Ordinary Banana

"update your beliefs" makes it sound like there's a spreadsheet in your skull and you go in and change a value, no big deal

actually finding out you were deceived or wrong has major emotional costs - a sense of betrayal, shame, the beckoning horror of chaos

the meager rewards of insight and humility are hardly a match - rational utility maximizers should often choose to stay deceived

and almost nobody is a reality enthusiast for its own sake. most of the emotional reward and risk is of being SEEN BY OTHERS as wrong

seeking out information that challenges your deeply held beliefs is good but also like sticking your hand in the fire over and over

betrayal and shame suck as emotions so you can see why we'd want to be in groups with relatively stable, widely-shared worldviews

a culture might also provide tools for holding beliefs while minimizing the cost of updating: irony, goofiness, levels of anonymity, fiction