It’s all the time fascinating to look at any person cope with data that challenges their view on a difficulty. Doubly so when it’s any person actually, actually good. And when it’s data that challenges certainly one of their core beliefs, or some notion they maintain about themselves comparable to their self-image, the multiplying components of cognitive dissonance can actually begin to stack up.
I witnessed it the opposite day. I gained’t say who or on what topic, nevertheless it concerned the sneery dismissal of a e book and its creator. There was no try and rebut the e book’s evidenced claims or provide an alternate clarification for the very severe points it addresses. Simply the sneer and the private slight of its creator.
I do know this sort of factor might be customary behaviour on social media, however you need to marvel concerning the dynamics of the response. Why would a sensible, profitable individual react in such an emotive, private approach to a e book? Why not type an argument in opposition to it?
The reply might properly be that the magnitude of the dissonance is so nice, that accepting the premise of the e book on any degree would come at an awesome private value. On this case as a result of the person was as soon as a big determine in a sector that we now perceive has had severe, dangerous results on people and societies world wide.
Absorbing data and arguments that problem one’s views might be very arduous. They may even shake the very concept that one is an ethical creature. The shattering of a self-image is a really severe matter. And so is the shattering of a curated self-image.
That is one thing for which all of us should be looking out. Particularly in a world by which it’s straightforward to make use of phrases to painting a specific concept about ourselves, whereas the info may recommend one thing else. And it may be an particularly troublesome problem for the big-brained.
As Bertrand Russell as soon as mentioned: Some trendy philosophers have gone as far as to say that phrases ought to by no means be confronted with info however ought to stay in a pure, autonomous world the place they’re in contrast solely with different phrases. These authors inform us that the try and confront language with truth is ‘metaphysics’ and is on this floor to be condemned. That is a kind of views that are so absurd that solely very realized males might probably undertake them.
Principal picture: From Affe vor Skelett, Gabriel von Max, Public area, through Wikimedia Commons