evilgenius wrote:something that teaches us through the culture not to admit doubts and uncertainty.
Absolutely. I think internet discourse in particular discourages anyone to ever admit being wrong. Digging your heels in when down deep you know you're wrong seems to be a sport for many. That's why I keep posting clips of Bart Simpson singing
"I didn't do it". It's about leading all discourse from the vantage point of ego-protection which is infantile.
This is, for instance, one reason I've lost most of my respect for Elon Musk, because even if he IS worried about some of the same problems I am, he has such a fragile ego that he never wants to admit to any errors in how he runs Tesla or to problems with the cars. So I struggle to find really anyone to look up to and is worth emulating these days.
I know I'm generalizing but I think why so many people seem envious of Europe or Asia is because they seem to have more of a sense of common purpose. We USED to have that common purpose like when during WWII everyone bought war bonds, were OK with rationing, etc... But today people feel only loyalty to themselves and their chosen tribe. True patriotism in the sense of envisioning the country as a united whole in which minority speech and opinion still matters no longer exists. We are a already ideologically balkanized and only interested in winner-take-all across the board.
The birther controversy is a great example of this ego-protection nonsense. You start out by trying to create a conspiracy around Obama's birth certificate. Then finally the birth certificate is produced. Then Trump says where is the LONG-FORM birth certificate? The goal-post shifts but the bottom line is if Trump had already seen Obama's birth certificate he never would have launched the birther campaign in the first place. The only reason to keep digging in your heels is to avoid looking like an idiot.
Another one is the face on Mars. Sure, the original viking lander photos looked like a face, but when they went back and got high res photos from a different time of the day where the shadows didn't align just right,
the face no longer looked like a face at all. But Richard Hoagland had invested so much of his ego in pushing the face on Mars concept that he retconned his theory to suggest that the face was actually a lion/sphinx. But again, if you started OUT with the high res photo, nobody at first glance would say it looks like anything concrete. Only in the context of trying to protect the sunk ego investment in having spent so much mental energy constructing this belief system can you rationalize continuing to dig in your heels.
I could go on and on with similar phenomenon--including, of course, fast-crash peak oil doomers who failed to accept the idea that the credit crisis caused the recession instead of peak oil and fracking caused a glut.
(People tend to operate on auto-pilot like this rather than being able to step outside of that ego-protection bubble and see things from a more objective perspective. The "evidence seekers" strive to do just that.)There are many many psychological articles that talk about how once you have that sunk investment you will heavily weight all arguments in favor of continuity rather than to take the ego hit of accepting you're wrong and falling into the emotional abyss:
The answer is related to their ego, their very sense-of-self. Some people have such a fragile ego, such brittle self-esteem, such a weak "psychological constitution," that admitting they made a mistake or that they were wrong is fundamentally too threatening for their egos to tolerate. Accepting they were wrong, absorbing that reality, would be so psychologically shattering, their defense mechanisms do something remarkable to avoid doing so — they literally distort their perception of reality to make it (reality) less threatening. Their defense mechanisms protect their fragile ego by changing the very facts in their mind, so they are no longer wrong or culpable.
...
People who repeatedly exhibit this kind of behavior are, by definition, psychologically fragile. However, that assessment is often difficult for people to accept, because to the outside world, they look as if they’re confidently standing their ground and not backing down, things we associate with strength. But psychological rigidity is not a sign of strength, it is an indication of weakness. These people are not choosing to stand their ground; they’re compelled to do so in order to protect their fragile egos.
This plays out in so many ways. Think of Trump supporters. They started out thinking he was one thing but over time it's revealed that he's another, frog boiling in the pot style. But since they put on that hat--since they fought tooth and nail to defend the guy, gosh darn it, nothing is going to make them throw all that away, not even 150K+ dead from COVID, the impeachment, Bounty-gate, various tell-all books from insiders saying he is a complete moron, etc... But like I said, if you pulled these people aside quietly and asked them, gee, if you knew back then before you became a Trump supporter what you know now, would you have chosen to support him, they would probably say no.
Same thing with relationships and jobs. When you have that sunk investment you heavily favor the status quo in a way any outsider never would.
Humans are all about stubborn inertia. Inertia of behavior, inertia of ideas.
The other aspect is what humans do when any shocking world event happens like what we saw in Beirut. The knee-jerk impulse is to think like what Trump did, that it was an "attack". We don't wait for evidence. Our brain-stem reaches for the most extreme explanation right off of the bat. And those who can't admit being wrong will cling to this initial idea. If they eventually concede it will be way later than it should be, because it just feels too humiliating.
How about Short and his lost bet? He deserves ridicule not so much for losing the bet, but by being psychologically incapable of conceding, tying himself into a pretzel to somehow rationalize away his error.
People go through life exhibiting these character flaws and seemingly never have these pointed out to them. But even when you do point them out, they just double-down and triple-down. They are the epitome of the unexamined life that is not worth living.
The vast majority of posters here do not engage in a true back and forth dialogue as much as they seek to merely project/impose their view of the world, their narrative, their overarching paradigm.
Humans tend to clutch at some very simple rule of thumb that defines this view of the universe. This is the lens through which everything is filtered.
Take Onlooker, for instance. It became clear pretty early on that he has sort of a romanticized lefty concept of communism in which the poor are by nature good and the rich and powerful are evil and corrupt in an X-Files Smoking Man sort of way. He then goes out and purposefully selects "news" that reinforces and affirms this way of thinking. No matter how often it's pointed out to him that he may only be seeing what he wants to see, that maybe the MSM isn't always fake-news and Zerohedge isn't somehow the key to enlightenment, it's like talking to a brick wall. He has reached, as I've said many times, EPISTEMIC CLOSURE.
This is true of just about every poster that I have trouble with here. They are filtering reality through a heavily distorted lens which they are holding onto for dear life. Anything that conflicts with this vision is "the enemy". Truth is not what is being sought. Only the comfort of validation.