Ego has been mentioned. Sunk cost fallacy plays a part. Combine those and people tend to over value the effort they've made to form their opinion, either through some form of information consumption or synthesis of known ideas/held opinions, while devaluing/doubting the existence other people's previous efforts. So, you often end up with two people who both think they're informed and assume the other person is just making up an opinion right now and failing to see their valuable insight.
Civilization. While it CAN be a stressful game if you crank up the difficulty to Deity, at prince or king, it’s just so much fun.
With the advanced setup options, you can set up a game for however you are feeling at the time, explore a large world (however full or empty you want it), expand and watch your empire cover the map, learn and find all the new stuff in the world, conquer everybody, be a neutral power broker, launch into space.
Cognitive dissonance. People see themselves as rational and intelligent and anything that counters that is very difficult to accept, so they double down.
Because people tie their egos to their opinions and beliefs. They see an attack on those as an attack on their person.
We are all like this to certain extents. For example, I am a firm believer of the right of the individual to make their own choices, and believe that attempts to remove a person's right to make choices morally abhorrent.
It’s a basic psychological need to be able to trust that your brain can be right. A lot of psychological problems can result if you don’t trust your own brain to be able to solve problems and cope with new information.
Some people don’t learn the value of accepting mistakes/failure as part of learning. As a result, they will associate being wrong with weakening the trust they have in their brain. They don’t want to believe that their brain may not come up with answers for the problems and changes they face in life. So they will deny that their brain is incorrect.
It’s an ugly insecurity, but it’s totally understandable from an evolutionary perspective. We need to be able to trust our brains to navigate life’s challenges. People need to be taught that it’s okay to make mistakes, and that admitting when you are wrong is an opportunity for personal growth.
Can you elaborate on what you mean psych problems when you don't trust your brain?
I have memory issues and so when I'm doing something more complex than muscle memory I write it down. So I don't trust myself on specific memory tasks, like phone numbers.
I’m not a psychologist, so I can’t explain the exact theory, but basically my understanding is that self-confidence and self-esteem are linked to the concept of self-efficacy, which means the trust that your mind will be able to cope with the challenges presented to it. Low self-esteem and self-confidence are linked to all kinds of insecurities and challenges functioning.
Disclaimer: I recently began working on my own low self-confidence with my therapist and she pointed me to a book, the contents of which I’m mostly regurgitating here. The book is “The Six Pillars of Self-esteem” by Nathaniel Branden.
Online it can become a competitive thing. They still want to “win” the argument even if the light comes on and they realize they have incorrect or incomplete information and the other side has made better arguments with better evidence. I suspect most people fall into this trap at some point in online forums. I definitely have. Guilty as charged.
And not to excuse this behavior, but part of it comes from poor sportsmanship and lack of grace from damned near everyone vis a vis Twitter/X/Facebook/reddit. People who “win” a competition like this are quick to gloat on how they “owned” the other person. Worse than this, trying to be reasonable and open-minded in these spaces often comes across as weakness.
There is a small movement of folks who call for radical empathy. This is where you do your level best to make a good faith effort to fully understand and see the merits of the other side’s arguments even if you don’t agree. That way lies learning and growth.
I don’t see admitting that I’m wrong as a weakness, and I’m not afraid to be the first to make a “concession”. I had a very few arguments on reddit turn into something positive (to the surprise of both parties) because I admitted I had made an incorrect assumption, my reasoning was flawed, or whatever. That made it “okay” for the other individual to admit they had made a mistake, too. Importantly, I didn’t use that as an opportunity to judge, criticize, or attack them. From there, we had a real conversation. It didn’t happen often, but it was great when it did!
Of course, most of the time people made cheap insults or just ignored me, but I was okay with that, too. Sure, it was disappointing, but the whole conversation was right there for anyone who wanted to read it. At least I wasn’t the one who looked like a petty asshole.
I’ve often had the same question as OP. I’ve read and understood the replies in this thread, and some of them are very good. I understand the points being made, but I still don’t get it, ya know? Everybody is wrong sometimes. There’s absolutely no shame in it, and it’s completely unrealistic to pretend that you never are. Plus, by keeping an open mind, being wrong is a fantastic way to learn!
I agree with you that it shouldn’t come across as weakness, and to a mature person it is sign of strength. I should have phrased it better, but my intention was to say that in these online forums many of the ‘spectators’ (who up and down vote, and/or pile on) seem to read nuanced arguments and open-minded thinking as being “weak”.
In other words, there’s often too many points scored for having an aggressive style, nasty sarcasm, insults, etc.
I’m not looking to self host anything or switch frontends. I just wish I could watch videos when people post Piped links without the extra hassle of navigating Piped’s interface enough to get the raw Youtube url. I suppose if there’s a public Invidious instance that actually works and everybody on Lemmy posting links to Piped switches to that public Invidious instance, that would wolve my issue, but I suspect Invidioue may not actually be any more reliable.
Tetanus is a bacteria that lives in soil. It’s only associated with rust because rust gives more surface area to allow dirt to accumulate on which bacteria can survive, and because iron objects are often sharp enough to pierce the skin. If you were cut with a gleaming razer that had just had soil smeared on it you’d have a good chance of contracting tetanus!
It's also because the bacterium in question is anaerobic, so it dies in an oxygen environment; rusting consumes oxygen, so it helps preserve the bacterium longer out of soil.
Edit: I had always been told this, but evidently it isn't true. The rust does not seem to have any effect on the bacterium that causes tetanus. Apologies for spreading misinformation.
Yeah, this is a strange mix of information being conveyed. Tetanus is indeed caused by an anaerobe, and it’s caused by a puncturing wound. The depth of the wound is what causes the oxygen-free environment. The correlation with iron, from my understanding, is solely because a nail can easily cause such a puncture. A nail stepped on in the general environment can easily innoculate the wound with with the relatively common Clostridium tetani bacteria, which causes tetanus. I don’t think rust is a factor, though I’ve been wrong before.
Yeah, you're right. This is something I was taught at one point, and I guess I never questioned it because it sounded plausible. Sorry! I have updated my comment to reflect this.
It’s frustrating, because the people who normally call this out are the people who are most likely to be the ones doing it.
They see people around them fail to think critically, they criticize them for that, and then turn around and never question their own opinions. Because “obviously I am right”.
Not accusing you of it, but I’m sure a lot of people reading this fall into that category. Maybe we all do.
You are right i always try to think in all ways but maybe i am biased? It’s just that during my school life i was never bullied but rather it was my classmates badmouthing my family, me, shaming my body, or insulting me so that the entire class would know etc. The attitude of people just randomly changes if you open up too much to them or be too friendly they don’t respect your boundaries. I just don’t know anymore i talk to people but i never try to get too close to them. I feel like i have changed in just these recent 6 months
You might have something there. I know it works the other way. I was going to post that most of the people I know just come out and say when they know they’ve been wrong. It stops it being a big thing. Admitting you’re wrong or you made a mistake takes all the embarrassment out of it because you now own the situation.
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