I plan on tackling some pretty controversial subjects in the future. There are some things that I will need to reference frequently when approaching some of these topics. I will sometimes be directly talking about some things that some people may find very important to their life and their world view. It is very likely that no one that reads these works will be free from feeling uncomfortable. It is also likely their mind will scream and they'll immediately go into mental protection mode and want to discard what I am writing about and go on the attack. I know this. I have only touched the edge of some of these subjects before. I plan to hit them pretty hard from my perspective and I may make some enemies. I may lose some friends. I still think it is important to do these things.

I am not going to talk about one of these topics here. Instead I want to talk about something that will be a central theme of many of the things I challenge. For that reason having this particular post handy might save me from having to repeat similar things over and over.

Speculation
Imagination
Hypothesis

Our imagination is very valuable for us to try to make sense of information that we view and experience. People can be very uncomfortable, stressed, and frightened when they cannot explain something that comes to their attention. Their mind will naturally use what knowledge they themselves have and within their areas of expertise to try to give them some scenarios to explain these encounters.

This same imagination can be used to create multiple scenarios and in a sense what might as well be considered worlds within worlds within our minds. This is a very valuable skill. It is this from which so much of our creativity rises.

Those are the positives and I believe most people see them as positives and are aware of this aspect of these things.

They however, likely have not given much thought to the negative side of these things.

What happens when we speculate/imagine/hypothesize to explain something we encounter and we are lacking sufficient information or experience to adequately explain it?

It is likely our speculation will not be accurate, correct? That is what I personally believe to be the case.

What happens when we believe our speculation is the truth? When we forget that it was something we imagined with our own mind to explain what we had observed, but it is also limited by our own personal knowledge and experience, then bad things can happen.

Speculating/Imagining/Hypothesizing are powerful things and useful when creativity is the goal, or to try to come up with paths to attempt rather than standing idle. They are dangerous when they are treated as fact and then pushed as the truth onto others.

For example: Religion. Regardless of your religion, how many different denominations are there? How many different interpretations have you heard? Which one is the truth? Why is one human telling you their interpretation is the truth the one that is true over other explanations?

I have a theory that the less knowledge and experience a person has to explain an observation the more likely their truth is to be further and further from the actual explanation.

Many people will refer to the Bible as the word of God. Though they somehow casually dismiss the many different translations and edits. They ignore the fact those translations and edits are done by other humans. They even go so far back as to not be aware of the First Council of Nicaea (AD 325) and the Second Council of Nicaea (AD 787) which were put together to form the bible. They decided what should be in the bible, and what should not. This council of humans. Would you be okay with Congress meeting, deciding what the bible should say, and then calling that the word of God? I suspect not. So why is it okay that it happened not only 300+ years after Christ, and then again almost 800 years after Christ? If it was the word of God why did they need to meet an edit in the first place? Keep in mind this was also a time that pretty much only priests and nobles even knew how to read the bible or scriptures.

This process began before that, and it is a normal process for religions.

It also continued past the Council of Nicaea so that in the United States for example there are over 60,000 different denominations of Christianity alone. Each one is slightly different from the others.

If there is one truth, why are they different?

How and why are you so certain your choice is the truth?

I did not bring up religion to attack it here. It is just one of the more common examples and was easiest to set the ground work for negative speculation.

It has lead to massive amounts of death, persecution, and intolerance. It often had moral and ethical teachings embedded that could have positive meanings for people that learn them.

There is actually no danger to listening to speculations. Even if they are not the absolute truth they can still provide techniques that translate to tools and understandings that help in life. This means even when you are only NEAR the truth there is still often a value. Listening to speculations can provide new pieces that might bring the truth into sharper focus.

The danger is when people forget that a speculation is still a speculation. It is a guess based upon the best knowledge and experience of the person that made the speculation in response to some event or observation.

It is important to remember that. It is a guess. It is hopefully an informed guess, and it may be better than any guess you would come up with. That really depends upon the knowledge and experience required to explain things.

There is a danger of falling for an Argument From Authority where you give into a speculative truth because you view the source as an authority. The truth of the matter is there is no human that is an ultimate authority. It is still wise to consider probabilities based upon experience of the person speaking these things. Yet, it is also important to remember they are still human, and limited just like you, and just like I.

We listen to doctors because they go to school and study extensively so due to their experience and knowledge it is more probable they will have the answers within their field than the average person. It is still important to remember that they are human and even high probabilities leave the possibility for being wrong. This is why people buy lottery tickets. They purchase them knowing there is a very low probability of them winning big. They still have hope.

It is important to leave room for doubt too.

Hope is important.

Doubt is important.

You must balance them and make your own choices. It is simply important not to let anyone pass off their speculations as the facts and truth without you considering they could be wrong. Allow your world to shift and react as you encounter new information, new ideas, and new experiences. Don't allow someone to beguile you due to them throwing around words you don't know or perhaps only shallowly know.

Some Personal Observations

People will often make reference to terms that are on the fringe of societal consciousness. This will lend some air of "Wow, they know what they are talking about." Often they don't. They often only have a shallow understanding of some of the terms and words they use. They play upon the fact that most people don't know these words any better than they do, and might even know them less.

I will often see this happen as I happen to be well versed in some technology and knowledge that is on the fringe.

I will see labels used in ways that are not accurate. People will still think they are an authority. They will give more weight to the speculations of the person that does this.

I heard quite a few of these things tonight. I decided I needed to stop thinking about needing to challenge these things and I should just do so.

I will be challenging them as a man. I too will have my flaws, my limits to knowledge, etc. The difference is I will try to always state that I am speculating. When I say that it means I recognize a lot of it is the product of my imagination. I am very likely wrong about a great many things, but I might be right about some. I also will be challenging things that it appears the flaws are singing out loud if someone knows what to look for. Some things I can point out the flaw, but that doesn't mean I'll know the answer. I'll just know the answer I am challenging is not the answer.

That is all I can do.

Here are some words I heard tonight misused or at least used with limited knowledge.

Cloud
A.I.
Blockchain
Satan

Now the first three I am certain I have a better grasp on than the person that was speaking.
As to the fourth. I have an understanding of the history behind the origins of Satan, predating the Council of Nicaea, and going back into the early days of the Old Testament. Most Christians do not know this history. They don't know what role Satan/Lucifer and Hell had in Judaism before they mingled with the Zoroastrians. They don't know there was no Hell prior to interacting with the Zoroastrians, and that there was no fallen angel and "enemy" force type thing prior to Zoroastrians interacting with Jews. Both Judaism and Zoroastrians considered themselves monotheistic. Prior to Judaism meeting Zoroastrianism I believe it was actually worthy of that title. There was simply God. There was no Hell, Damnation and the Devil. Yet, while Zoroastrianism claimed to be monotheism it had an antagonist, a bad guy, much like Satan. It also had the concept of Heaven and Hell. It was also a far more prominent religion. Judaism and by extension Christianity has a history of absorbing traits of other religions and spinning them as if they are its own. The holidays are not so much so in the case of Judaism, but very much so in Christianity. They absorbed many existing pagan holidays and incorporated them into Christianity. Some of the most common are Christmas and Easter. Those do not correspond to what Christianity defines them as these days. They were repurposed pagan holidays. That doesn't mean the events those days are meant to signify did or did not happen. It just means they didn't happen on those days. I've always thought that this was likely due to making it easier to convert people. How much easier it must be when the people you are converting do not have to give up all of their traditional beliefs they already have. That of course is speculation on my part. I try to think why I might do what was done in history. What reasons might I have to do some of these things? Why would I invent Hell? Why would I invent Satan in the form we know today? An obvious one there is converting Zoroastrians, but I don't think that is all. Satan and the prospect of Hell for your sins are pretty huge motivators. They are powerful mental imagery. What must Judaism have been like when those things didn't exist? Did they see some control (self or otherwise) benefits in what the Zoroastrians were doing?

It is common to see modern man attributing all manner of things to Satan and God that are not written in the bible. Instead they are men and women passing off their speculations and tying them to those labels.

They can say the bible is the word of God if it comforts them. Yet, what of the words they speak as fact to explain things that are not written in a bible? Why do they have the authority?

Is it okay that they do so? I think, yes it is as long as they remember it is speculation and don't push their own imagined explanations as the truth and facts.

This applies to science as well.

There are many so-called scientists that use the scientific method only when it is convenient to them.

They will often be just as guilty of treating speculation as fact when it was their own speculation.

They seem to forget that is only the second step of the scientific method and there are many additional steps before it is considered a theory (in the scientific sense), a law, or the closest model to explain observations at the time.

I let my hair and beard grow as wild as I could put up with and had my daughter take some photos. They were intended as humor. I'll often encounter people throwing a Darwin, Marx, Einstein, or other image around as though it lends support to whatever idea they are trying to push. I noted I can look like that too.

I decided I should use my own image for silly quotes and memes if nothing more than to illustrate how silly trying to use an image to make some idea be more true. Facts don't care about feelings.