[klabb3]

Upvotes and disagreeing comments.. hard to parse. Anyway, my understanding is that Plato’s cave refers to being bamboozled a core lie about the world, and then when someone tells you how you’re wrong they will reject it because they lack the ability or language to process the alternative view, or it conflicts with their identity that they’d rather stay in the world they know. In Plato’s cave, it’s iirc a former prisoner who tells the other prisoners, ie someone they previously trusted. Yet, they are still upset and violently reject his message.

Is that the same statement as Carl Sagan’s? No. I’m just casually associating. To me they both seem to cover the same aspect of human psychology, our core beliefs that basically cannot be altered later in life.

Moreover, it’s really interesting that people only seem to agree about this observation when it comes to other people–they are stuck in their ways, they are beyond salvation. Very few accept that they themselves suffer from this.