Someone Asked “What Are You Certain Of, Right Down To Your Bones, Without Proof?” And 40 Folks Delivered
We perceive reality judging the facts we are given. We know that some things are true because we have proof or logical explanations for them. But there are things that we just know are true that we don't have evidence for. It might be things in your personal life or just about life in general.
Because there is no evidence for such things, everyone can believe what they want. Reddit user UnbentJohnson came up with the question, "What do you KNOW is true without evidence? What are you certain of, right down to your bones, without proof?" The Reddit thread got nearly 100k upvotes and more than 50k people shared what they believe is true but it could be difficult to convince others that it is.
What would you answer to this question? We are curious to know, so leave a comment down below and upvote the answers that you feel might be true!
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Not everyone is meant to raise a child. Just because you can biologically create a child or financially support one does not mean you are meant to raise one.
No matter what happens, no matter what I do or don’t do, no matter what I achieve or fail at: I know my dog will still love me and wag his tail when I get home.
That gardening is the secret to happiness.
Sounds super strange, especially coming from someone like myself - an ex world of Warcraft gamer. I had kids, got busy with work, wanted out of the suburbs, got some land in the country, and started planting stuff. Years later I have what I call a food forest. I have replaced lawns with fruit trees, bushes, vines, flowers, all woven together to mimic a natural forest - except everything in it is edible.
It has changed my life completely.
I just think there's something about being outside in the sun, feet on soil, hands in dirt, planting s***. Watching it grow in the background of your life. Going out and checking on it and watching how much bigger it is getting. Watching life find it, and now you get to live WITH the natural world, not isolated from it.
Birds making nests in your trees, frogs making home in your ponds, seeing bees all around your flowers, butterflies everywhere. Rabbits and squirrels moving in, then owls moving in to eat those. It's this wonderful trophic cascade that you started, and it's incredibly rewarding.
Plus, being able to just walk outside and get chemical-free nutrient-rich dinner is amazing.
I actually think a big reason depression is such a big thing these days is because we have all become so disconnected from the life that we evolved in for the last 6 million years. We evolved walking around savannahs and forests, pulling food off bushes and trees, out in the sun, feet in the soil, hands in the dirt. We couldn't be further from that, living inside our isolated homes, cars and offices. It's no wonder we're all so depressed.
I think gardening is the secret to happiness.
That there is other intelligent life in the universe. We may never encounter it, certainly not within any of our lifetimes, but it's out there somewhere. The universe is too goddamn big for us to be the only ones.
It would be the height of human conceit to think that we're the only ones in such a vast universe.
That the near complete absence of financial literacy education in American public schools is 100% on purpose.
I agree with this to a point. We allow politicians who like to boast about how they did poorly in school, were the class clowns, etc dictate what should be taught in school. If you're the rich people who want to keep good education out of reach for the poorer people the best way to do that is to vilify public schools and demand more 'rigorous' testing policies that have little to do with actual student progress. This way the public schools have to spend more time testing than they do teaching so that the poor students get less education than the kids whose parents can afford private schools who aren't subject to those required tests. It's funny how politicians constantly point to public schools' failing standardized test scores, and tout private schools as the answer, yet never talk about how those private schools don't have to offer Special Education, take standardized tests, or even follow the mandated common core standards.
That we would be happier if we returned to a more natural way of living rather than the 9-5 rat race.
Flat earthers are just doing it for attention. They really don't think the earth is flat.
The Flat Earth Society is trolls. They HAVE however gotten OTHERS to believe them.
If I'm stuck in traffic and switch lanes because the other lane looks like it will move faster, the lane I just switched from will automatically go faster.
i'm pretty sure big rig truckers talk on their CB radios to each other to coordinate making sure every time I merge onto an interstate one of them will be there in the right lane just as I am merging on.
Most company CEO's don't really know what they're doing. Whether their business thrives or fails has more to do with luck than anything else. There are exceptions, but most of them have a completely warped sense of their own "brilliance".
I'm quietly convinced I made a bestselling mystery novelist change the way he writes because I criticised him on Reddit.
The novelist in question is Chris Carter; the books are the Robert Hunter series. (Yes, the guy who has built a career on looking for serial killers is named Hunter. He works for the LAPD's Ultra-Violent Crime Unit. It's not a series that's overburdened by subtlety, is what I'm saying.) They are as schlocky a bunch of thrillers as you could ever hope to find, but for some reason I can't get enough of them, despite the fact that they're... very much not great. They lean pretty damn heavy on ridiculous tropes, and I've never seen a more Mary Sue lead than I have in this series, but the biggest complaint I have with them is that the same line appears almost literally word for word in the first nine books ('Hunter’s biggest passion was single malt Scotch whiskey, but unlike most, he knew how to appreciate its flavor and quality instead of simply getting drunk on it.'). I made a comment about it on Reddit on an r/books thread about your favourite terrible authors.
That post was made in January of 2019; in April, his book Hunting Evil came out, and the line was nowhere to be seen. I didn't think much of it until his new book, Written in Blood, came out a few days ago, and also didn't have the line in it. This comment is also one of the top answers if you google his name and the book series via Reddit -- exactly what you'd do if you were looking to see if people on the internet were talking about your books. I also can't find any evidence of anyone else pointing this out in a review or suchlike.
So yeah... in short, three months after I made that comment, he broke the habit of a decade of writing and finally decided that after nine stories that used this as a crutch for Hunter's personality, it was too much.
I know you're reading this, Chris. I know.
100 years from now only a handful of kids and grandkids will have any memory of my life.
200 years from now, at most I'll be a photo in an old family scrap book with my name in the margin space.
300 years from now no one in my family will know I existed outside of a half finished family tree.
Yet ultimately all of their hopes and pains, successes and failures, dreams and depressions will be the direct result of my having existed. So it isn't that bad.
And there will be no scrap books... you will be a lost file in an ancient computer that doesn't work anymore
Load More Replies...I'll be forgotten in 50. I'm an only child with no children of my own.
I'm sure you have affected people in your life and some will still remember you🙂
Load More Replies...Remember the "Iceman" -- the mummified corpse that was frozen in the Alps until he was found 25 years ago? He lived 5300 years ago. We don't (and will never) know his name or the name of his village, whether he was admirable or villainous, kind or cruel, generous or stingy. And we will never know anything about the people he lived with either. Millions have lived and died over the millennia and left no trace. That's not sad, it's just life.
Do you mean Otzi? They found his nearest living descendant living nearby.
Load More Replies...One of my great aunts was into genealogy, so I know the names and locations of ancestors from more than 200 years ago, in once case nearly 400 years ago. But of course with that distance, they'd be barely related strangers anyway.
I often think back to my family apes...and before that..to axalotills
Load More Replies...You die a second and final time the last time someone speaks your name.
A few hundred thousand years from now our species' era will be identifiable as a layer of plastics in the geological record.
"Yet ultimately all of their hopes and pains, successes and failures, dreams and depressions will be the direct result of my having existed. So it isn't that bad." - Whoa there a minute. So your saying that their pain, failures and depression will be all down to you? And you think that isn't bad? Have I missed something?
That's why thinking people aren't having kids anymore, it's seems that the future is not rosy...
Load More Replies...This is comforting. No one will remember me specifically, but how I care for my loved ones will affect how they care for their future loved ones on and on for years.
I like to think I'll be remembered because I'm an author, but as I'm no George R R Martin what will probably happen instead is that one day some great-great-nephew of mine will find a crumbling old paperback in his Grandma's house and hear some vague comment about "oh yeah, I think a relative of ours wrote that? I forget what her real name was."
This makes me sad not only for me, but for my past relatives. Everyone should be remembered.
I agree...I do a loving mediation to thank my ancestors for surviving and having kids...x
Load More Replies...And this is relevant, how? We will all be forgotten unless we somehow hit the history books.
It’s an answer to the question from the top. That’s what makes it relevant.
Load More Replies...I like the thought of that I also know that your grandchildren will live to 100 yrs after you were born.
'I know my actions will be remembered in history until the end of humankind, even if my name is never known' ~ Unknown writer
I think you're giving yourself too much credit if you think anyone will know you exited 300 yrs ago. 100 years after you die, actually probably 50-60 years is more accurate, absolutely NO ONE will have any idea you ever existed, much less care ... and that goes for all of us.
I get that! I don't believe we are capable of caring whether or not anyone will have any idea we ever existed, because we will be dead. The overwhelming devastation of this minuscule thought is only ever fearful and terrifying to our Ego. Only the Ego imagines the funeral.
Load More Replies...Not necessarily, due to our modern online digital lives there will be more information readily available than at any time in history! Big data used by Facebook and Google, the Internet archive, credit ratings and the fact that most data is backed up in hyper secure underground vaults means that the data of those of us alive today may very well outlive the human race!
I don’t have any kids and am 50. In another 50 no one will ever know I lived.
Ah, so true,BUT! Somewhere my five minutes of sanity will be remembered by someone ,and they'll know from whence it came!
We are ALL going to be forgotten, and I doubt we will be around as a species, much less with 'old family scrap books' to thumb through. I always think of the poem 'Ozymandias' - the mighty O's legacy ended up as a broken statue buried in the sand.
One day the universe itself will no longer support life at all, anywhere. Everything we build, everything our descendants ever accomplish, even everything that every intelligent alien species has done or ever will do, throughout all of time and space, is for naught.
300 years is 10 generations. That person will have 1000 ancestors back to today.
100 years from now you'll be fortunate if your grandkids will have any memory of your life unless you plan on writing a biography or become famous. In these times with the tech world, AI, and the fast way things are evolving, not to mention the good Lord returning hopefully before then, there are too many things happening and we're just a blip on the stage of craziness.
The average middle class person of today has luxuries and a standard of living that far surpasses that of Kings and Queens from centuries ago.
1 in every 3 or 4 people is not capable of critical thinking. And I'm not making some kind of point about politics or anything - I mean those people are literally incapable of taking in information and synthesizing it with other information and coming to their own conclusions. They're basically robots programmed by whatever source is most convincing to them.
Everyone is capable of critical thinking, it's just that people compartmentalize that which they think critically about, and that which is off limits to questioning or skeptical inquiry.
My phone is listening to me, it’s simply not a coincidence any more how my targeted ads change directly related to and after a conversation. People say we are just more predictable than we think but I mention something I haven’t even thought about for years and there it is on Instagram.
How's this for freaky. I was hanging out with my brother and we were talking about inflatable spas. At that time my phone had no internet access AT ALL, it was completely disabled from the actual phone provider. Anyway, I get home later and go on the ipad. As soon as I open facebook there is an ad for an inflatable spa. Like wtf, how does that even happen.
I don't care who you are or what you think, or even what the science says - Geese are evil creatures.
That a LOT more famous actors than we realize are secretly the children of other famous actors from the previous generation. I call it the Hollywood Bastard Theory.
Back when I was 10 there was a competition for schoolkids to write a treatment for an episode of Doctor Who, with the best one being developed into an full episode in the next series and the winner receiving a writing credit. I was a huge fan of DW at the time and the competition was actually run through schools, so my teacher made the entire class do it, but I was very excited.
I began writing a story about the Doctor landing on a planet full of defective cybermen, who's programming had gone a wry and had been left on this asylum planet to rot. The Doctor lands there in response to a mysterious distress call from a woman and attempts to find and save her while avoiding the dangerous dysfunctional cybermen and the looming threat of planetary destruction at the hands of the normal cybermen. I finished my short treatment and gave it to my teacher to submit. Unfortunately it turned out the competition was very strict about the formatting of submissions and mine was returned because I had used the wrong formatting in some way, it seemed like a weird reason. I was a bit disappointed and that was the end of that.
But then, a year or two later, there was an episode of DW called Asylum of the Daleks, which seemed incredibly similar to my story except with Daleks. So incredibly, eerily, similar in fact, that to this day I am absolutely convinced that Steven Moffat saw my script and came up with a formatting excuse so that he could remove me from the competition, steal my story, change the bad guys and claim it as his own. I have zero evidence, I don't even still have the treatment I wrote, or any letter from the BBC about my submission, and yet I know in my bones that Steven Moffat stole his script from 10 yr old me.
My wife's school was doing a production of Grease. (As faculty, she had a bit part she totally hammed up.) Colin Ferguson was supposed to be in town doing a standup show that got cancelled. The next night his stand-up kept referencing Grease. Everyone his age has seen Grease... from America. But why suddenly make jokes about a 40+ year-old play?
That alien lifeforms will be nothing like we have ever imagined
There’s a travel agency that’s been around in my town for as long as I can remember. I wholeheartedly believe it’s a front for the mob.
Epstein didn’t kill himself
That the entire U.S. mattress industry is a front for criminal organizations. Virtually every city has more mattress stores than it needs. When was the last time you bought a mattress? So then why does a city of 80,000 have like 7 separate mattress retail places within like six blocks?
They rent the showrooms out to prostitution. (That's a joke. I hope.)
There is some godzilla s*** at the bottom of our oceans. Deep Sea gigantism will not fail me.
I am essentially a good, decent person. I may not act this out successfully, it’s the fact that I keep trying to act it out relentlessly that makes it true.
Most of this is just busy work
Most jobs can be done with 6 hour days 4 days a week. This insanity about working 8-6 Monday to Friday is just to keep people busy so they don't have time to look at the way the world is being steered by the super rich.
That 1-2 generations down the line, our use of technology will lead to extreme mental health issues. My brain feels deep fried from time to time and I haven't seriously started using a smart phone before I was already an adult
I’m really, really f*****g lucky. But like in a subtle way like if there’s a 95% chance I’ll get hurt doing something stupid I’ll come out unscathed. Sometimes I think there’s a guardian angel watching over me making sure I don’t kill myself by being an idiot.
I seem to be really lucky/blessed and 'land on my feet'. Get my sister who's a really good person seems to be cursed
Life on other planets. Not green one eyes aliens but even insect's and things like that
Again, there has to be other life somewhere in the universe. It's 100% out there somewhere.
As an Asian, I can safely say without a doubt that you don't need cups to measure the water when cooking rice.
Not that it is something I believe to be true, but something that I often think about is the Butterfly Effect. Like little things I do during the day could affect the total outcome of my day.
My brother deleted my game save on purpose. He was old enough to read, he knew what he was doing.
Dogs go to doggy heaven
All pets go to the sunny fields outside the gates of Heaven and wait for us. When we die, they’ll be there and will walk through the gates with us.
Dejavu comes from previous dreams
My ex-boss used Covid as an excuse to make me redundant because I was the only member of his team to be hired by someone else and not him.
That my last boss secretly hated me even though we had, on the surface, a very positive relationship.
Nothing wrong with this, so long as they didn't hinder you or affect you emotionally. ( You don't have to like anyone so long as you do no harm).
That my cousin stole my holographic 1st edition Charizard Pokemon card back in the early 2000's.
That the funeral home by my house is run by some sort of criminal organization.
I always see the same gangster looking guys hanging out in front of it smoking cigars and drinking beers.
I watched flight 93 go down. I would never share that in real life because it’s f****n grim and no one would believe you (the geography of the reports are off ). I saw it clear as day from Kent state’s main campus (Ohio). I didn’t know what I was seeing other than I remember thinking “that plane is way way too low (we had a aviation college so planes were common) and too big and it’s jerking around like how a toddler drives a power wheels truck....”. Continued on to class. You don’t wanna be late even at a liberal college.
I'm not sure what you saw, but you didn't see a plane that crashed around 200 miles away from you. There were enough ordinary people who WERE in that part of Pennsylvania that DID see it crash and then there were all the reporters who went out to that place, who are not part of a conspiracy to pretend that the plane crashed around Canton, Ohio just because. Like you said, you're next to an aviation college. That would be the most likely explanation for it.
Reddit supermods have the ability to give unlimited free awards on reddit. This allows them to make certain opinions more visible and normalizes paying real money for reddit emojis.
Same thing if you steal the snacks form a family member
Load More Replies...I am now off to explore the surrounding town centres to see which local businesses are a front for organised crime, secret government agencies and other life forms living here under cover
I nominate our local thai restaurant. Not once has there been a customer inside.
Load More Replies...Very interesting post. I hope to see more like this in the future. I do agree with the alien theories for sure, simply from a mathematical perspective.
I think we share earth with life forms that our 3 dimensional senses cannot conceive . Sometimes we mistake them for ghosts or aliens if we catch a glimpse. Why? Because I know that there are hundreds of life forms right now that cannot conceive of us for instance creatures who know the world only by taste or smell or touch. I often wonder as well what ants recognise, is human distinct to them from DOG or are we all strange blobs that they don't differentiate between from their tiny little perspectives.
That reincarnation is real and time does not go in a line but a circle
Similarly to the Dr Who text, I remember once drawing fan art for a game and sending it to this publishers fan art email address. Later when the game was released, there was a vehicle that suspicously looked a lot like my fan art. I'm glad if they really used the art to make something, even though the game turned out to be quite awful.
Like the Dr Who one, I entered a songwriting competition in 1993 and submitted a cassette demo of a song I'd written, but never made a backup copy. A couple of years I suddenly heard a song almost identical to mine but with different lyrics - it was Kiss From A Rose. Seal claims to have written it in 1987, but I wonder if the competition was a front for a record company to harvest some song ideas.
The lottery is fake. Either it's rigged (only certain types of people win it, let alone those that have won it multiple times), or the money that is won isn't all of it (part of the money gets taken by the government).
Pitying African Americans will never lift the most desperate out of poverty without them being taught behavioral changes. The same for the most desperate impoverished whites. It not the system. It is how you interact with the system. The Asians proved that.
My boyfriend and I believe it's easier to wash someone else's dishes than our own. More often than not, he'll do the dishes and tidy up my kitchen and has a 2 day stack of dishes waiting for him in his flat.
Life. We can create it or remove it. We destroy species and just move on. Eventually we will all be one mixed race of humanity. But for some reason although we are all human we can't get along. We war. We humiliate. We steal an murder. But we all are the same. If people understood that basic fact that we live all the same, we could get rid of war and hunger and poverty an adjust the mean scale to equality for everyone and have utopia on this planet and become a better species. With that we could accomplish great things on our planet an enjoyable harmony with the planet an the universe itself. Also black holes aren't flat like depicted but at 3 dimensional orb intaking at all angles. Thank you.
I believe that we're causing a future water shortage by throwing away glass and plastic bottles with just a bit (or a lot) of liquid closed up in them. One day we will root around in landfills for water.
Same thing if you steal the snacks form a family member
Load More Replies...I am now off to explore the surrounding town centres to see which local businesses are a front for organised crime, secret government agencies and other life forms living here under cover
I nominate our local thai restaurant. Not once has there been a customer inside.
Load More Replies...Very interesting post. I hope to see more like this in the future. I do agree with the alien theories for sure, simply from a mathematical perspective.
I think we share earth with life forms that our 3 dimensional senses cannot conceive . Sometimes we mistake them for ghosts or aliens if we catch a glimpse. Why? Because I know that there are hundreds of life forms right now that cannot conceive of us for instance creatures who know the world only by taste or smell or touch. I often wonder as well what ants recognise, is human distinct to them from DOG or are we all strange blobs that they don't differentiate between from their tiny little perspectives.
That reincarnation is real and time does not go in a line but a circle
Similarly to the Dr Who text, I remember once drawing fan art for a game and sending it to this publishers fan art email address. Later when the game was released, there was a vehicle that suspicously looked a lot like my fan art. I'm glad if they really used the art to make something, even though the game turned out to be quite awful.
Like the Dr Who one, I entered a songwriting competition in 1993 and submitted a cassette demo of a song I'd written, but never made a backup copy. A couple of years I suddenly heard a song almost identical to mine but with different lyrics - it was Kiss From A Rose. Seal claims to have written it in 1987, but I wonder if the competition was a front for a record company to harvest some song ideas.
The lottery is fake. Either it's rigged (only certain types of people win it, let alone those that have won it multiple times), or the money that is won isn't all of it (part of the money gets taken by the government).
Pitying African Americans will never lift the most desperate out of poverty without them being taught behavioral changes. The same for the most desperate impoverished whites. It not the system. It is how you interact with the system. The Asians proved that.
My boyfriend and I believe it's easier to wash someone else's dishes than our own. More often than not, he'll do the dishes and tidy up my kitchen and has a 2 day stack of dishes waiting for him in his flat.
Life. We can create it or remove it. We destroy species and just move on. Eventually we will all be one mixed race of humanity. But for some reason although we are all human we can't get along. We war. We humiliate. We steal an murder. But we all are the same. If people understood that basic fact that we live all the same, we could get rid of war and hunger and poverty an adjust the mean scale to equality for everyone and have utopia on this planet and become a better species. With that we could accomplish great things on our planet an enjoyable harmony with the planet an the universe itself. Also black holes aren't flat like depicted but at 3 dimensional orb intaking at all angles. Thank you.
I believe that we're causing a future water shortage by throwing away glass and plastic bottles with just a bit (or a lot) of liquid closed up in them. One day we will root around in landfills for water.