[mjburgess]

If people were easy enough to convince that they had been deceived, then I'd not mind so much. It's the extraordinary lengths people will go to in order to protect the bullshit they acquired with far less scepticism. Genuinely wild leaps of logic, shallowness of reasoning, on-the-face-of-it non-sequiturs, claims offered as great defeaters which require only a single moment of reflection to see through.

This is the problem. The problem is how bullshit conscripts its dupes into this self-degradation and bad faith dialogue with others.

And of course, how there are mechanisms in society (LLMs now one of them) which correlate this self-degrading shallowness of reasoning -- so that all at once an expert is faced with millions of people with half-baked notions and a great desire to preserve them.

[danans]

> It's the extraordinary lengths people will go to in order to protect the bullshit they acquired with far less scepticism

That's the narrative bias at play. We all are subject to it, and for good reason. People need stories to help maintain a stable mental equilibrium and a sense of identity. Knowledge that contradicts the stories that form the foundation of their understanding of the world can be destabilizing, which nobody wants.

Especially when they are facing struggle and stress, people will cling to their stories, even if a lie or deception in the story might be harming them. Religious cults and conspiracy theories are often built on this tendency, but so is culture in general.

[mjburgess]

I think there is a certain sort of person who, if not "wants" this destabilization, doesn't really experience the alternative. People primarily relating to the world through irony, say. So, characteristically, socrates (, some stand up comedians, and the like) who trade in aporia -- this feeling of destablization.

[danans]

> I think there is a certain sort of person who, if not "wants" this destabilization, doesn't really experience the alternative.

I agree, but the ability/willingness to engage in that kind of destabilizing irony itself comes from a certain stability, where you can mess with the margins of your own stories' contradictions, without putting the core of your stories under threat.