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Do you use doublethink?

Do you use doublethink?

  • Yes.

    Votes: 21 53.8%
  • No.

    Votes: 14 35.9%
  • I don't know.

    Votes: 4 10.3%

  • Total voters
    39

Orangey

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Fitting facts to one's own perception or beliefs is not doublethink anyway. I won't argue with whatever type of naive real world skepticism is going on here (because that's a tiresome and futile endeavor anyway), but we must remember that doublethink is assenting simultaneously to the truth of two logically contradictory things. While that may involve the convenient bending or disregard of pertinent facts, that kind of activity is not a sufficient condition of doublethink.
 

Lark

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I've always thought that Orwell meant doublethink to be a byword or synonymn for hypocrisy or ideologically motivated lying?
 

Litvyak

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Fact 1: "We've always been at war with Eurasia and allied with Eastasia"
Fact 2: "We've always been at war with Eastasia and allied with Eurasia"

If I accept the first fact while never really disproving or rejecting the second one, I use doublethink. I can temporarily forget one of the truths, and then, "when it becomes necessary again", I "draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed".
This is possible if there is no objective truth, and since there is none, it is not dishonest.
 

Litvyak

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(you do realize that I'm playing devil's advocate, right? very few sane people have learned to implement this in everyday life, but that doesn't tell anything about the theory)
 

Lark

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Fact 1: "We've always been at war with Eurasia and allied with Eastasia"
Fact 2: "We've always been at war with Eastasia and allied with Eurasia"

If I accept the first fact while never really disproving or rejecting the second one, I use doublethink. I can temporarily forget one of the truths, and then, "when it becomes necessary again", I "draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed".
This is possible if there is no objective truth, and since there is none, it is not dishonest.

No, I dont think that's what Orwell was suggesting, having read a lot of his other writing its apparent to me that the most important thing about his writing is that he is to be taken at face value and he tries to communicate truisms and to do so simply too.

So when he demonstrates that two contradictory ideas are held and doublethink is the means it is supposed to simply mean that there is political lying and intellectual concepts are invented to get people to believe those lies.

Although in a sense those statements were and are true because Winston grasped the fact that not only was the regime allied at one time with one foreign power and at another with another but that essentially the regime was at war with all powers foreign and domestic as it suited itself to be.
 

Litvyak

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I realize Orwell's intentions in creating a dystopian nightmare, but I wasn't talking about 1984.
These examples seem to be the most obvious ones for demonstrating the rules of doublethink, that's the only reason for using them.
 

Lark

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I realize Orwell's intentions in creating a dystopian nightmare, but I wasn't talking about 1984.
These examples seem to be the most obvious ones for demonstrating the rules of doublethink, that's the only reason for using them.

Oh alright, you're theorising beyond the original intent of the author, it all just sounds to me like a pretty intellectual take on rationalisation in dealing with cognitive dissonance but its grand, carry on.
 

Bamboo

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I force myself to disregard or alter "facts" to shape my reality. It's hard for me to imagine a successful yet honest life without implementing doublethink.

Is that because you are not successful or honest, so you use doublethink to say that you are?

why be the devil's advocate when you can be the devil himself? ...playing along
 

Bamboo

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Does it matter?:

If other people rely on you, then when you delude yourself into thinking that you are something that you are not, you make it difficult for everyone around you. Therefore it matters if you are holding yourself accountable to standards that other people can recognize.
 

xisnotx

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^
Solution: Know what you are capable of and stop holding yourself to external standards.
 

Bamboo

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How can you know what you are capable of if you abandon external standards?

Not just (double)thinking what you are capable of, but actual demonstrated ability?
 

Orangey

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It's funny that the majority of people in the poll admit to patent irrationality and delusion. Is that fashionable these days or something?
 

MacGuffin

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It's funny that the majority of people in the poll admit to patent irrationality and delusion. Is that fashionable these days or something?

Perhaps most voted before they realized they were voting for insanity.
 

xisnotx

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How can you know what you are capable of if you abandon external standards?

Not just (double)thinking what you are capable of, but actual demonstrated ability?

I'm not sure. I guess everyone gets to answer that question for themselves.
 

Athenian200

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It's funny that the majority of people in the poll admit to patent irrationality and delusion. Is that fashionable these days or something?

Perhaps most voted before they realized they were voting for insanity.

Or maybe they disagree that it's insanity and delusion. Just because the two of you are so convinced, doesn't mean everyone else is.
 

Craft

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Or maybe they disagree that it's insanity and delusion. Just because the two of you are so convinced, doesn't mean everyone else is.

If you don't think its insanity, then argue with logic and reason please. Oh wait, you can't.

Considering how we behave very much according to nature and instinct, I doubt anyone truly believes in the validity of opposing statements and at the same time acknowledges that the two are contradictory. Else, how do we eat? How do we even inhale oxygen and live? If anyone declares his or her belief, then they must be either fooling themselves or they simply misunderstand the entire thing. And because of how some people talk about contradictions not being contradictions after all, I suspect it's the latter. I mean, the "state" of contradictions don't change over time. The external world is not according to the internal, at least in this universe where there is "order." Without logic to dictate reality, nothing can exist. Things will not relate to each other. In other words, a universe with different rules is not even a universe at all. Being illogical is normal. The real problem is when you acknowledge illogicality.
 

Athenian200

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Without logic to dictate reality, nothing can exist. Things will not relate to each other. In other words, a universe with different rules is not even a universe at all. Being illogical is normal. The real problem is when you acknowledge illogicality.

Spoken like a true INTP.
 

MacGuffin

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Or maybe they disagree that it's insanity and delusion. Just because the two of you are so convinced, doesn't mean everyone else is.

Perhaps the ones voting no are insane but don't realize it. I mean, people that use doublethink cannot be trusted to answer accurately. It might be accurate now, it might not a second later. Asking doublethinkers anything is an exercise in futility, there is no answer.
 

highlander

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It seems very philosophically profound, realizing that all things are embedded within their opposite, and indeed cannot exist in the absence of their opposite. Things which seem to be contradictory, are not truly contradictory.

Of course, I use it all the time. I'm not sure how profound it is though. It's just related to use of Ni.
 
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