Well… yeah. I thonk it’s fairly self-evident that individuals have different threaholds for suspension of disbelief, and that the thresholds even vary between subjects with a given individual (for example, it’s harder to maintain suspension of disbelief relative to an area in which one has expertise).

But that’s not really relevant - I just included “acceptably” to be more precise and accurate.

The relevant part is the core idea that the mechanism by which at least some seemingly rational people support blitheringly insane and factually unsupportable political views is not really some combination of prejudices and biases by which they convince themselves of the nominal truth and correspondence to reality of their beliefs, but by engaging in suspension of disbelief - by entirely switching off the parts of their brain that measure truth and correspondence with reality, just as I do when I read a novel or watch a movie.

I certainly don’t know that to be the case, but it’s a fascinating possibility

…there might well be something to that.

Yes - exactly as you say, research needs to be done on suspension of disbelief.

And thanks for sharing that fascinating idea.

Not quite.

Suspension of disbelief refers to the act of essentially switching off the parts of ones mind that check for truth and reality, and simply following a narrative on its own terms, whatever they might be.

It’s not that truth or reality are unnecessary under suspension of disbelief - they aren’t even relevant.

I think this is a fascinating idea.

And I just tried to explain it to a friend and she didn’t get it, then I came back to the thread to find respondents who didn’t get it in the same way she didn’t.

She kept trying to warp it into something like confirmation bias, even though I kept trying to get her to see that the significant thing about suspension of disbelief is that truth and reality don’t even enter into it - they aren’t even meaningful concepts.

The only thing that’s necessary when disbelief is suspended is that the narrative remain acceptably internally consistent. Whether itt true or not or corresponds with reality or not is entirely irrelevant, since the entire process of expectng and testing for those qualities has been set aside.

Again, that’s a fascinating idea. I’ve long suspected that Trump is unable to distinguish between truth and falsehood, but that that was a consequence of his narcissism and egotism - that effectively the only measure he has for truth or falsehood is whether he believes something to be true or not - that the concept of consensual reality isn’t even coherent in his entirely self-absorbed internal reality.

But I’ve long wondered how the at least somewhat more sane people following him manage it. Something like confirmation bias would only work up to a point that Trump has long since gone beyond.

And I think you might be on to something - just as I do when I sit down to read a novel or watch a movie or a series, when they start engaging in politics, they switch the parts of their brains that track truth and reality entirely off and instead just follow along with the narrative, whatever it might be.

It came down to a choice between making some logical and reasonable and obvious changes to benefit the bulk of humanity or protecting the obscene privilege of a relative handful of psychopathic shitweasels, and the shitweasels won.

Note that that could also serve broadly as a description of the end days of Dynastic Egypt, Imperial Rome, Ancien Regime France and the Russian Empire, among others.

Let’s do a thought experiment here.

Pretend that the answer is no - they do not have that right.

Okay - now what? If they don’t have the right to do that, then that means… what exactly? Are they to be arrested if they try? Are you somehow granted the right to kill them if they try? Is there any reasonable method by which they can actually be denied that right?

Yes - all people have a right to feel however they feel and to voice their feelings. Or more precisely, nobody can possibly have the right to stop them.

The thing they don’t have a right to is your attention, concern, sympathy etc. You’re entirely free to grant or withhold those things as you prefer.

Google has become a colonialist project.

First they gained access to the communsl property of the internet. Then they stole it from the original inhabitants. And now they’re trying to claim a legal right to exclusive control over the property they stole.

I know this is meant as sarcasm, but honestly I sometimes suspect it’s actually to some notable degree true.

First, Trump is collecting so much graft from so many different sources that there’s no way he could serve all of their interests, and he likely can’t even keep track of them all.

Beyond that though, I think that to some degree he actually pushes for things like coal power and gas-guzzling cars and open discrimination against minorities and LGBTQ+ people living in fear because they’re nostalgic reminders of his privileged childhood as an ignorant racist serial-raping piece of shit living off of someone else’s money.

You know - as opposed to his more difficult adulthood as an ignorant racist serial-raping piece of shit living off of someone else’s money…

It’s 1920 and the Pentagon just bought billions of dollars worth of buggy whips.

Republicans can’t win free and fair elections so they’re trying to eliminate free and fair elections.

More to the point, and cynically hilariously, the US under Trump, in just one year, lost any opportunity to be anything other than a second-rate has-been in the future, while the world is being led, as it always is, by the strongest economy with the latest technology.

By design.

I fundamentally agree with you, but… in this current world, that’s a conversation that can’t happen, because the wealthy and empowered few - the tech companies and their politician cronies - hold too much power. They aren’t going to make concessions or limit their abuses, and we have no power with which to make them.

Our only hope would be that the few were conscientious and honorable enough to choose on their own to limit their abuses and that’s very much not the case.

So all we can really do is oppose them at every turn, which is likely doomed to fail too, but as the old saying goes, if we give them an inch they’ll take a mile.

Those anti-features don’t exist in Lemmy

No, it in fact hasn’t. If anything, it’s been verified by them, because they generally start off by admitting that everything I said is true. It’s just that they then go on to say that it somehow doesn’t count because it’s possible to opt out of those anti-features.

Which misses both the point that the anti-features do exist (as opposed to Lemmy) and do exist because rimu stuck them in there, and that most of the reason it’s possible to opt out of them is because other people - notably wjs018 - added that functionality.

Gonna have to disagree with you on this one.

Much though one might criticize the lemmy devs for their politics, at least they keep it to their instance. They don’t bake it into the software.

And that’s very much as opposed to rimu, whose opinions are at the heart of Piefed and forced into virtually everything the software does from the moment you sign up for a piefed instance, from the preset subscriptions to the reputation tags and default hiding of downvoted content to the list of prohibited sources and banned domains.

All you have to do to avoid Dessalines and Nutonic’s opinions is to avoid their instance and federated ones. But it’s impossible to use Piefed and avoid rimu’s opinions, because they’re baked into the software.

Even stronger faith I’d say, since billionaires aren’t actively conspiring with politicians to keep you out of heaven.

Okay - here’s the moment again.

Frey could go down in history as a hero. All he needs to do is call a press conference and give a speech with a bit of background, then say something like, “So I would like to take this opportunity to, on behalf of the fine people of Minneapolis, say to Donald Trump (look straight at camera) ‘Go fuck yourself.’ Thank you very much.”

Somebody needs to do it, and very publicly. And the moment that someone does, the dam is going to break and "Go fuck yourself"s are going to start rolling in from all over the world.

The fact that he won’t be has no bearing at all on the fact that he should be.

This is a moment.

Carney needs to very clearly announce, in these exact words if necessary, that Trump can go fuck himself.