The Only Way To Thwart Deception

The truth is accessible to everyone willing to forsake assumptions and align with reason: the intentional withholding of belief from anything that cannot be logically proven, which excludes things that are merely subjectively persuasive or that are consistent with various evidences like hearsay which do not actually prove them, is the only way to avoid all deception.  The deception of thinking one can know the contents of other minds beyond necessary truths (such as how if other minds exist, they are their own nonphysical consciousnesses), possibilities (this person might be lying to me), or probabilities (this person seems to be sad because of their facial expression) is one that many fall for.  At the same time, non-rationalists are often quick to both want to not be deceived and to believe people on the basis of hearsay or mere persuasion.

When it comes to politics, non-rationalists rush to one news source or another, as if current events are the heart of reality and as if the hearsay from any news organization actually proves that an event even happened.  When it comes to science, non-rationalists are quick to fallaciously embrace some claims or reported discoveries, none of which they can prove unless they are claims about the philosophical nature of science as opposed to actual empirical phenomena.  When it comes to everyday relationships, non-rationalists tend to believe what at least certain people tell them until counter-evidence arises, as if many things people tell each other (like "I am feeling happy" or "the food is in the next room") can be proven by words anyway.

It is hardly difficult to see how non-rationalists fall prey to their own stupidity, which in turn feeds into the stupidity of other non-rationalists and makes it even more unlikely that any of them will stop.  They even usually think that it is the rationalists, who alone make no assumptions and are willing to forsake contradictions and unproven beliefs, that are somehow the stupid ones when their own errors and thoughtlessness are exposed!  All the while, they might complain about how supposedly hard it is to "know" which news sources are accurate, although logic proves that no hearsay at all establishes anything except that there is hearsay and that perhaps some reported events are probable.

Affirm the objective fact that one cannot truly know if an event is happening because of a news source or if someone else is lying about their mental states, however, and non-rationalists will almost invariably panic or misunderstand to the point of rejecting what is logically true in favor of comforting or subjectively persuasive assumptions.  They are not really interested in truth, or else they would not remain non-rationalists for long either because of their own rationality or help from rationalists.  Instead, despite the fact that there is no such thing as a claim that a historical event (other than the beginning of time and the universe) or someone else's emotional state that can actually be demonstrated to be true, non-rationalists will believe some people and dismiss others at random, at best with arbitrary criteria that have nothing to do with the truth or proof of the ideas they accept or deny.

Anyone who wants to avoid believing what is false or unknowable and yet hinges their entire worldviews and lives on any core thing at all but the laws of logic is a goddamn fool.  There is more to deception, though, than just one person lying to another or ignorantly, thoughtlessly communicating false ideas.  After all, one must shed self-deception of personal assumptions, not just social conditioning, to become a thorough rationalist.  Political, scientific, historical, and broader philosophical deception can never have any power unless someone makes assumptions, but rationalists--and all people can become rationalists--can avoid all assumptions and replace unproven or blind beliefs with those established by absolute logical certainty.  Many beliefs will not survive such an analysis, yet the ones that do will have not a trace of errors or epistemological assumptions in them.