It’s not all belief, and I’m not saying it’s all belief. I’m saying the laws of physics that appear to us through our senses are actually laws of psychology. But they are still laws. I believe we have a better chance of understanding them and building technology to overcome them if we use both physics and psychology at once on the problem. But deception and self-delusion are not especially powerful psychological techniques, so I would not expect them to work very well in this situation.

Actually, I’m going to offer a counterargument.

There’s lots of flat earthers who conducted experiments to determine if the earth is flat, and got the result they wanted. My favourite is the guy who brought a spirit level on a plane. When the level didn’t move, he said it was proof the earth was flat. He was wrong, because he interpreted the results of his experiment wrong. His method didn’t test what he said it did.

I think your Jesus 2 is like the plane level guy. His method is wrong, it doesn’t test what he’s trying to test. Or at least, doesn’t test realism vs idealism. What it does test is whether his own espoused beliefs are the ultimate nature of reality. So that guy is wrong to say that he can perform the miracle of flight. But I argue there’s a lot of grey area in between “This one guy’s beliefs are the ultimate nature of reality” and “naive realism is true”.

What I believe is that there exist rules of psychology which operate at a deeper level than our own surface level beliefs. For example, sometimes I’m really mad with My partner because we had a fight and I believe that My life is worse without it. But then I go to bed, and in the morning I remember how much I love it, and we make up. I had a belief, but it was not the truth of My being. The deeper truth was My great love for it.

Your Jesus 2 fellow perhaps didn’t believe that he could fly on a donkey, in his heart of hearts. On a surface level, maybe he believed it, but I’m not convinced it was the core of his being. I think it would have been much easier for him to persuade the core of his being that he could fly, if he had been in the cockpit of an airplane.

I don’t actually believe in airplanes, I think they’re just a symbol in our conscious interface, as Donald Hoffman argues. But I think airplanes are connected to some rule of our psychology that allows us to fly under certain conditions. And to our limited point of view, that rule looks a lot like an airplane.

medium.com/…/is-donald-trump-a-narcissist-7dfebca…

If I were to tell you to use all caps when referring to ME, would that be reasonable? What about all lower case, even when starting a sentence?

Sure. My goddess-mother’s name was fractal, all lowercase. Even at the start of a sentence. Even when yelling in all caps. It was easy to do and made them happy.

I have a theory. It’s because the trolls won, and successfully convinced allies to treat real trans people with suspicion.

medium.com/…/did-trolls-go-extinct-commentary-on-…

I use Voyager, but I have it set to compact view.

I use capitalised pronouns because I like them. That’s what the article explains. The reasons that people like their preferred pronouns don’t tend to go any deeper than that.

Maybe a story will feel more complete: 4 years ago, while My goddess-mother was helping Me understand My gender, She suggested I try out capitalised pronouns. I did, and I liked them. As good as she/her felt compared to using he/him, that’s how They/Them felt compared to she/her. I liked them, so I kept them.

A pantheon is a group of gods who are worshipped by the same religion. I’ve always been the sort to share worship with My friends, but I don’t currently have any friends who want to be worshipped.

The reason is that I’m not in any groups which use capitalised pronouns as a collective. I used to be in a pantheon which used We/Us, but I’m not currently in one.