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How do you differentiate between knowledge and belief? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'm not interested in what the dictionary says or a textbook definition I'm interested in your personal distinction between the two ideas. How do you decide to put an idea in one category versus the other? I'm not interested in the abstract concepts like 'objective truth' I want to know how it works in real life for you.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I’m confused. You don’t know that the sun will rise tomorrow - you believe it will. Science is our best guess at how the universe around us works. Geocentric was how we believed the universe worked until that theory was proven to be wrong.

You know the current theory, and based on that knowledge you can believe it will rise. There could be some phenomenon that will turn the sun dark for 7 days that is not part of the current model. It’s unlikely, but possible.

Knowledge is the understanding of that which will not change. Yes, you can modify the theory tomorrow but it will not be the same theory as today. That’s why it’s knowable

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Anything is "possible". Forecasts of the future can't be 100%. But not everything is plausible. If you round to 100 significant figures, the probability of the sun rising tomorrow is 100%. You'll never get to true 100%, past, present, or future. Even after watching something with your own eyes and watching the video documentation 100 times over. It's "possible" someone faked the video, and eyewitness testimony is known to be incredibly bad evidence for a reason.

Knowledge is strongly backed by evidence. Belief ranges from "the evidence is inconclusive/not strong enough/doesn't exist" to "the evidence can't exist".