{"id":51312,"date":"2022-10-31T01:00:26","date_gmt":"2022-10-31T05:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=51312"},"modified":"2022-10-30T10:16:02","modified_gmt":"2022-10-30T14:16:02","slug":"qotd-the-true-believer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2022\/10\/31\/qotd-the-true-believer\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The True Believer"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; padding: 0px 0px 10px 25px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>A cult claimed that a flood would destroy the Earth on December 21, 1954. Only the faithful would be saved, because they&#8217;d be evacuated by a flying saucer. 12\/21\/54 passed without incident, of course, but what you&#8217;d expect to happen to the cult, didn&#8217;t \u2014 instead of everyone dropping out and moving on with their lives, most stayed, and their commitment to the cult&#8217;s leader actually <em>increased<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Why? From the Wiki summary, believers will persist in the face of overwhelming disconfirmation if:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A belief must be held with deep conviction and it must have some relevance to action, that is, to what the believer does or how he or she behaves.<\/li>\n<li>The person holding the belief must have committed himself to it; that is, for the sake of his belief, he must have taken some important action that is difficult to undo. In general, the more important such actions are, and the more difficult they are to undo, the greater is the individual&#8217;s commitment to the belief.<\/li>\n<li>The belief must be sufficiently specific and sufficiently concerned with the real world so that events may unequivocally refute the belief.<\/li>\n<li>Such undeniable disconfirmatory evidence must occur and must be recognized by the individual holding the belief.<\/li>\n<li>The individual believer must have social support. It is unlikely that one isolated believer could withstand the kind of disconfirming evidence that has been specified. If, however, the believer is a member of a group of convinced persons who can support one another, the belief may be maintained and the believers may attempt to proselytize or persuade nonmembers that the belief is correct.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This is Leftism in a nutshell, and it explains why SJWs are impervious to factual, rational argument. Boiled down as far as it will go: <em>Group<\/em> identity is so important to the Leftist that, faced with the choice between continued group membership and the evidence of xzhyr own lying eyes, xzhey will pick group membership, <em>every time<\/em>. This sets up its own feedback mechanism, such that disconfirmations of their dogmas actually increase their commitment \u2014 only the truest, holiest believers would keep believing in the face of the facts.<\/p>\n<p>Severian, <!--<a href=\"http:\/\/www.rottenchestnuts.com\/what-happens-if-the-ufo-actually-comes\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">-->&#8220;What Happens if the UFO Actually Comes?&#8221;, <em>Rotten Chestnuts<\/em>, 2019-09-25.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A cult claimed that a flood would destroy the Earth on December 21, 1954. Only the faithful would be saved, because they&#8217;d be evacuated by a flying saucer. 12\/21\/54 passed without incident, of course, but what you&#8217;d expect to happen to the cult, didn&#8217;t \u2014 instead of everyone dropping out and moving on with their [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,41,11,13],"tags":[1020,139,1462],"class_list":["post-51312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-quotations","category-religion","category-usa","tag-progressives","tag-psychology","tag-severian"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-dlC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51312"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77557,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51312\/revisions\/77557"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}