Oh of course, wasn't saying that at all. It's just that I have noticed an uptick in using this kind of phrasing when trying to dismiss other positions on things as a version of the "thought terminating cliche". Not trying to say there are no delusion belief systems.
That said, the bar should be very high for calling other peoples beliefs as such. I disagree with lots of people on lots of things, but one of the things I've learned is that by approaching topics with such a judgemental, holier-than-though attitude, one puts on blinders to truly understanding a persons position, and more importantly, how they got there. The power of empathy is strong in giving the brain more information to work with, but the power of harsh judgement is that it stifles the flow of information prematurely.
That's the most important part, isn't it? Beliefs of humans are path-dependent. Nobody can perfectly rationally re-evaluate all evidence they've encountered and compute a belief to hold. We always start with a belief, and adjust it over time. Some more eagerly than others, some more correctly than others, but it's always an additive shift. Integration of evidence, if you like. That's why when I see someone believing something that's clearly (to me) absurd, I'm mostly interested in how did they get there - something must have convinced them, and I found it useful to discover what it was, because often it's a piece of real evidence I haven't encountered before.
Thats such simple yet profound statement to me. Thank you for the response, it has definitely given me something to ponder. Ugg. Now I'm imagine companies/govs doing path dependent profiling of people for their minority report-esque systems.
People don't like, a lot of things, they don't call them delusional. We call things delusional because they are, in fact, delusional. What makes it dangerous is that people deeply believe that their delusions are "truth". Belief to the point of fundamentalism, where they will kill non-believers in their delusions.
Both obviously happen. The “delusional” label is used (rightly) to dismiss certain claims, but then of course people use the same label incorrectly when attempting to dismiss claims they don’t like.
