Ask Lemmy

The backfire effect. Here's a nice funny comic to explain it. https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe

You will realise that many people are too egotistic to back down.

Also consider the Yes Ladder - in sales, getting someone to say yes to something small makes them more likely to agree to other things.

It also applies to other contexts. If a police suspect refuses to talk, they ask innocuous questions because once someone starts talking, it's hard to stop.

Admitting incorrectness will make you more likely to concede other points too

I think we have an ecolutionary predisposition to be very defensive when we feel threatened. Add that to a social environment where we are CONSTANTLY and artificially condititioned to be threatened, considering that emotional intelligence and the ability to articolate and understand your own thoughts (let alone other's) are virtually never taught if not en passant and indirectly (and often the wrong this are taught) and you have the perfect recipe for the Tower of Babel.

Humankind's inherent incommunicability of internal thought is paired with an artificial and political cooptation of our survival instincts, the ones we evolved to defend ourselves from the people that a re manipulating us right now. That's the reason antiauthoritarian thought is often patologized. They name the cure a sickness so that we keep ourselves under the Veil

Read up on cognitive biases.

People are social animals. We form groups and we stick with them. Some of our cognitive biases are very clearly geared toward preserving the cohesion of the group. The truth is very much secondary to group cohesion.

Individuals vary a lot, however. And some individuals are much more open to changing their mind than others. Groups are stronger when they have a variety of different personalities within them. Different people can have different roles within the group and help it adapt to changes.

If you're genuinely interested, then there are people studying and talking about this (beyond the expertise of Lemmy). There's a fantastic podcast I listen to that talks in detail and there author has written a book about how minds change. Here's a specific episode (out of many) that is relevant, but I would really recommend listening to all:

https://youarenotsosmart.com/2022/05/01/yanss-231-why-we-often-cant-choose-what-we-believe-thanks-to-the-fact-that-certainty-is-a-feeling-and-not-a-conclusion/

I'm not an expert, but…

even when doing so wouldn’t necessarily undermine their broader position

Conceding one wrong is proof that you, your view or argumentation, is flawed. Conceding just one minor point puts every point's validity into question.

Even if you can conclude that it's irrelevant both factually there's social and emotional aspects to it.

We are driven not only by reason, but in large part by emotion, and our ingrained social psyche.

Even if it is factually irrelevant, conceding is confirming fault, and may cause anxiety about repercussions in terms of social standing (how you are seen by the others) and for your argument as a whole (will you be trusted when something you said was wrong).

What you describe as building identity is building that identity around a set of beliefs and group of people.

Depending on the group and beliefs, two aspects come into play:

Group dynamics of in-group and out-group. Loyalty may be more important than reason. The own group is likely seen as better than the "others". Others may be seen as inferior or as enemies.

If you acknowledge just one point integral to the groups beliefs, what does that mean for you as a part of that group? Will you lose all your social standing? Will you lose being part of the group?

Somewhat unrelated and related at the same time, because self-identity is also a construct to build stable group associations; building your confidence and self-identity around a set of values, conceding on some of them means losing stability and confidence in yourself, your worth.

The human psyche is still largely driven by genetics developed in ancient times, and the environment.

As a social create, it was critically important to be able to join groups and stay in them, to have strong and stable bonds. This persists today, in our psyche and behaviors.

It can feel a bit lopsided - if I'm having a conversation about some divisive thing, and grant a point, even a small one: the other person will probably keep harping on the thing I was wrong about. Meanwhile, that person will never admit they were wrong about anything.

It's a symptom of treating these conversations like debates. After you 'lose' a couple, you're conditioned not to give an inch.

Very often on Lemmy, and maybe social media in general, discussions are pointless. People are not there to see the other side, they are there to fight for what they already think.

All these keyboard warriors think they are fighting a battle, weather its about defending trans rights or fighting antivax opinions, or whatever.

Lemmy is worse than reddit in almost every measureable way. The reason I haven't gone back to reddit is purely out of principle and it's not a principle if it's not costing you anything.

Damn your opinions suck lmao. Were you the reason Blahaj defederated from feddit.uk?

Cuz it would be funny if one user could annoy a community so much that they decide to defedreate the entire instance.

Also the above comment being right next to:

Longest continuous edging streak. Hell, I might already hold that record anyway.

Perfect example of a reddit user lol.

I dunno, man.

All I know is that open-mindedness is far less common than I’d once assumed.

And there are those people who aren’t actually interested in truth, but are instead interested in “winning,” because they see every conversation as a power struggle, with a winner and a loser (and as such, language is merely a tool to be wielded for gaining and maintaining social power, not actually finding out things for their own sake). Part of that game can include pretending to be curious and interested in truth, because of the positive image that can project for them.

When those of us who are actually curious about the world interact with one of these types, it can be quite a confusing and frustrating experience if we don’t know what we’re dealing with.

Oh boy. If you really wanna understand this, there are like 80 episodes of the podcast You Are Not So Smart that look at this from different angles.

There’s not really a single reason. It’s a lot of inter-related ones.

I'm not here to rehash any particular political event or take sides

checks post history out of curiosity oh.

Because I am always right obviously

Hmmm. There are a lot more opinions about this than I thought there'd be.

Personally, and without any real evidence? I think it's just because conceding a point somehow feels as if it compromises your whole position. Like you're getting scored, and admitting you're wrong gives the other person a point and undermines your entire argument.

For example, it feels like many people bind their identity to a cause so tightly that admitting any fault feels like a betrayal of the whole.

That's exactly it in a lot of cases. More on that here:

https://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html

Probably cause kids ridicule you hard if you are wrong or stand out. When you grow up, you might learn to have your own opinions, but you might never unlearn the various defens mechanisms and feelings of ridicule that developed as a result of kids around you scrutinizing you and your opinions.

They don't want to hear it cause it is uncomfortable. And they feel like they are loosing respect and getting attacked. They rather sweep it under the rug and forget about it, sometimes not learning from it at all. Humans are also lazy.

Being wrong gracefully is a learnt skill.

In general the small points are not actually related to the overall point or are the rare exception to larger trends and are either meant to derail the discussion or show that the other person is going for gotcha points.

One thing I would add to all the good answers here: It stems from a lack of contact with real-world, messy, difficult environments.

Usually people who come into contact with harsh reality a lot in their daily life are pretty humble. They don't get stuck on one way of looking at things, they don't refuse to admit obvious good sense arguments. Even if they get to the point that they're super-qualified, they just kind of have common sense and are approachable. Mostly, not always. I think this is why people kind of fall in love with certain types of environments with a lot of challenge or "win or lose" aspect to them: Business, sports, law, war, esports, mountain climbing, whatever. It's like you get to prove yourself and all your bullshit against the harsh light of day, and a lot of times what you learn is that some genius theory wasn't really all that solid once it got exposed to the real world.

But then, a whole lot of first-world modern life isn't like that. You can just go around your entire life talking about economics or politics and just be wrong as hell and you never get to find out. So it's easy to be super-confident, and it's obviously a lot more comfortable to be always right about everything than it is to admit when someone's maybe successfully poking a hole in your genius.

I think it sometimes depends on how much they have internalised their perspective on a topic as a core part of their personality.

If they perceive a disagreement with their perspective as a direct attack on their person, that can lead to subjectively bad outcomes.

There is also the possibility that what you see as a small point is a critical point to them.

Because team mentalilty.

Many people will instinctively disagree just because you happen to be on the other team.

Let's take political ideologies, they all want the same thing:

Good schools, good healthcare, good geriatric care, good infrastructure and so on.

Where they differ is how they get there.

The left want the government to provide these services, the right want the private sector to do it.

To have a productive discussion on how to solve society's problems, I find it better to talk about the issue itself and avoid branding yourself as a part of a particular movement.

You have to do the heavy lifting, not them IMO.

For example the why should we help lazy people?!! I wonder what should we actuallydo with them then? Like you're too lazy to work should we let them die because of their "stupidness" and errors they made?

Never changed anyone's mind right away but you get to talk about the underlying reasons why they hate "lazy" people, and it's often something (shocker) that has nothing to do with "lazy" people.

For example.

Edit: I use the rightwing trope here just as an example. I'm the laziest person I know!

It depends a lot in which context the "discussion" is taking place.

• at a dinner table it's more about small talk and performing... "social grooming" as you would observe it in ape societies.
• at official events, people either have a job or an established opinion, they are in a stressful environment that does not actually allow them to make rational evaluations
• in school / academia / media, the particular response and opinion will affect your grade, social standing and future career opportunities

In all of those situations, it should be obvious why the "dominant" position does need to give an inch, for social reasons.

Even in absolutely perfect conditions, calm environments, prepared discussion participants, "objective neutrality" towards the outcome, individuals will have different opinions on importance of topics or methods and will discard "details" or see them as irrefutable counter examples.

Basically, there are lot of (subconscious) things going on that prevent an "objective discussion" from happening. I'm sure you can find specific examples of what could be influencing people in specific circumstances once you look for them.

People are very reluctant to admit they're wrong in general. If you then have an emotional connection to the topic, even more so.

Hot take: Lack of world-shattering psychedelic experiences.

Regular take: media designed to isolate or at least divide. Plus general trend of less in person daily contact

People will rather justify doublethink than admit they are wrong.

Because that would shatter their worldview which is essential to how they understand the world and themselves in it.

Because it conflicts with their personal identity. If I point out being “pro-life” while also denying people’s right to health care for that life is hypocritical, I’m calling you a hypocrite from your perspective.

Pride and ego

I'm sure there's a trove of psychology research we could look through instead of speculating