I would counter with people who believe the earth is flat. This is in fact an extreme belief. The best part is, I don’t care if people believe this, not even a little a bit.

I care when they start arguing with me and trying to jam their belief down my throat. I didn’t even ask, you brought it up and you’re mad at me because I disagree.

I think this is the more interesting point to consider. Having a belief, any belief, is probably just fine. It’s the second part that’s the issue.

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hingler36 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Where would you draw the line between someone advocating for their belief vs shoving it down your throat? Does the "extremeness" of the belief factor into the judgement? If so, how are we not back at the original question of the definition of what an extreme belief is?

	▲	irishcoffee 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Why are you implying that advocating for your belief and making someone else endure that advocation is some kind of right? It is not. As to your question, there are a lot of extreme beliefs that sometimes end up becoming true. IIRC the person who first advocated for washing hands because of tiny "things" that could make people sick, he was laughed out of the room, and he was right. It was an extreme belief at the time. I basically reject the whole premise that "no belief is extreme" because there are countless examples throughout history of extreme beliefs that the world considered extreme, and they turned out to be true. Didn't make the belief any less extreme at the time.

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phatskat 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Oddly though beliefs like “the world is flat” are tied up in other beliefs that actually cause harm. Flat-earth leads to the firmament leads to Christian god did this leads to ((those people)) killed Christ and control the banks that want you to believe in a spherical earth and get vaccinated.

One of the most depressing things about exploring the conspiracy world is that all roads tend to get co-opted into hateful rhetoric - I miss the days when I believed that one could hold a rather silly belief and have it just be benign.