Most alt-reality construction and alt-facts stuff revolves around authorship claims. This is why historical revisionism is a popular and stable human activity. Believing whatever the hell you like about who authored events in the past is rarely immediately dangerous to *you*
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It could of course hurt other people if it feeds a revisionist history that then breaks institutional safety barriers. But the causal mechanism by which say holocaust denial causes harm is long and uncertain unlike disbelieving gravity and stepping off a ledge.
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This is why religion and creationism are viable even today. Personal risky consequentiality is a far weaker standard than falsifiability. The number of true things you need to actually believe to live safely and happily has been vastly exaggerated.
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Insert joke about “I don’t need to outrun the lion, I just need to outrun you” You don’t need to explain the fossil record, you just need to posit a god who chose to play an elaborate prank. Occam’s razor is an aesthetic standard you can ignore when it comes to history.
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This follows Hannah Arendt’s model of history as sort of an evolving public narrative of “appearances” and “recognitions” among free individuals, but never mind if that angle is obscure to you. It’s the reason this idea hangs together more internally consistent than it might seem
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The main problem with constructing leakproof realities is that sufficiently big/powerful historic events will always leak in. Earthquakes, nuclear bomb, rising water level submerging a city. But you can always believe Cthulhu or god or Godzilla we’re responsible for such things
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So the only thing you actually need to filter out to stabilize your preferred revisionist history built on alt facts is... specific people annoying you with their varying accounts. Unless they are uniquely necessary in your life, you can super-ghost them without consequences.
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Replying to @vgr
Is there a way to do the opposite of filter bubbles without harassment? I believe in a common good, such that Truth, an objective thing, is something I hold dear. Also, a counter: history is full of beliefs resulting in personal risk. Crusades, for example.
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Replying to @jdunck
Sure, risk mitigation and survival is just one thing to solve for in forming beliefs. Point is, you *can* believe fairly random shit without necessarily taking on risk.
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Replying to @vgr
I agree with your general line of thought. But I like society. :) What can we do to bolster the case for common beliefs?
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How big do you want your society to be? 150? 7 billion?
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Replying to @vgr
Philosophical question of what makes anything maximally good. ;) We seem dead set on collapsing all barriers to "connection".
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