Talk:Wishful thinking/Archives/2014

Poor examples

I am not perfectly happy with the some of the examples. I do believe Chamberlaine hoped that his agreement with Hitler would lead to peace, but as far as I know, he certainly did not believe it would guarantee it. In 1938 the Commonwealth was preparing for war.

The example with Operation Barbarossa makes me wonder if the author is referring to Hitler´s belief that he would win or Stalin's refusal to believe that an attack was imminent as wishful thinking. This needs to be clearified. They are both highly qualified examples. And so are by the way Japan's attack on Pearl Harbour -both the Japanese hope that they could somehow get the Americans to give in and the American refusal to believe that an attack was imminent. -Sensemaker

I quite agree, they are poor examples, so I have removed them.Rubisco (talk) 14:59, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Example of quotation from New Testament about nature of faith. An atheist might regard this as "wishful thinking" while a believer might maintain that it is in a different category from ordinary beliefs about the world. As it is, it seems to imply that religious belief as such is false, which seems to go outside NPOV. I am not implying that no sort of bias can exist but that examples ought to be things which assist the reader by illustrating a principle with cases which will be agreed, rather than cases which will introduce further controversy. The Bertrand Russell quote in footnote would make it acceptable if could somehow be part of the example, i.e. "Russell argued that faith..." Aardwolf (talk) 14:39, 6 February 2014 (UTC)