If I understand you correctly, your first point was what I said. It was MY first point as to why it wasn't reasonable to doubt that it did in fact say 66.6%, which you seemed to feel was questionable in your first post above. So I guess we are in agreement? Though that wasn't really the main point of what I was trying to say.

For your second point, the hacking was intended to be an example of creating doubt out of thin air.

My response, which came out a little more "lecturey" than I intended, was meant to discuss the concept that we (as in all people) have a tendency to give more credence to imaginary doubts than they deserve. It is a fundamental part of how we remain stuck in the Matrix. We attach belief to imaginations, and use rhetoric to give those imaginings power to influence the beliefs of others.

I wasn't trying to suggest there was anything wrong with wondering if the photo was "shopped." I was trying to say that by attempting to cast doubt on its authenticity, without any evidence to support it, it would create doubt in others where there was no reason for any to exist. I.e. it would create doubt that wasn't based on reason but imagination, i.e. it wasn't a reasonable doubt.

Your doubt wasn't based on any evidence but rather on what you dreamed up as "possible." My response about "hacking" was the exact same thing. I created a doubt (not really, but hypothetically), based purely on my imagination, on why we should doubt everything that we think of as evidence of C_A fuckery. That imaginary doubt was intended to be an example of what you did taken to the extreme to show what it was.

I really didn't mean to direct my "lecture" at you. I was intending it to be an exposure of how we use rhetoric to change beliefs based on no evidence whatsoever. It was intended to be a caution of something we should watch out for in our writing. This type of rhetoric helps to perpetuate The Matrix.

Using these imaginings, cycled through influential rhetoric, can manipulate not just doubt, but fear, or really any other emotion, thought, belief, etc. It is this idea of giving substance to imaginary plausibility's that literally runs the whole world.

If I understand you correctly, your first point was what I said. It was MY first point as to why it wasn't reasonable to doubt that it did in fact say 66.6%, which you seemed to feel was questionable in your first post above. So I guess we are in agreement? Though that wasn't really the main point of what I was trying to say.

For your second point, the hacking was intended to be an example of creating doubt out of thin air.

My response, which came out a little more "lecturey" than I intended, was meant to discuss the concept that we (as in all people) have a tendency to give more credence to imaginary doubts than they deserve. It is a fundamental part of how we remain stuck in the Matrix. We attach belief to imaginations, and use rhetoric to give those imaginings power to influence the beliefs of others.

I wasn't trying to suggest there was anything wrong with wondering if the photo was "shopped." I was trying to say that by attempting to cast doubt on its authenticity, without any evidence to support it, it would create doubt in others where there was no reason for any to exist. I.e. it would create doubt that wasn't based on reason but imagination, i.e. it wasn't a reasonable doubt.

Your doubt wasn't based on any evidence but rather on what you dreamed up as "possible." My response about "hacking" was the exact same thing. I created a doubt, based purely on my imagination, on why we should doubt everything that we think of as evidence of C_A fuckery. That imaginary doubt was intended to be an example of what you did taken to the extreme to show what it was.

I really didn't mean to direct my "lecture" at you. I was intending it to be an exposure of how we use rhetoric to change beliefs based on no evidence whatsoever. It was intended to be a caution of something we should watch out for in our writing. This type of rhetoric helps to perpetuate The Matrix.

Using these imaginings, cycled through influential rhetoric, can manipulate not just doubt, but fear, or really any other emotion, thought, belief, etc. It is this idea of giving substance to imaginary plausibility's that literally runs the whole world.