Danterious

Since this was a post about acknowledging the good in others and how that should be thought about more I intentionally withheld my beliefs on how I personally deal with those people, but in reality I am not against intentionally disengaging and avoiding those people in certain scenarios. What I am trying to get across is that the animosity shown towards them (even though it can be justified) is making the problem worse not better. And strategic empathy can make a lot of difference.

FYI: yes I belong to atleast one of those hated groups

Edit: removed unecessary period.

Now there will be stories about LK99 being legit, and the “scientific community” (read government) rejecting it because UFOs are going through US court whatevers. And LK99 came from extraterrestrial origins, or whatever. This is irrational.

Or … scientists made a mistake. This is rational.

I think both are rational (consistent with or based on reason) it is just that one of them is using the right premises.

Ok, so:

1. Fix things that aren’t going well (or make people feel things are going well).
2. Have authorities we can trust (or make people trust our current authorities).
3. Reject authority (or make people believe that needing authority is a good thing).

The solutions I'd suggest would be

1. Exactly the same as yours
2. Teach people to be selective with the sources they trust and base it off of reasons why someone should and shouldn't trust a source in specific situtations.

Mutually contradictory beliefs can happen because we don't have infinite attention. I can agree with something today and three years from now agree to something else that might be contradicting to that old belief. If it is never pointed out and is not relevant to that individual then those beliefs don't get challenged and even if they do they are soon forgotten because they are not reinforced by not facing those conflicting beliefs together alot or because their social circle doesn't reinforce thinking about the contradiction.

Edit: wording

Sorry if it that's what it comes across as. I just like crossposting to different communities because the fediverse is pretty separated so I'm not sure that people are in the same communities.

Someone that is intelligent in one area can be ignorant in another so fooling people can just be a matter of subject area.

Also a con man can convince an individual at first but for it to be reinforcing there needs to be a community of people that are reinforcing the ideas and in that process build ontop of what the con man introduced.

If it requires alot of domain knowledge and skill why not?

Would you say that they at least can be smart in other areas though. Like personal hobbies that they have?

Your point about choosing to trust people/organizations selectively is a good insight because to do that you have to have reasons on why you can trust instead of blindly trusting in certain sources (which is what authority in practice makes people do). Part of critical thinking actually helps with that. It is just that critical thinking isn't at the forefront of what we teach people or even how we communicate with others.

Edit: Also sometimes they don't trust that information so they won't change their beliefs just because you present them with the correct information.

I like how you went into more detail about how to break these patterns. Which is starting with what they already believe and showing the contradictions. I gave you an upvote.

I agree that it is easier to engage with someone if they aren't shouting you down all the time but sometimes that attitude in and of itself can come from beliefs that individual has. For example if a person is christian and they believe that all gay people are choosing to be sinners therefore they are choosing to be bad then it makes sense that they would act more hostile to people that are gay.

That behaviour isn't justifiable and shouldn't be accepted but that is also a tactic that gurus/influencers can use to isolate the people in those groups. You convince them of something that makes them act hostile towards a specific group in turn isolating them even more.

And as for the scientfic model yes it is true that there are axioms that we put our trust in but it isn't done unreasonably. A key idea in science is to trust but verify. This means that you can be concious in who you trust in and it is never absolute.

If I were to simplify it I'd say people aren't stupid just because they have incorrect beliefs. Even the incorrect beliefs that people do have tend to have internally coherent reasoning.