When somebody tells you something, sometimes it's something they personally experienced and sometimes it's something they heard from somebody else. How do you tell the difference?

Comments

• palebluethought@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Uh… Ask, I guess?

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  • Dr_Satan@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

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    • Lmaydev@programming.dev ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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.

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• Candelestine@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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.

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  • vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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?

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    • Candelestine@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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.

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• makeshiftreaper@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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

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