(09-21-2020, 05:09 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(09-21-2020, 04:15 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Dude, you are free to be very wrong. You have no right to turn your beliefs into the reality that others know without winning consent.
You are free to believe that the Earth is flat.
Someone may be free to believe the Earth Two is flat, but that doesn't mean the rest of us can't use GPS satellites counting on orbiting. Enforcing odd beliefs so that the rest of us are impacted does remain a problem.
I am free to believe that a string quartet has seven players, but of course I would be wrong. I am free to confuse a cat with an octopus (although a mimic octopus could make itself look much like a cat if it had cause to do so, such an octopus is unlikely to ever meet a cat and imitate one). One of the tentacles might even come to resemble a feline tail and adopt a tabby coat color... if that would ever do it any good.
Of course the mimic octopus is more likely to imitate creatures common to an area, and cats do not willingly go underwater.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.