As much as everyone hates to be fooled unwillingly, a lot of people seem to hate it even more to learn that they have been fooled and would rather not know that they have and prefer to go on seeing things in the way they were misled to see them. Sometimes people accept that they’ve been had, then claim to
be disillusioned, and feel that they are now more resistant to being fooled. It seems that very few people actually consider whether they have been fooled again, but in another way.

It doesn’t seem that when many people learn that what they thought was true is very likely to be false, that they wonder whatever new thing they learned to disprove their old beliefs may also be false in some way. I can understand that it’s very comfortable to just pick something that hasn’t been shown to be wrong yet and go with that. And I can understand being defensive when coming across something that threatens to show that you’re still wrong. But I don’t fully understand why some people just hang on to an idea for longer than it serves them to do so. Well, I do understand for the most part, I suppose, but not enough to know whether it necessarily has to be that way. Maybe it’s completely different for each individual person but it looks like a common pattern. I can accept that some people will never change their minds. But I feel that I need to think that most people’s minds can still change in important ways. I acknowledge that I may be fooling myself, though.

I apologize for not being specific as to what ideas and beliefs I may be alluding to or how I feel people are fooling themselves. I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind at the moment so it doesn’t matter right now.

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