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wat10000today at 4:06 PM0 repliesview on HN

I think a large number of people don't "believe" things in the same way that the typical commenter here would understand it.

Your average rationalist techie would consider a "belief" to be some factual statement about the world, backed up with some justification, with some confidence level. "Tariffs help the economy" would mean some probabilities about likely outcomes for different actions, based on some kind of economic theory that explains why those actions make those outcomes more likely. We'd put this statement in the same category as something like "Joe works at Acme, Inc."

(And yes, I know that rationalist techies will still have plenty of irrational beliefs. But this is what we typically consider a belief to be, even if we don't always live up to it.)

But for a lot of people, it's something different. It's more of a pronouncement of faith, or a declaration of allegiance, or an expression of will. It's almost like a prayer. Pronouncing a belief like "tariffs help the economy" isn't a factual statement about likely outcomes, but more of an attempt to sway reality through faith.