after years of contrary experience and an impossible to quantify amount of evidence deep down its still difficult for me to believe that most people lack the ability to reflect on what theyre saying and thinking and to check if it makes sense.

i dont really talk to people in real life about any "political" topics anymore, but sometimes my wife does, or, to say it more accurately, sometimes ill hear people bring it up to her. yesterday she was on the phone with this guy that i know is ostensibly intelligent. [...]

and he says, yeah, [this person or group] is just crazy evil, they're horrible and evil + bad. and she asks, innocently, with no real point to make, what do you mean, what evil thing have they done? and he gives the same kind of spiel, and shes like, can u name something specific

and theres this long silence. like a minute long. and the guy says, i cant think of anything specific. i know there are specific things but i cant think of any.

and deep down its just impossible for me to believe that in that moment that person experiences no self reflection

i mean im wrong about stuff all the time. ive been wrong about things, someone teaches me something, shows me how im being wrong about something, happens all the time, has happened a ton, in a way i kind of like it. its like losing in a sport you ultimately enjoy playing.

but if that happened to me, i dont know how i could not self reflect and just think for a second and be like, wow, i really was just saying something i couldnt substantiate at all. not to have even a second of doubt or reflection, i truly just cant believe its a real thing.

i think the most maddening thing is that you get this behavior by what appear to be otherwise rational actors. it seems as though if there was really this level of lack of awareness uniformly spread out you'd often see people at work who forgot to wear pants, things like that.

theres a part of me that just cant accept that u can show someone a deck of cards + count them in front of them + show theres 52 cards there + they'll still say "theres 30 cards there". ive been banging my head against this wall for my entire life and i still dont think its real

interesting it seems to exist totally independent of IQ. people who are exceptional within their own particular field often display essentially no ability to reason while "dumb" people can often be difficult to deceive and are inherently skeptical. really profoundly fascinating

the really crazy thing, as long as i unintentionally made a thread about this, is when u first get into analyzing arguments, from any side, lets say theres like rhetorical tricks u can use. like pointing to one thing and using it as a case in a way that is dishonest, or something

at first u see people doing it, and u think, "ah, well yeah, you're doing that intentionally because of your view, i get it", but then you did deeper and a lot of them arent. they dont even realize theyre doing it. its like the view is using them, acting through them. incredible

theres something deeper that i think only a few people have really "dug into" because of how well manifested it is by new tech and stuff, about how "views" are really almost like suprabiological creatures, they're like meta human entities made of information that act. they act.

theres a trap here people usually fall into when they get into stuff like this imo, where the jump then is, "yeah, worldviews are bad, they're inherently bad". i dont think its that simple. theyre more like those huge robot suits people wear that can take u over if ur not careful