[David Lucifer]
Let's say I tell you that I believe something, X, and you have no reason to think I am being deceptive. What does that tell you?
X can be any well-formed sentence, e.g. "The Mighty Ducks are going to win next year", "A dingo ate my baby", "WorldCom is doomed", "The Goldbach Conjecture is false", "Aliens are among us", etc., etc.
[rhinoceros]
This is a huge topic. One thing is checking the validity of the statement itself or assessing how easily it could be (in)validated.
Also, how well does it fit with my own beliefs. I might just discard the statement or change some beliefs of mine; that also depends on the previous step. Who you are is also important.
Besides the validity of the statement, I would use the statement itself and the fact that you chose that particular statement to classify you as a person.
This process seems to be one of those things that cannot be thoroughly analyzed.
---- This message was posted by rhinoceros to the Virus 2002 board on Church of Virus BBS. <http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=51;action=display;threadid=25642>
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