Good point. I believe people I trust. My trust develops over a period of
time and it may in- or decrease every day. If there is more people to base
my belief on I judge the credibility of those "others" too.
I distinguish two kinds of items I believe in: ones which matter to me and
ones which don't. If it is something which at the moment does not matter in
my life (eg. cold fusion or E=mc2) I tend to store data rather than beliefs,
for example "Einstein said this or that". It may be true, it may be not, I
am not going to use it in my near future anyway.
If I can apply something in my own life, then *I* must verify it. There is
no other authority. Maslow's selfactualization, for example -- I test it
myself and decide how it applies in my life, I look at what other people do
and check the theory. When I hear about Branden's "Six Pillars of
Self-Esteem" I try it out -- it works -- I use it. I hear about Level-3. I
find out that MS Flip software is required. I don't trust MS Flip (based on
my experience with MS Power) -- I conclude it's a scam. It may take a long
time to convince me one way or another, but since it is important to me, I
spend that time.
>Do you do the same thing with Level-3, et al. Or do you refuse to
>recognize that there may be some things you lack the skills to confirm or
>deny yourself, Tad? (Or those skills may simply be rusty or in need of an
>upgrade)
That's the heart of MAIDS: I never assume I have NOT ENOUGH brains to
understand. Besides, there are good tools, memetics for one... I am not
sure if you heard about an excellent book on the subject: "Virus of the
Mind" by Richard Brodie. When I read this book and somebody on this list
was trying to push "meme-space flexing on the fly" I quickly recognized it
as one of the tricks to get people to follow MS Guru. A dirty trick. It's
all described in that book. And how many people on this list bought it? (I
am still wating for David R's new scientific view on Level-3).
Regards, Tadeusz (Tad) Niwinski from planet TeTa
tad@teta.ai http://www.teta.ai (604) 985-4159