Get Premium
Dark mode theme is available exclusively for premium users. Learn more about the benefits of subscribing.
No fees, cancel anytime.
Dark Mode 
No fees, cancel anytime 
A wise man once said that if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. And nowadays, there is so much misinformation out there that it's easy to go tumbling head-first into a dark hole of nonsense if you aren't careful.
We're taught to fact check, cross-reference and dig for evidence before blindly believing. But sometimes, we just know something to be true, even when there's nothing to back it up. Someone asked, "What’s something you have zero proof of but believe 100 percent?" and more than 5,000 people threw caution to the wind as they boldly shared the hills they're willing to perish on.
Bored Panda has put together the most interesting answers... From wild theories to highly believable ideas, some might have you questioning what you thought you knew to be true. Others could have you wanting to punch your screen.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
That religion began as a superstitious attempt to explain a world and events beyond reckoning at the time, and has grown into chains around the neck of humanity.
Some may argue that you should never let the facts get in the way of a good story. But we aren't living in a Hollywood movie. Nowadays, more than ever, it pays to remove your blinkers when walking through the corridors of life, and apply what's known as critical thinking. This means that instead of just blindly believing, you should question, analyse, interpret, evaluate and make a judgement about what you read, hear, say, or write.
"Good critical thinking is about making reliable judgements based on reliable information," explains the Monash University site.
RELATED:
#2
That the unspoken reason those ‘private jet tracker’ apps keep getting sued, and the FAA is attempting to make ‘one-time use plane identification codes’, is because the rich [jerks] don’t want records of when they’re visiting this year’s version of “Epstein Island”.
#3
Honestly I’m convinced Google listens way more than it says, like you mention something once and suddenly it’s in your ads later that day. I know there’s explanations but it still feels a little too perfect sometimes.
According to the Foundation For Critical Thinking, we can hone our thinking skills. Just like we practice, or put in the time and hard work, to get better at things like sport, music or any other hobby, so too can we improve our critical thinking.
The foundation's site explains that there are six stages in our development as a critical thinker, and that we can only move through these stages if we a) accept the fact that there are serious problems in our thinking and b) begin regular practice.
#4
That major religious figures don't actually believe in God. They just found a perfect way to make a lot of money.
#5
That sometimes you can feel when someone is looking at you.
That Persistent Lint 11 hours ago
100% It's called scopaesthesia and is a survival trait to detect threat.
#6
Misinformation and AI slop are deliberately being spread on social media to make the public question everything we see and hear.
The first stage is when we are unaware of significant problems in our thinking, i.e. The Unreflective Thinker stage. The second is The Challenged Thinker stage, or when we become aware of problems in our thinking. We move onto The Beginning Thinker stage when we try to improve but without regular practice.
Stage Four, say the experts, is The Practicing Thinker. At this point we recognize the necessity of regular practice. The Advanced Thinker is our fifth stage when we advance in accordance with our practice. And finally, after much hard work, we hit Stage Six: The Master Thinker. The foundation describes this as when "skilled & insightful thinking become second nature to us."
#8
Every one sees colours differently. What red looks like to me if is different for another human being's perception of red.
David Paterson 3 hours ago (edited)
You need to see the results of the XKCD colour survey. The first take-away from that survey is that naming colours drives EVERONE crazy eventually. Essentially, after images mess with our sense of colour so badly that we become unable to identify colours after a time. Not only do different people see colours differently, also a single person will have a situation where what red looks to them at one time is different from what red looks like to them five or ten minutes later. Do you know "the dress" optical illusion, is it white and yellow or blue and black?
#9
Most CEOs and politicians are sociopaths.
There are a number of ways we can improve our critical thinking on a daily basis. The foundation lists nine of them, including using “wasted” time, working through a problem a day, keeping an intellectual journal, dealing with our ego, redefining the way we see things, getting in touch with our emotions, and others.
When it comes to wasted time, there aren't many people that can say they haven't done so at one point or the other. "So why not take advantage of the time you normally waste by practicing your critical thinking during that otherwise wasted time?" asks the Foundation for Critical Thinking's website. "For example, instead of sitting in front of the TV at the end of the day flicking from channel to channel in a vain search for a program worth watching, spend that time, or at least part of it, thinking back over your day and evaluating your strengths and weaknesses."
#10
The current job market is by design.
Tossed_Away_1776:
Feels like they want us all desperate.
Kirsti-Tina Thompson 12 hours ago
I fully believe this. They want the ants fighting among themselves for scraps, such as crappy jobs to survive, so we dont turn on them.
#11
Dating Apps, like Tinder, Hinge etc, have an algorithm good enough to match people with others they would fall in love with, marry and happily spend the rest of their lives with. But this would cause people to then unsubscribe from their services. So instead we get the algorithm that keeps people paying the most and on the apps the longest.
General Anaesthesia 9 hours ago
Imagine an app that would make divorce lawyers redundant. So lawyers' associations pay Tinder etc. to not use their perfect algorithms. Right.
#12
Organized religion does more harm than good. Way more.
David Paterson 2 hours ago
As an atheist, I disagree. Almost all good charities around the world are run by or were started by religions. Imagine a world without any charities, no Red Cross for example.
According to the Critical Thinking Academy, not learning, or using, critical thinking can leave us open to fallacies, cognitive biases and poor reasoning.
"Our perceptions are imperfect, and we have many cognitive biases that we aren't aware of, or educated about. As a result our decisions are based on incorrect judgments and poor inferences arising from our cognitive biases," explains the academy. "A knowledge of cognitive biases helps us to guard against them."
#13
The Cat Distribution System is real. A cat adopted me when I lived on a sailboat in my early 20s. Through 30+ years since then, two apartments, two houses, kids, dogs, even coyotes in the neighborhood, we have never been without at least one cat. Almost always two or more.
We have never once gone and gotten a cat. At some point anecdotal evidence adds up to be science, man.
#14
That we will all see our past pets again someday.
#15
USA, UK, Canada and Australia are basically run by several main companies and it doesn't matter who is in government.
Of course, not everyone believes that human beings should be critical thinkers. There's a whole group of people who are against schools teaching critical thinking... And then there are those who say that even if some teachers wanted to teach critical thinking, they wouldn't know where to start.
"The simple fact of the matter is that even though the term 'critical thinking' gets thrown around a lot in teacher education programs, most educators receive no direct training in how critical thinking is actually taught," explains The Critical Thinking Institute site. "So, we cannot blame educators for not teaching critical thinking."
#16
That there are no grand government conspiracies. That's far too many layers of complexity for anyone to reasonably control. Instead, it's uncounted layers upon layers of personal agendas, greed, and incompetence. All interwoven into an absolute mess of a system that somewhat resembles a conspiracy.
David Paterson 2 hours ago (edited)
The first myth of management is that it exists. The blacked out part of declassified files is censored to hide management incompetence.
#17
That the ultra-rich are an armored class of psychopaths. The majority of current wealthy are the way they are because of psychopathic tendencies brought onto them by a combination of damage from unhealthy upbringing due to absent parenting or being taught from a wealth-focused worldview, or both. They don't get a proper sense of healthy values when they're raised in a life without true survival needs. People who reach that level of wealth do so at the expense of the other aspects of their lives, including parenting. And the kids are either bought in or damaged by that childhood. Then those children grow up and inherit the family wealth, except now they didn't grow up struggling to become rich. They assume that this is their normal and that everyone who is not on that level either can't or won't get to that level, making them lesser people. It separates them from common society, and suddenly you have powerful people who are disconnected from the world, and have completely different ideas of what is true or not, but unlike the not-rich, they have the weath, power, and connections to make their ideas affect the rest of the world.
But I can't prove that, because even if I was educated in the subjects that could properly analyze that wealthy sector, they would not permit such scrutiny that could damage their image or position. So this is all just an opinion from me.
David Paterson 2 hours ago
The Forbes rich list misses every really rich person in the world. It's only listing the people who got wealthy legally, and that's by far the minority.
#20
That Comcast throttles your internet sometimes for whatever reason. But ever since they bought SpeedTest.net, if you go to that website when your Internet is slow. Somehow it mysteriously turns super fast. I think they monitor it and fast lane you so you don't get proof of them being [jerks].
Daniel Atkins 3 minutes ago
T mobile will over sell their internet in a area when it is oversaturated they throttle down the speed of older customers to open up bandwidth. It works well for years for us then all of a sudden it doesn't and changing modems didn't help. W3e also heard from others we know that used their service that they were having the same problem.
#21
That people, who genuinely believe people chose to be gay, are bisexuals who have chosen to be straight.
Ye Olde Dirty Grumpy 13 hours ago
The flip side to this is everyone is a little bit gay. Ron Tater Salad White pointed out "straight" guys watch big weiner p**n
#23
That young working class men are not educated properly to keep them in manual jobs and away from good jobs that go to the rich kids.
Tfelv22:
I work in a title 1 school where kids going into 7th grade can't even read. I believe this theory 100%
#24
The reason our (women's) clothes don't have pockets is so that we buy handbags.
#25
Israel absolutely knew about the October 7 attacks before they happened, & chose to let them happen in order to help Netanyahu stay in office despite his corruption & justify invading Gaza.
#26
OJ did it, Casey Anthony did it.
#27
Well I mean, the superrich being a network of degeneracy and rampantly using their power to actively make the lives of us all worse because they can‘t stop hoarding already is pretty much proven true with Epstein.
So I‘ll stick with: somewhere in the universe there is a high civilization that already has been wiped out (by themselves or sickness/natural causes) and we will someday find their ruins.
GenericElder 12 hours ago
I'm more afraid that the alien version of the European Explorers/Colonizers will make first contact with Earth and do to us what the Colonizers did to the Natives THEY met.
#28
That most people are way lonelier than they admit. Everyone's pretending they're fine but deep down a lot of folks are just isolated as hell. No data, just vibes.
#29
The preservatives they allow in our food in the US is the cause of a lot of diseases.
#30
Facebook listens to your conversations and sends you ads of things you were just talking about.
That Persistent Lint 11 hours ago
Yes. It also has a database processor that sells population behavioral patterns as a product. Google does it too with GA4.
#31
There is life elsewhere in the universe. I recognize that it's not necessarily true, but...
Wigbold:
It would be the most extraordinary thing if we are actually alone. Like, unfathomably extraordinary. There are just THAT many stars with planets that the chance of there NOT being life elsewhere is near zero.
#32
My sister stole all the m&ms from my Halloween bag in '87. She denies it to this day, but I KNOW it was her.
Jeff White 12 hours ago
The most compelling position I've heard on this post. However, I must warn you ... it is often Mom who steals the M&M's.
#33
Yuri Gagarin wasn't the first person in space. He was the first to come back alive.
#34
Ghislaine maxwell was the real mastermind behind Epstein. She inherited the business from her father.
I have loose evidence at best for this. But there was a [criminal] ring in the UK that had broken up naturally by the time things went public (arrests for financial crimes, etc.). Well around the time it fell apart, Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine's father and a major UK socialite was unceremoniously outed from the UK business world, he later died mysteriously on his yacht, named after his daughter Ghislaine.
I think they [made him disappear] and she inherited the business, moved to the US and hooked up with Epstein to be the face of the business.
Maxwell also had ties to Israel, and their Prime Minister even attended Maxwells funeral in Jerusalem... Which lends to the theory that the whole group was an Israeli operation to get blackmail on prominent businessmen and politicians.
Breadcrumb. 11 hours ago
Epstein still did horrible things to children. I don't think she forced him to do any of it. She was just another player, she shouldn't be blamed for his actions. He is responsible for himself.
#35
Those "only 1% of people" memes/puzzles are designed to get people to believe they're smarter than they are so they can trick them into believing some dumb stuff.
#36
I 100% believe that music can transfer energy/emotion between people across time. When you listen to a song that someone poured their soul into whether it’s from 1972 or last year you’re not just hearing sounds. You’re catching a direct hit of whatever they were feeling when they made it. Heartbreak, pure joy, rage, loneliness, hope… it hits you in the chest exactly like it hit them. I have zero scientific proof of this.
Bored Jellyfish 11 hours ago
Listening to music lights up many areas of the brain. It can bring back emotions and memories and even muscle memory from long ago, even in damaged brains. Ever seen that video of someone playing music from Swan Lake to an elderly former ballerina with Alzheimer’s?
#37
He wasn't shot. He didn't win.
#38
Throw back Thursday was invented by the NSA to train and test age progression/regression facial recognition algorythms.
#39
Modern driver aids like lane-keep, blind spot warnings, and adaptive cruise are making people worse drivers by letting people be less attentive at the wheel.
Automatic transmission make traffic worse because they reduce the effect of engine braking, forcing the use of brakes, turning on brake lights, causing overreactions by drivers behind in a cascade effect.
David Paterson 2 hours ago
Excuse hobby horse of mine. Lane-keep is a safety system. Cruise control is a convenience system. You must not have a safety system that switches off automatically,.
#40
Genealogy websites were set up by the FBI in America to track down [criminals] and solve old cases.
#41
That Michael Jackson used his money and power to dodge those allegations, which I believe were true.
#42
There's no way in hell a certain someone was shot in the ear. Evander Holyfield got bit almost 30 years ago and is still missing a chunk because cartilage doesn't regrow. Even plastic surgery would leave a scar...
#44
Keeping people and cultures separate without a space to learn more about each other and have personal experiences with each other is part of the social divide that makes everyone you don’t know feel like a threat.
Kirsti-Tina Thompson 12 hours ago
That's why they want to control the internet, and carve it up. They dont like the fact we can fact check it, reach out to other people from other cultures and ask them "yo, is this true?"
#45
That my ex-wife cheated on me. She went on a solo “vacation” visiting an old boyfriend who was also married with kids, so nothing to worry about. Then she came back floating on a happy cloud. One month later she wanted a divorce. Three months after that I discovered she had started to date him.
She says it began after we separated but I am 100% convinced she cheated on me before that. Funny thing is, it didn’t upset me. Our marriage was over and done, I just didn’t know it yet.
#46
Using chapstick makes you need to use more chapstick.
That Persistent Lint 10 hours ago
Yes. There are irritating agents on some of them. Also, besides the behavioral dependency they create, if they don't have any hydrating agent it just masks the need to hydrate under a petroleum jelly coat.
#47
That major shopping centres deliberately block or slow your phones data inside stores for two reasons.
1) To prevent price matching and comparisons to other shops that may offer discounts.
2) to make shoppers utilise the free wifi that shops provide to collect data to better tailor your shopping experience and track where you spend the most time in the complex.
#48
The universe is nigh unfathomably large.
If there is a curvature, we're literally incapable of detecting it due to how ridiculously small our "section" (i.e. the Observable Universe) is in comparison to the whole, to the point that it appears we live in a flat universe.
David Paterson 2 hours ago
The universe is metastable, therefore it is finite because if you go far enough in any space or time dimension you'll reach a point where it has catastrophically decayed. The curvature is indistinguishable from zero.
#49
The person I served on a jury for was set up by their former student turned small town cop.
It was plain as day and painfully obvious.
Me and another person are the reason they weren't found guilty on both counts.... only one.
Quite the eye opener and my faith in jury trials is gone.
Disgusting.
#51
That the direction your life takes is influenced way more by small random events than by big “life decisions” people think matter most.
#52
All of the hype about Tom Cruise doing his own stunts and how he picks up every skill he puts his hand to is pure Scientology propaganda . Oh, he's decided to learn how to fly a helicopter and he's as good as lifelong pilots? He learns how to shoot pool for a movie and he's suddenly a pro level master? Is there any chance this has to do with the fact that he's the public face of an organization well known for spewing propaganda like there's no tomorrow?
That Persistent Lint 10 hours ago
They must be mad he'll never be a Chuck Norris level leggend.
#53
That Ted Bundy had way more victims than we know.
#54
Pharmaceutical companies have the cures for multiple diseases but refuse to release it because they make more money treating the conditions.
Jeff White 12 hours ago
Nope. Hardcore Nope. Feel free to think that, I cannot stop you. But something like that would a secret that could not be kept secret.
#56
That dreams allow us to visit other dimensions/realms.
Kirsti-Tina Thompson 12 hours ago
Honestly, I believe it. I've had too many cases of deja revie, and dreams that felt so good d**n real. And visited by people the night they passed away.
#57
Incest is more common, specifically cousins. A lot of people think it’s just hillbillies in some rural mountain but it could be your neighbors hell it could even be your own cousins and you wouldn’t know.
#58
I think that an internet friend of mine is the real life inspiration for a character on a TV show. There's too many coincidences. I don't even want to say the name of the character or the show because of how seriously I believe this to be true, and the woman is a nice person and I don't want her to be bothered.
The character's name and the character's boyfriend's names line up. The location lines up. The appearance of the characters also lines up. I'm not close enough with the woman to just come out and ask her. Also the show is not kind to the character so even if she is the inspiration, and knows it, she might not want to admit it.
#59
Some of the things people see on psychedelics are actually real, but hidden from normal perception.
#60
I think our ENTIRE universe is the powerhouse of a single cell in a much larger living being. I think the big bang was just the birth of that cell.
#61
That we simply pass. No great ethereal journey to judgment. No reunification with lost love ones in paradise. Just lights out like when you are asleep.
#62
Trees can talk but very very slowly, like weeks or months per “word”, so it doesn’t register to us.
#63
That there are multiple layers to the universe and not everyone can see them. Some people can and we consider them either religious leaders or mentally ill.
I’m sure I’m wrong, but I like to think this.
#64
Epstein is alive and well....
Jeff White 12 hours ago
Too many powerful NEEDED him to never talk again. That is why I think, without and "real" evidence, that he's d**d.
#65
I am part of some kind of government experiment in where I am followed, my grocery purchases tracked, and a vast majority of products I really like are discontinued to see how long it takes me to lose my mind.
It even crosses international borders! Bring back Heinz tinned sponge pudding.
#66
Everything possible will happen at least once, more summarily, everything is eventual. Maybe there is theoretical evidence of this idea and I’ve heard it talked about but I don’t think it’s a common thing to have a strong belief in one way or the other. I find the idea exciting. With my limited understanding of how things work even I can imagine some really interesting things that must happen somewhere eventually, or may already have. What we’re observing is such a small part of what’s is and what will be. To quote Tom Petty, You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.
#67
They shot down flight 93. Two planes hit the twin towers, one hit the pentagon, one was on course for who knows where. They shot it down to save more lives and made up a story of heroism. How could they know if the passengers over powered the high jackers and crashed the plane?
It’ll probably be declassified in a hundred years.
GenericElder 12 hours ago
Weren't there like a bunch of text messages & voicemails sent to loved ones from that plane. Or do you think those were faked?
What do you think ?
Chich the witch 11 hours ago
Said this before but the push to get people to return to the office and end WFH is because middle management realised they served little to no purpose.
Chich the witch 11 hours ago
Said this before but the push to get people to return to the office and end WFH is because middle management realised they served little to no purpose.
Related on Bored Panda
