«««««
You may force men, by interest or punishment, to say or swear they believe, and to act as if they believed; you can go no farther.
»»»»»

Full quote, sourcing, notes:
https://wist.info/swift-jonathan/58346/

#quote #quotes #quotation #action #appearances #belief #coercion #compliance #conformity #force #freedomofconscience #freedomofreligion #freedomofthought #oath #obedience #pretense #religiousfreedom #religiouspersecution