[rstuart4133]

> When is it ever advantageous to reject truths?

Of course it is. Trump is a living example of how advantageous it can be for someone to reject almost obvious, self evident truths.

That's an egregious example. Consider another example I saw raised by an anthropologist. It was a tribe that had only bows and spears being being overrun another tribe armed with modern weapons. They survived courtesy of their shaman convincing the young men some complicated ritual made them immune to the bullets. This gave them the courage to take the interlopers on, and a lot of them dying in the process. Obviously the young men who died weren't better off, but their relatives got to continue the young mens blood line as a consequence. The ritual was complicated enough to make it plausible the men killed got it wrong.

Sorry no link (it was here on HN). But if you google "origins of religion war immune to bullets" you will find numerous other examples, and of course the search term hints at a popular theory about why it's sometimes advantageous to reject truths.

[cubefox]

Okay, the anthropology example is convincing, if far-fetched. It seems this couldn't realistically happen in a modern society.

The Trump example is arguably beside the point because the previous poster talked about a truth being harmful for the whole society, not for an individual.