Talk:Unrestricted Wishes/@comment-5799968-20130916090904/@comment-15716441-20130917034206

I once wondered the same thing, so I set out to believe something I knew to be false. I think that what the answer is depends on how exactly you define belief, but based on my experience I feel that the answer is yes, you can make yourself believe something that you simultaneously disbelieve.

I first decided on what I wanted to believe in. I deliberately chose something that had no direct bearing on my everyday life, so that I would not be constantly faced with opposing evidence. But I was also careful to choose something that was not completely disconnected with events in my life; believing this one thing would influence the way I interpreted certain events, but not in a way that is falsifiable. Very much like religion.

Then, over a period of 3-4 weeks, I got into the habit of simply asserting the truth of my chosen "fact" pver and over again. By the time I stopped doing this, I found myself in a very mixed state of mind on this one topic.

On one hand, I still knew it to be false. On the other, my reaction to certain events was to interpret them in the light of the false belief.

It's very hard to explain, but I did find that I could hold the contradictory thoughts in my head at equilibrium and compare my dual perceptions of reality.

I think that's how this argument came to be. Consus, don't remove the user. Addikhabbo believes in it. As you believe in the ridiculous notion Dybad has with his pages. Deso can suck it up cause life's unfair. All in all, our beliefs are the reason this illogical argument came to be. Let's all just agree to disagree.