It's also a little inconsistent with at least one other belief on the graph.

Most people are really pleasant. That creates a power vacuum where the worst are usually in seats of power.

the awful big caused the local good to come out here. my community is weird for a lot of ways i refuse to specify for reasons

My friends cousins are all convinced they saw ghosts when they were kids. They also had an uncle who frequently played tricks on them. These two things are unrelated apparently

Ditto "aliens", if we interpret it as "extraterrestrials that have been to Earth".

This is an important distinction.

100% chance there is extraterrestrial life out there somewhere

0% chance any of it has come to visit

hey, i have a ghost that lives in my microwave.

first a few things you should know. my entire town was built on an american indian burial ground. like, starting in the 70s they'd have the tribe come out for every new development and help relocate artifacts to [redacted fuck you i ain't telling] and our house is legit burial ground. not cursed burial ground or anything. anyways we have this ghost that turns on our microwave from time to time, seemingly randomly. I named him Smudgy, because we have one of those touchscreen control thingies and i noticed he's active whenever someone with greasy fingers has been using the microwave. and he's really easy to shut up with a soapy washcloth.

i "believe" in ghosts. it's harmless fun.

Real adulthood is knowing there's no logical way to unconditionally prove those particular negatives. What you do with that information is another discussion.

Edit: Also if anybody is interested in reading up in an absolutely fascinating phenomenon, this was a topic that came up during my hospice / palliative care rotations. This article in particular is a systematic review from last year.

One of the most fascinating things about this phenomenon is that it's markedly different from the hallucinations seen with psychosis and delirium (which I'm more familiar with, my specialty being psychiatry). In particular the person experiencing it presents with orientation and cognition that is otherwise completely logical, linear, and otherwise intact.

A patient with psychosis often presents with poor understanding of their situation overall, such as not knowing where they are, not remembering recent events, or sometimes not even recognizing themselves. Their speech also usually presents with either thought blocking / poverty of thought, or the opposite—tangentiality / flight of ideas where their statements don't logically follow each other.

Meanwhile patients reporting death visions are typically able to accurately recall where they are, what has been happening, what is likely to happen next, and retain the ability to have linear and reality based discussions. They just also report seeing deceased family or pets, religious figures, etc.

Fascinating topic.

So far

I feel like the deeper you get into physics, the more that statement makes sense. 😅

Human goodness and society are two different things. There are many great people that do amazing things that don't it for credit or recognition or money. Most go unnoticed.

Society on the other hand is crazy and greedy.

Someone want suggested that the rise in belief in human goodness is a function of the rise in belief of human incompetence. When you start recognizing that people frequently do stupid bad things not because they are bad, but because they are stupid, your heart softens a bit with regards to their intent.

Anti-abortion is a great example. The majority of anti-abortion people genuinely believe that a zygote is an innocent human life, and terminating it is literally murder. If that's what they believe, why wouldn't they do everything in their power to stop it? People are murdering innocent babies!

The more you get to know people, the more you start believing in Hanlon's razor. Most of the "bad" people aren't bad, they're just good people with stupid beliefs.

There are three periods in a man's life:

• he believes in Santa
• he doesn't believe in Santa
• he is Santa

Likely for kids. You gotta "believe again"

I'd assume it's belief in him physically existing as a kid then translating to Saint Nicholas or spirit of christmas, but staying low to represent that it's shifted.

What's raised it?