Why people can't handle the truth?

Your title is un-self critical and condescending, so your conversations probably aren’t terribly productive in either direction.

That turn of phrase has never been used by someone conversing in good faith and with an open mind.

Edit: Jack Nicholson excepted

Not sure if this is helpful, but my take is:

Because in most cases, what is assumed to be “truth”is subjective. If you’re talking political. More often things are blurred with regards to truth as most things tend not to be empirically true, but instead, emotionally true.

For example;

“All conservatives are Nazis!”

This is inherently untrue. Yet I see every day- people who believe this to be the absolute truth. Same thing with-

“All liberals want to do is make our children gay!”

Also untrue. But when you try and correct them, they will almost always entrench themselves within their own version of the truth and disregard any form of critical thinking.

Have you considered that they probably feel the same way about you? That you're disregarding what they say and pushing back with your own outlook?

Humans are more influenced by emotions than logic, which means that critical thinking alone may not convince them. Only those who are receptive to logical reasoning can be persuaded.

A video about it

"I think it's very easy to convince people they are wrong."

"Actually, here's all these studies that prove that the opposite is-"

"Well I don't believe that."

People don't like being wrong.

Many reasons.

• the message seems fishy
• the messenger is not charismatic/trustworthy enough
• there's lack of clarity in the message
• it contradicts personal model of reality, and these form the cornerstones of our identity, thus can't be changed just like that
• etc, etc, etc

That's great question! From psychological perspective, people like to think that they are right. If they encounter some person or situation that threatens their believes they have three choices:

• accept that they were wrong - might cause some unpleasant emotions, risks being perceived as not trustworthy/knowledgeable
• assume the other party is wrong - the belief is upheld, no negative consequences
• find some condition under which the belief in question does not apply - middle ground Of course, there are many situational and personal qualities that affect how easily person accepts other view as their own.

Eg. if you are self-proclaimed expert on some topic, naturally opinions different than yours are wrong, at least to you. However, if you approach your expertise with attitude of trying to understand underlying principles, it would be easier to accommodate for new, sometimes very surprising facts or theories.

Also, humans are very susceptible to biases, meaning the world they perceive is different to what "objectively" is. One of them is attribution bias, which causes people to assume some results depend on their actions - even if there in no basis for that. This bias started the whole "vaccines cause autism" belief. The reaserch paper which started the whole thing is based on a survey directed to parents of autistic childen asking, do they think autism of their child was caused by a vaccine. It is ridiculous belief for most nowadays, but it provided a clear cause of the disease for those parents.

I know my writing can be confusing sometimes, so let me know if you would like some clarification.

Be honest, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much does this question have to do with your constant posting about how the maaaaan, maaaaan, is holding down all your crypto "investments" and they're due to go to the moon any day now as soon as the cabal of lizard people who run the world is eradicated?

I'd be interested in a example. What is an example of a truth that you have found it difficult to get people to accept?

I think we underestimate how much normalisation is a survival mechanism. Personally I struggled to acknowledge the 'truth' about my traumatic childhood but I can see now that I did this because it was easier to get through life.

Because we're emotional creatures first, we default to what's familiar or comfortable. Logic/critical thinking take sustained practice and a lot of effort. There's a study that suggests that many of our conscious choices are simply post-hoc rationalizations for decisions made in the unconscious.

I absolutely no longer trust anyone that insists they're naturally and perfectly logical, they are unquestionably hiding some fixation or personal opinion which--if challenged--will make them unravel in the worst fashion.

It's not simply that people believe specific things, but that they define themselves in terms of what they believe.

And in fact, it's often the case that people invest in specific beliefs not because they've reasoned their way to that conclusion, but simply because they've effectively picked it off the rack of possible beliefs as the one that most clearly represents whatever image of themselves they wish to promote - it's the position held by smart people or enlightened people or trendy people or moral people or strong people or whatever.

So if you try to argue against their belief, you face two immediate and generally insurmountable obstacles.

First, they're psychologically invested in the belief, so if you call it into question, you're not just threatening the belief - you're threatening their self-image. Anything that casts doubt on the belief by extension casts doubt on their self-affirming presumption that holding the belief demonstrates their intelligence/morality/whatever.

And second, since it's likely the case that they didn't reason their way to the position in the first place, they can't becreasoned away from it anyway. So itvinevitably shifts back to their psychological investment in the position, and your attempts at reason are a distraction at best.

I think you could argue that this is an example of cognitive dissonance. It is uncomfortable to come face to face with new information that contradicts your beliefs or actions, and it requires energy if you want to integrate that new information into your worldview and adjust your actions. It is much easier to deny that information, even when it is clearly true.

For example, when it came out that aspartame might cause cancer, if you (like me) have eaten/drunk a lot of products containing it or have had a strong belief that it was completely safe, then it may be more comfortable for you to criticize WHO or think "well, it's not really relevant for me because my family isn't predisposed for cancer." If you didn't care about aspartame or artificial sweeteners before, you will probably readily accept that there may or may not be a cancer link.

No they don't. 🧌

Really though, look up brain plasticity.

When it comes to changing someone's mind, I believe it helps to first question whether there's even a need to do so. If there is, then asking questions is vital. You can't just hit someone with Facts & Logic™ and expect that it will immediately undo something they may have had drilled into them since childhood, or something that requires recognition that would challenge other dearly held beliefs (e.g. "if my dad did a bad thing, then is he not the great, infallible man I thought he was? If he's a bad person and people tell me I look and act just like him, does that mean I'm a bad person, too?"). Finding out why someone believes what they believe, and taking time to understand it yourself and validate their experience is instrumental in opening up people's hearts and minds. Or, at least, that's been my experience and is therefore true to me. 😉

Is there even an objective truth though? I’d say there technically is, but I think we all have our own subjective versions of what our “truth” is that rise and fall like a sine wave around the straight line of objective Truth.

Just remember that what is popular is not always true, and what is true is not always popular.

Could you make an example? They most likely see you the same way.

Most people's values and beliefs are all wrapped up with their sense of self, so if those beliefs get attacked, they feel like they're being attacked.

Avoiding this is very tricky and counter-intuitive, but there are techniques. Look up "street epistemology" if you'd like to know more. There's a guy on YouTube who goes to college campuses and has discussions with passersby regarding their beliefs. Basically, it's asking people "What do you believe?" and "Why do you believe that?" Like I said, though, it's tricky and takes a lot of practice, and it's really easy to fall back into old patterns again.

People don’t like making mistakes. I don’t know if it’s innate or a cultural phenomenon, but in my experience, the immediate reaction to a mistake is a bad feeling—even for inconsequential ones in a friendly environment. Being wrong is not only making a mistake, but living by it. There’s a much greater incentive to not be wrong. The easiest way for an individual to “not be wrong” (in their view) is to assume that the other is wrong, so they reject their hypotheses in a discussion.

Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

The older you get the more you believe that your view of the world is right. This makes sense. Children still need to find out how everything works. They get corrected all the time because the formed wrong assumptions and opinions.

However, Imagine if you checked your smartphone’s manual every time you used it. Imagine your colleague had to fetch their reference books whenever you asked them something about their job. No-one would survive for more than a week.

This issue is a research point in AI: How ‘certain’ do you want an AI to be? Always second-guessing itself would render it as useless as always assuming it was right.

There was a study about sometihng simiilar a while back. It was posted on Reddit, so if that site hasn't imploded yet, you might be able to find it. I don't remember the whole thing, but it said a lot of people rather double-down on their already accepted beliefs than open themselves up to new results. It wasn't everyone, of course and it wasn't for all topics either. Maybe someone can go find that study and post it here for OP.

People just make up their own truth and say that you're the one in need of "truth." It's a product of the "alternative facts" era that mainly Trump ushered in and others have picked up. If your facts do no support the preferred agenda, it's just dismissed as "fake news." Easy-peacy.

When you interact with people, you often do it on your grounds, i.e. in your area of expertise. This inherently means that you are more likely to be right in a discussion. I believe this transfers to other areas of your life – where you are not the expert. So you automatically assume you’re right even if you aren’t. However, in my experience this doesn’t apply to situations where you are very aware that you are the (intellectually) subordinate person, e.g. when talking to a doctor.

Confirmation bias is strong with some.

Pride/ego

Every person I know who is one of those people that can't be persuaded by logical arguments backed by irrefutable sources seems to have a powerful sense of ego/pride trending towards narcissistic. My father is like that, my stepdaughter-in-law, my former best friend, my kids former football coach, they're all people think they're smarter than everyone else, they still suffer from the same self doubt we all face but instead of facing those self doubts and finding teachable moments to learn and grow from, they instead doubledown on how great they are, and how much better than you they think they are.

https://twitter.com/juliusgoat/status/1679817901350567936?s=46&t=93HlSZBQz_rGRu4plCicig

Has the answer.

Here's a fun thought experiment: you'd think that it's because people don't like being told they're wrong, because you'd make them seem stupid in public and their pride & ego will kick in and they'll do everything so that they don't appear like they're wrong, but what's funny is that they have the exact same attitude also when online with anonymous pseudonyms. It should in principle be easier to just say "mea culpa, I'm wrong" online since you're dealing with random internet strangers and no one knows who you are, but no, you will very rarely see that.

It's called liberal propaganda.