[extropy-chat] belief

[scerir]

[Brett Paatsch]
The debate cannot be had if you can't stop using the phrase
"I believe" long enough to have it.

[Brett Paatsch]
Please tell me you are aware of the process and are making a 
deliberate informed choice whenever you use the word BELIEVE
[...]

I did not follow those threads. 
So I'm just pointing out, here, that 'believe' 
is a very difficult topic. I remember that Beth 
van Fraassen (1980) wrote there may be good 
reasons for 'accepting' postulates of a (scientific) 
theory (model) but we are never justified in 
'believing' more than their empirical consequences. 
Many claimed there was no difference between 'acceptance' 
and 'belief'. This debate is still going on, after 20 years,
in the British Journal for Philosophy of Science and in 
Philosophy of Science. (Yes, I know, it is not easy to
apply all that to the Singularity, because of its own
conceptual nature.)