I think a large number of people don't "believe" things in the same way that the typical commenter here would understand it.

Your average rationalist techie would consider a "belief" to be some factual statement about the world, backed up with some justification, with some confidence level. "Tariffs help the economy" would mean some probabilities about likely outcomes for different actions, based on some kind of economic theory that explains why those actions make those outcomes more likely. We'd put this statement in the same category as something like "Joe works at Acme, Inc."

(And yes, I know that rationalist techies will still have plenty of irrational beliefs. But this is what we typically consider a belief to be, even if we don't always live up to it.)

But for a lot of people, it's something different. It's more of a pronouncement of faith, or a declaration of allegiance, or an expression of will. It's almost like a prayer. Pronouncing a belief like "tariffs help the economy" isn't a factual statement about likely outcomes, but more of an attempt to sway reality through faith.

▲

mapontosevenths 9 hours ago | parent [-]

This statement seems to align with the world the way I've observed it to be, and I'd never considered it this way before. It really would explain a lot if true.

So is the theory that they don't say it because they actually believe it, they say it because they want YOU to believe it? Or is it that they believe it just because they wish it were true?

▲

wat10000 7 hours ago | parent [-]

It's more subtle than that, to the point that I have some trouble putting it into words.

It's a real belief, but it's a different kind of belief. A rationalist belief has structure behind it, even if only implied. There's a whole framework of, you believe X, what would it look like if X were true, or what would it look like if X were false? What's the basis for thinking that X true? How confident are you? What would change your mind? But for the kind of belief I'm talking about, none of that is there. It's not that it hasn't been done or that it's not sufficiently rigorous, but that it's just not even a consideration. It's not part of the concept of believing something.

	▲	mapontosevenths 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think I get it? A belief is something that some people do, to other it is something that was done to them. I remember it being like that was I was a child and one day realizing that it didn't have to be, that I could decide for myself what I believed in. Maybe some folks never have that realization?