Post No.: 0741
Furrywisepuppy says:
If we’re unwavering zealots then can we ever believe that our worldviews are wrong? Even past facts can be reinterpreted in favour of our positions…
If a political party wins an election and things are going hunky-dory then supporters of an opposing party will believe that things would’ve been even better had their party won. If things are going dreadfully then supporters of the incumbent party will believe that things would’ve been even worse had another party won. For someone who supports the current government, all successes will be attributed to this current government while all failures will be attributed to the legacies of a previous government(s), with virtually no limit on how far back in time one will go to find another party or leader to blame.
If one’s worldview doesn’t appear loudly supported (except within one’s echo chamber) then one might claim that one’s worldview represents the ‘silent majority’ i.e. that more people actually hold the same worldview but just won’t let themselves be publicly known for one reason or another. Or if another side appears particularly popular then one might claim that they only represent the ‘loud minority’.
If one side is accused of peddling fake news then they’ll accuse the other side of peddling fake news about fake news(!) If one doesn’t get one’s way then one can claim the system is rigged. The most basic delusion is persistently believing that a truth is a lie or vice-versa. Despite having no solid and unambiguous evidence, if the overwhelming status quo isn’t conforming to one’s desired worldviews, one can always claim that there’s a conspiracy headed by a powerful group that’s keeping the truth hidden from the masses. And other people are the fuzzy ‘sheeple’, never us!
If one gives up or u-turns on something then one will be branded as weak, yet if one carries on then one will be branded as gormless. So if you change your mind or apologise then you’ll get reputationally punished for doing so (and possibly legally admit your guilt), yet if you don’t then you’ll get reputationally punished for being stubborn. So ‘determined or brave’ can alternatively be interpreted as ‘obstinate or foolhardy’. Was a shortcut efficient or lazy? Was something a bad design or user error?
Politicians can be damned for forming a contingency plan because they’ll be accused of having no confidence in their main plan, yet will be damned for not making one if the worst-case scenario materialises. Governments can be simultaneously criticised for failing to reduce a deficit and for failing to spend more on public services. There are many ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ or ‘double bind’ situations for governments.
If the government intervenes to try to prevent something bad happening then we’ll complain about them interfering with our liberties, yet if something bad happens where the government failed to intervene then we’ll complain about them again for allowing it to happen! So we can directly hold someone responsible if they do something bad themselves, yet also indirectly hold them responsible if someone else does something bad because the former failed to intervene to stop the latter i.e. we can always place a fault on a targeted person/group if we biasedly have it in for them. So we might hold liable innocent Muslims for not ‘keeping all of their ‘own kind’ in check’ whenever a small handful of Islamists commit terror, and thus we can maintain our worldview that all Muslims are dangerous. (Osama Bin Laden didn’t speak for all Muslims even though he tried to make it sound like he did – just like no American can speak for all Americans, and that’s why we have votes.) If we make a mistake, we might still blame someone else for ‘not spotting our mistake sooner and telling us’(!)
If a football manager brings on substitutes who then score then one could interpret that as them being a genius, or conversely as them being incompetent for not putting these players on the pitch from the outset! During a bad game, are the players who play, or the manager who selected them, at fault? Do we blame the contestants who suck, or the people who cast them to appear on a reality TV competition? Do we blame the elected leaders, or those who elected them into power? In representative democracies, we vote for the politicians who in turn vote for the laws and taxes that affect us – so if we don’t like how particular politicians vote, isn’t that our fault, the electorate, for voting for those particular politicians? Is it their fault for constantly misleading us or our fault for being repeatedly fooled by their charms? If managers get sacked for picking the wrong players then should the electorate get sacked for picking the wrong leaders?! No one wants to blame themselves, particularly for any society-wide problems.
If one doesn’t retort then one will be deemed guilty of an accusation. Yet if one offers a barrage of defensive remarks then one will be ‘protesting too much’ and thus be deemed guilty again!
If someone wastes or pollutes, or even harms or kills, a lot, then they can always rationalise to themselves that they’re not that bad or as bad as the worst example. But why not compare to the best instead of the worst?
If there have been no recent terrorist attacks in the country then someone who objects to mass surveillance will argue what’s the point in mass surveillance because there seem to be no threats to watch out for? Yet if there are terrorist attacks then that same person could again argue what’s the point in mass surveillance because it doesn’t seem to work? Thus even contradictory evidence can be interpreted as evidence that supports one’s worldview.
Post No.: 0525 highlighted how many words of wisdom involve contradictory statements!
One side will argue that the other side shouldn’t have tried something because that caused a failure, but this other side will argue that it only failed because they were stopped from going far enough. So a ‘pro gun’ supporter, after a mass shooting incident involving a semi-automatic rifle, could still believe that these rifles are beneficial for civilian ownership by arguing that if everyone had them then all such incidents would be prevented.
If weapons of mass destruction cannot be found despite several independent weapons inspections then one could still claim that they’re being extremely well hidden and thus an invasion is still justified. It’s considered ‘necessary for global peace’ if our side has nuclear weapons, but considered ‘an incitement of violence’ if an opposing nation has them. Of course both sides will think this! If one invades or strikes first then it can be justified as ‘pre-emptively saving more lives’. One may claim something as a ‘necessary evil’. And one can always make oneself appear like the victim, such as ‘someone else made me do it’.
We can be accused of being either a sell-out or a dunderhead for taking or not taking some lucrative offer, respectively. We can be called honourable or dumb for telling the truth. It’s ‘smart’ if we do something that gives us an unfair advantage, but ‘underhand’ if someone else does the exact same thing if we didn’t think of it!
If someone gets conned then one can either hold liable the unscrupulous supplier or the suggestible buyer. Some condemn the thieves while others criticise those who leave the temptation of valuables unsecured. We collectively commit tons of false dichotomies because we’re each loyal to different sides of a case and cannot meet somewhere in the middle.
If a strategy doesn’t seem to work then we might convince ourselves that sometimes things get worse before they get better, thus we can continue to believe in our worldviews and plan. If research doesn’t give us an answer we desire then we might conclude that we just need more research, or we might simply keep moving the goalposts. And it doesn’t matter how outlandish, who’s inculpated, or how hard to prove/disprove a claim/counter-claim is – in fact, the more outlandish and especially the harder it is to disprove, the more we’ll be convinced of something we believe in, because if we think our hypothesis cannot be disproved then we’ll fallaciously conclude that there’s a great chance for it somehow being true. If a self-proclaimed ‘psychic’ cannot perform in carefully controlled conditions for a scientific experiment then they’ll claim that it’s just an off day or some other excuse. People who believe in the paranormal may interpret ambiguous results (even contradictory results that cover the entire spectrum of possible results) as supporting their worldviews, or they’ll constantly claim that hard evidence is simply not found yet. The possible excuses we can make for anything are infinite. We’re not intuitively good impartial truth-seekers because we’re intuitively good partial excuse-makers!
We can basically pick our arguments depending on which apparently support the conclusions we’ve already settled on i.e. those that’ll confirm our existing worldviews. We like to highlight all the times we were right yet conveniently ignore or forget all the times we were wrong. We can always believe ‘they were only joking’ or ‘it was only banter’ if a member of our ingroup or a person we idolise makes a crude comment that raises a question about their character. But of course this excuse isn’t extended to those we don’t support who make similarly crude comments. They’re creeps! Someone being ‘overbearing’ versus ‘caring’ with us with the exact same attentions and actions can just depend on whether we fancy the person or not!
If only one guest is invited to speak on a show and he/she is a supporter of a particular political party then, depending on our bias, he/she was only chosen to promote or be critiqued for his/her chosen political positions. This is how an overall neutral news channel can be simultaneously accused by all sides of the political spectrum for being biased against them! It’s like giving even one second of publicity to any view other than one’s own is considered too much to accept and ‘they’re biased’ (and we’re not ever).
And so on and on and on… Sometimes you just can’t win! You’ll always have critics. And you’ll always have supporters, and be virtually always able to interpret information as fitting with your worldviews.
In summary, in many cases, we can always continue to interpret the world – even contradictory events – as confirming our existing biases and worldviews. Our dogmatic worldviews are, to us, virtually effectively unfalsifiable regardless of what information we’re presented with. We can continue to believe in whatever we want to believe in despite strong contradictory or contrary evidence, and it doesn’t require intentional deception either – just unconsciously biased intuitions and rationalisations.
Because we cannot run multiple worlds in parallel to compare which worldview is more right or just than another, we compare the one world we do have with a hypothetical counterfactual one based on our own biased assumptions. With questions about right or wrong in terms of what we ‘ought’ to do, we can always choose, and constantly change or twist, our own definitions or measures to decide what is most ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ anyway, to keep our worldviews stable. For example, we could claim that safety is paramount if this suits our desired conclusion, or value-for-money is if this does instead.
Therefore people can have completely opposing opinions and worldviews despite everyone claiming to be reasonable. But the most reasonable people are those who understand that their worldviews are only one of potentially many. Reasonable individuals know the difference between subjectivity and objectivity, and when something is an opinion or a fact. And they value the truth more than their own self-interests or worldviews.
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