[WhitneyLand]

What makes some people more vulnerable to accepting things uncritically? Why is it so hard to admit when they or someone they support makes a mistake?

I have an ego, I don't like being wrong, and I think I'm right a lot. Ok, so far I get it. But to constantly ignore or avoid objective evidence? How do people not become ill at the thought?

1) Clinical narcissism or sociopathy? It's all an intentional means to an end.

2) Simple lack of practice in critical thinking? They are acting in good faith but just not seeing the con.

3) Their morale code does not exclude machiavellian tactics and they just want to win.

Maybe the population has all three types collaborating both knowingly and unknowingly across different roles.

[dwaltrip]

It's not some people. It's most people. Investigating claims rigorously is very difficult, even for highly skilled individuals. And it usually has very minimal direct impact on the mundane aspects of day-to-day to life. For many, there isn't an easy answer to the question: "Why should I bother, given everything else going on in my life?"

Honestly, it's pretty great how many people are willing to spend time and effort that doesn't directly benefit them (on a base material level) to care about this stuff.

It's also harder than one may think to do this well. You have be fairly skeptical 24/7, even of yourself and your own thoughts. I think that doing it halfway likely leads to lots of seemingly well-rationalized ideologies.

I like to think I'm getting better at being generally skeptical and slowly layering together a coherent, mutually supportive set of usefully accurate mental models of how the world works, but I find it very tough to know to what extent I'm fooling myself or not. One simple maxim I've found useful is to try to avoid allowing any idea from becoming "sacred" and above questioning. While not practical for daily life, I think it's a great fundamental background orientation for our thoughts and perception of the world.

[kough]

> I like to think I'm getting better at being generally skeptical and slowly layering together a coherent, mutually supportive set of usefully accurate mental models of how the world works

You may be interested in the Meaningness project: http://meaningness.org

[dwaltrip]

I remember running across that site a few months ago when it was posted on HN. I really like his basic description of meaning as a nebulous, contextual, and participatory dynamic. I also remember some good points about how the universe is one cohesive thing, but the stuff inside varies immensely in the degree of connectedness, and that these connections are often quite nebulous.

Btw, here is the fixed link: https://meaningness.com/

And HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13136458

[eriknstr]

Page doesn't load.

[donw]

How deliciously Nihilistic.

[dwaltrip]

Working link: https://meaningness.com/

HN discussion from a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13136458

[kough]

Thanks, was on my mobile phone at the time I wrote my original comment.

[wallace_f]

> What makes some people more vulnerable to accepting things uncritically?

To add to this, I think an additional problem is academia.

So much of success and even prestige in academia is garnered through skills that do not involve critical thinking.

Who hasn't had a conversation with someone at the top of their field who has strong, factually unsupported, convictions about another?

Entire fields are subject to self-interested ideologies, rather than facts (i.e. my undergrad degree in economic science was more propaganda science at all): http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/12/13/economics-scien...

Just to clear up any notion that I'm being bitter, I graduated at the top of my class.

There needs to be entire coursework in critical thinking, starting in primary school. Unfortunately, most of my primary school education outside of maths and language was just rote memorization of facts.

[rdtsc]

> Why is it so hard to admit when they or someone they support makes a mistake?

One of the critical aspects is social pressure. If they ever made fun of the thing they are supposed to be convinced of, convinced others (publicly especially) against it, they will throw every cognitive, emotional, and other tricks against every believing that.

That is why public ministering and proselytization as a necessary step in participating in many religions -- it is not just to simply bring others into the faith, but it is to inoculate those who do it against every disavowing it. I posit that social media and everyone messaging each other false-hoods is part of this public display of belief. Later on going against that is very hard, because there is solid evidence of them making fun of it just a week before. Nobody wants to be seen flip-flopping or being a hypocrite.

2) Simple lack of practice in critical thinking? They are acting in good faith but just not seeing the con.

Interestingly critical thinking of often orthogonal to other proxies for what society thinks "intelligence" is. Often it goes the opposite way -- the smarter the person thinks they are (maybe the more diplomas they have hung on their wall), the less likely they are to ever change their positions, because they will:

a) Have to confront the fact that they have chosen or supported an invalid one before. And with 3 diplomas on the wall, that is surely not something they would do

b) They have a greater capability at rationalization. When the CEO has a bad day because they had a fight at home and goes to work and shuts down a project or fires someone publicly, they will rationalize it to themselves in many other ways except "I really was upset for another reason, and made a stupid mistake, I just wasn't thinking straight". They'll use their intelligence to make something up that sounds reasonable.

[empath75]

How important is it for you to know that the world is round? What would change in your life, if you didn't know that seemingly important fact? How about that homeopathic medicine is a fraud, or that global warming is man made or that vaccines don't cause autism? If you were wrong about all of those things, what changes about your life right away? That's why people don't exercise critical thinking. It just doesn't matter if you know the truth about things, for most people, most of the time. (Until it does, of course, and you die of cancer because you tried to pray it away instead of getting chemo).

[mattnewton]

All of those things actively affect others' wellbeing when put into public policy. And a democracy gives the masses the ability to put those beliefs in public policy.

Would it affect you tight away? No, but in a Generation our children contract more disease, less of them go into stem fields because of the distrust and dissonance that has been spread, and the air your children breath becomes more polluted.

[nine_k]

The belief that a particular quack medicine is effective may have cost Steve Jobs many years of life.

[glitcher]

> But to constantly ignore or avoid objective evidence? How do people not become ill at the thought?

Information bubbles. Too many people only consume information that aligns with their beliefs. To many, they don't feel that they are ignoring or avoiding objective evidence because they easily dismiss it as lies without any evidence.

[kough]

For an elaboration on your first answer, look up The Last Psychiatrist. Lots of interesting analysis of American society within the framework of narcissism. And to be honest I was convinced by a lot of his arguments, it's a very applicable framework.