(no subject)

[pengke.livejournal.com]

I’m sure everyone has read someone’s post on this community or read a comment that made you stop and think, “I don’t believe you.” If you haven’t, either you don’t read the threads very closely or you work very hard not to think critically about anything you read here, because there have been some very outrageous claims made here over the years. (But that’s an entirely different discussion.) I want to know what people think when they come across one of these statements that they just can’t believe.

Do you:

A) Think the person is lying.
B) Think the person is knowingly role playing
C) Think the person believes that they are multiple but is probably unintentionally role playing or some other form of imagination
D) Think the system is lying about the experiences
E) Think the system is knowingly or unintentionally role playing the experiences
F) Think the system is adhering to the community’s cultural norms/trying to fit in
G) Think the system probably honestly believes their claims even though another explanation seems more logical to you
H) Think the system probably started out making things up but has since convinced themselves that their claims are true
I) Worry that you might be making things up too or that someone else might think you are
J) Think something else entirely – please share

Also, do your thoughts change depending on why you can’t believe the statement? For example, is there a difference between someone claiming to do/be something that you think is impossible and someone contradicting themselves or claiming that something happened in real life that could not have happened?

Comments

[pengke.livejournal.com]

Well... when you say you "don't believe in elves", what exactly does that mean?

I don't believe they ever existed. They're a myth that probably originated when members of a population encountered people with a different phenotype for the first time. The response has been seen more recently with tribes that thought they were meeting gods or demons when they encountered white people for the first time.

However, in this age of e-mail, it doesn't seem impossible or even improbable that a representative of an organization could receive and reply to a query over a weekend.

If you were talking about a supervisor or a higher up within your own organization, I would agree although I would probably doubt that they'd have much input into your livejournaling habits. Governing bodies are a lot more removed from the individual members of a profession. Even with e-mail, you do not have immediate access to ethics boards or directors. There are specific channels that you have to follow to receive an official position on a subject.

I'm not seeing the distinction between 'being delusional' and 'believing that something which physically can't happen does physically happen'.

Delusional implies a detachment from reality which isn't always the case in believing that something that can't physically happen does. I have read about a situation in which one member of a system got pregnant but another member didn't view the body as her body and insisted that she wasn't pregnant. This system believed that when the other member used the body she wasn't pregnant because they noticed spotting when she used the body and thought it was her getting her period. In that case, the system wasn't delusional for believing that the pregnancy changed depending on who was fronting; just stupid. If they still felt that way when they were eight months pregnant, then they'd be delusional.

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

If you were talking about a supervisor or a higher up within your own organization, I would agree although I would probably doubt that they'd have much input into your livejournaling habits. Governing bodies are a lot more removed from the individual members of a profession. Even with e-mail, you do not have immediate access to ethics boards or directors. There are specific channels that you have to follow to receive an official position on a subject.

If you're talking about the person I think you are, I doubt that she ever did any of that supposed checking. She's said some things in other communities since then that are even more unbelievable, as well as being full of contradictions, enough to convince me that she's not just deliberately making things up, but doing so with malicious intents.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

"I don't believe they ever existed. They're a myth that probably originated when members of a population encountered people with a different phenotype for the first time. The response has been seen more recently with tribes that thought they were meeting gods or demons when they encountered white people for the first time"

Ummm... those "people of a different phenotype" were elves, or more precisely (in Denmark) the Alfar. Probably indigenous hunter-gatherers, like the faeries of the British isles; quite possibly with more Neanderthal genes than was common among the other populations. The fact that a bunch of tales were made up about them by later peoples doesn't indicate that they never existed.

With the pregnancy thing - I'm not convinced that my 'brother' Crist-Erui ever realized this body was pregnant, or that the baby came from this same body he lives in. He freaked out big-time the first time he felt her move, and wouldn't take form ('front') until after she was born. So maybe the same with the person you describe? Hard to say.

[kasiawhisper.livejournal.com]

We have had instances in our group where certain group members were pregnant, but the body was not and they have felt strange using the body because it wasn't pregnant and they were.. but they haven't said that they were no longer pregnant when they were in the body just because the body wasn't pregnant..