The soft-fantasy mindset is not a full-on fantasy

You don’t believe any random nonsense that’s pleasant to imagine,

 

Incoherence,

conflict with the consensus,

conflict with the authorities’ position

— are all enough to dissuade you from proudly asserting your belief in some magical phenomenon

 

you’re more sceptical than that:

maybe divination doesn’t exactly work

maybe the Moon landing did happen,

maybe god didn’t create women from the rib of a man

maybe there’s no afterlife with virgins

maybe there is no secret ruling elite, that is also a paedophile ring, vampires drinking blood of toddlers, but also infidels, idk

maybe the earth is not flat, after all

maybe you’re not jesus

 

However,

in soft-fantasy mode,

you will STILL believe a lot of random nonsense that’s pleasant to imagine,

or curious to imagine,

 

maybe there is the occult, out there

maybe we do live in a simulation

maybe Elvis lives

maybe the legacy media is an utter psyop and “the one true narrative”,

maybe covid was a scam used to subdue people

maybe our soul does live forever, irrespective of god

etc etc

 

All that stupid shit is a bit harder to instantly refute,

It can be argued in a semi-intelligent manner,

There can often be found cherry-picked instances that seem to corroborate those versions of events,

And the adherents of such soft-fantasy beliefs can sometimes be quite sharp,

or even have a history of impressive and successful anti-establishment, sceptical bets

 

…the problem is – it’s STILL usually nonsense

Because it still doesn’t adhere to the standard of evidence required to claim such things with confidence

 

See the thing about succeeding in life — a lot of our confidence doesn’t have to come from scientific proof — because WE OURSELVES are the scientific proof

We learn to walk, learn to count, learn to read, learn to focus, learn to get ourselves to work, learn to build something, learn that it has to work, learn to sell it — and then we are successful

We learn all that by a massive trial and error campaign,

It’s all constrained by our quite specific goals,

At the end we reach them — or not

We may not perfectly know every detail of the process,

But we do get a process that works,

its working is the proof

its successful results are the corroborating evidence

(of course that often fails too and we end up with delusional sense of our ability)

 

So you can be quite successful,

and quite rational in your domain,

without having ANY CONSCIOUS NOTION OF PROPER RATIONALITY AND SCIENTIFIC, PHILOSOPHICAL STANDARDS OF EVIDENCE

and why would you?

You’re already enacting the truth-discovery process without thinking about it

 

The problems only begin when you’re making claims, having precious opinions — on matters where you’re not actually personally constrained and educated by reality

And at that point — your otherwise hard-earned confidence is worthless — because it doesn’t apply here

And here you should need higher, and explicit standards of evidence — to acquire the same confidence

But that you lack

You just think it will work out somehow

Like other things did

 

So you are keen to espouse the soft-fantasy belief,

Something that sounds quite pleasant and even a little plausible,

Something that serves to explain something otherwise inexplicable,

And has definitely not been clearly, overtly refuted,

It merely has not been confirmed either,

 

And if you had higher standards of evidence,

You’d wait for confirmation,

You’d wait for very strong evidence,

You may never know for sure — that’s not how empirical data works (the outcome is at best extremely likely — never certain),

But you would really have a lot of data,

Because you know how MISLEADING the reality is,

How there can be infinitely many logical-sounding, coherent explanations of something,

But the story has to fit the data… ALL the data. Including the most awkward and incomprehensible observations,

And sometimes there simply is no story,

The data says it’s merely a chaos, randomness

And of course most of the time you don’t have nearly enough data,

Most of the time you hear or glimpse something — and that’s all you’ll get to “know”

You don’t know where the sound came from, what caused it, you don’t know anything, and you will never know

 

And this is the truly sceptical, REALISTIC attitude

REALISTIC is not merely plausible

REALISTIC is not merely not implausible, not stupid, not naive

REALISTIC is backed by sufficient evidence

 

And the soft-fantasy mindset is not that

It revels in mysteries and stories,

In cool unfalsifiable little insights

 

And though it’s not as insidious as full-on delusional fantasy mindset, with gods and demons and conspiracies everywhere,

It is still not rooted in reality, not rooted in facts — and therefore not serious,

and usually harmful

 

…though it is sometimes instrumentally useful,

it can sometimes lend itself to the otherwise rational impulse to explore something, to be INSPIRED,

but it is nevertheless usually harmful, because it chooses self-indulgence and fable-making over fidelity to the reality