Schopenhauer and Hume provided me with my initial full comprehension of how we tend to make a huge number of assumptions, every time we ‘believe’ something to be true. Most of these assumptions prove to be false, on closer examination. Of course the benefit of ‘jumping to conclusions’ is that it is fast. And it’s better to be wrong when you ‘run home after believing you heard / saw / smelt a tiger in the woods’, and discover later that it was just a friendly dog, than it is to be wrong when you assumed that sound and movement was ‘probably just a dog’, only to become dinner for a family of tigers. Making assumptions, quickly, building models, jumping to conclusions, accepting what you are told by some ‘authority’, leaping to judgements based on ‘hearsay’ and ‘assumptions’, are all ‘efficient’ ways to increase your survival chances. But at some point, when the danger has passed, it makes sense to consider what you REALLY know. What was assumed. Whose opinion you took at face value, without analyzing to see if it was justified / valid. When the danger has passed. So of course ever liar, deceiver, manipulator, will try to make you feel ‘in danger’, ‘at risk’, at every moment, so that you never have a chance to pause, and consider, and think for yourself. You will always be jumping to your own, or someone else’s, conclusions…fearful of some imagined / illusory threat…like ‘hell’, or ‘gods’ or ‘terrorists’, or ‘enemies’…as long as you are held in the thrall of fear, you can never step back and evaluate the beliefs you have formed, and have been offered / often forced to accept, and at least behave as if you believed…and once your start behaving as if you believe, your mind will tend to rationalize that behavior, by actually BELIEVING … and defending those beliefs…so strongly that you often end up denying the facts of reality around you…this is how most people live today…this is why the world still needs philosphers, more than ever...