This makes me think of some discussions I’ve seen on hete before about how hypocrisy (or rather the illuminating thereof) is a useless rhetorical cudgel insofar as the juice ain’t worth the squeeze. I guess it’s better to just focus on admonishing the bad thing itself rather than musddying the water with debatebro-like gotchas 🤔
What I’ve realized is that people internalize a narrative about how the world works. Things that fit that narrative are accepted, while those that contradict it are rejected. Facts and truth have little role to play here because the narrative is what matters. There’s an underlying thermodynamic explanation for this. We don’t hold ideas in isolation because each idea is connected to many other concepts in our minds. The older we get, the larger this network of knowledge becomes, and all connected concepts must be at least minimally compatible. So when a person encounters a fact that doesn’t fit, they must either rework an entire network of existing facts to accommodate it or simply discard it. The latter is strictly cheaper in terms of energy use for the brain, which is why new ideas that contradict existing beliefs are very easy to ignore. This dynamic changes only when there is a physical pressure, such as an economic downturn, on the person, forcing them to reevaluate their beliefs. Only when the narrative becomes so divorced from material reality that it is no longer tenable do people start becoming open to new ideas that challenge their existing worldview.
This makes me think of some discussions I’ve seen on hete before about how hypocrisy (or rather the illuminating thereof) is a useless rhetorical cudgel insofar as the juice ain’t worth the squeeze. I guess it’s better to just focus on admonishing the bad thing itself rather than musddying the water with debatebro-like gotchas 🤔
What I’ve realized is that people internalize a narrative about how the world works. Things that fit that narrative are accepted, while those that contradict it are rejected. Facts and truth have little role to play here because the narrative is what matters. There’s an underlying thermodynamic explanation for this. We don’t hold ideas in isolation because each idea is connected to many other concepts in our minds. The older we get, the larger this network of knowledge becomes, and all connected concepts must be at least minimally compatible. So when a person encounters a fact that doesn’t fit, they must either rework an entire network of existing facts to accommodate it or simply discard it. The latter is strictly cheaper in terms of energy use for the brain, which is why new ideas that contradict existing beliefs are very easy to ignore. This dynamic changes only when there is a physical pressure, such as an economic downturn, on the person, forcing them to reevaluate their beliefs. Only when the narrative becomes so divorced from material reality that it is no longer tenable do people start becoming open to new ideas that challenge their existing worldview.