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Notes -
Sure, you could practice being cynical:
There's a reason rationalists are sometimes accused of being quokkas. There is also a reason why, at a certain threshold, open-armed rationalists can be seen transforming virtually overnight into hardened black-pilled culture warriors. The transition from Jedi to Sith portrayed in the Star Wars prequels is sometimes mocked as too abrupt, in a way that is arguably responsible for all the Jedi lore that has developed since (though it did give us a wonderful bit of flash rationalfic from Eliezer Yudkowsky). But the strongest counter is that George Lucas just had it right to begin with: the most sensitive are the most vulnerable. A mistrustful misanthrope who is constantly on guard against being tricked, lied to, and abused, is rather insulated against betrayal from the beginning.
By contrast, a tendency to simply believe what people say, until you have a reason to believe they are lying, is the kind of attitude that is difficult to maintain in the face of persistent exploitation. But if it is your "nature" (insofar as any of us has one of those) to be a quokka, you probably aren't going to change the first time you get burned. Instead, repeat burns are going to accumulate until it is simply no longer psychologically possible for you to ignore them, and then the whole quokka edifice is going to come crashing down all at once.
I would like to suggest that the question you've posed is complicated in part because there is a good reason for you to continue falling for creative writing exercises: that you fall for them at all suggests you still have faith in humanity, or at least in its potential. There are explanations for every objection raised; the story as told is not literally impossible (I think--I've never used Hinge--but any given lie may also be an exaggeration, or an attempt at infosec, rather than proof that a story is entirely false). And even false stories may communicate truth, else why ever touch fiction? Presenting fiction as fact is problematic, of course, but there are also times when a carefully crafted lie is instrumental to uncovering truth.
The question that has faced careful thinkers since time immemorial, then, is whether your love the truth is so strong that you are willing to be stripped of human experience as a result. Socrates died for the truth, and Plato preached the virtues of the solitary mind. The original Cynics, including Diogenes of Sinope, were ostracized from polite society over their commitment to the truth. But there are others--Aristotle, the Epicureans--who thought that socialization was crucial to human flourishing. They, too, were committed to truth, but the Epicureans at least recommended against participation in certain kinds of conversations (most especially, politics!).
It's probably good mental hygiene to maintain a healthy skepticism against anything you read on the Internet; anonymity and inaccountability present a different incentive profile than face-to-face interactions, after all. But "gullible" is not quite the same thing as "open and trusting." Aristotle might say that "gullible" is having too much trust, while cynicism is having too little. I don't know what the relevant virtue-mean is ("credulous?" maybe just "trusting?") but striking the right balance is probably the pursuit of a lifetime. Falling for a somewhat-plausible work of creative fiction is a far cry from, say, getting bilked out of your life savings.
Trust but verify as the golden mean?
That seems right to me, yeah. Thanks for pointing it out!
What's the difference between "trust but verify" and "don't trust"?
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