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<blockquote data-quote="Riley37" data-source="post: 7396792" data-attributes="member: 6786839">Can we stipulate, not just claim, that people believe things they're not aware of believing? Is there anyone here, who did not already know, from the OP onwards, that people believe things they're not aware of believing?Cognitive science and linguistics have, AFAIK, settled that question with more confidence than the question of whether light is a wave or a particle. Anyone who has walked up a flight of stairs, reached the top, and stepped on one more stair than was actually present, has experienced the disjunction.One application to TRPG: I played, at a convention game in Hero System, an entertainer PC, whose skills included acrobatics, knife throwing, and sleight of hand. The party reached a locked door, and someone turned to me, expecting my PC to pick the lock. That player believed, *without knowing it*, that anyone who can do acrobatics and sleight of hand, also has the skills of a professional burglar, such as picking locks. That belief came from their experience with the D&amp;D class &quot;package deals&quot;, and their application of those assumptions to a Fantasy Hero game.That player had apparently taken the class descriptions in the PHB, as canonical elements of *every* fantasy world in which players have characters, not just as elements of Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms.I once played Runequest at the table of a GM who did his best to run a setting which was universally enchanted, in which there had been an era before Time, in which the Moon was, objectively, also a giant bat. It was a lot of fun. I tried to establish a spell or item for &quot;Detect Magic&quot;, and he said that it would invariably return a reading of &quot;IT'S ALL MAGIC!&quot;.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Riley37, post: 7396792, member: 6786839"] Can we stipulate, not just claim, that people believe things they're not aware of believing? Is there anyone here, who did not already know, from the OP onwards, that people believe things they're not aware of believing? Cognitive science and linguistics have, AFAIK, settled that question with more confidence than the question of whether light is a wave or a particle. Anyone who has walked up a flight of stairs, reached the top, and stepped on one more stair than was actually present, has experienced the disjunction. One application to TRPG: I played, at a convention game in Hero System, an entertainer PC, whose skills included acrobatics, knife throwing, and sleight of hand. The party reached a locked door, and someone turned to me, expecting my PC to pick the lock. That player believed, *without knowing it*, that anyone who can do acrobatics and sleight of hand, also has the skills of a professional burglar, such as picking locks. That belief came from their experience with the D&D class "package deals", and their application of those assumptions to a Fantasy Hero game. That player had apparently taken the class descriptions in the PHB, as canonical elements of *every* fantasy world in which players have characters, not just as elements of Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms. I once played Runequest at the table of a GM who did his best to run a setting which was universally enchanted, in which there had been an era before Time, in which the Moon was, objectively, also a giant bat. It was a lot of fun. I tried to establish a spell or item for "Detect Magic", and he said that it would invariably return a reading of "IT'S ALL MAGIC!". [/QUOTE]

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