> Studies have shown that having ideas challenged which you associate with your identity, and in turn your group identity, are responded to neurologically in the same manner as physical threats, short-circuiting logical thought processes and exacerbating tribalism.

Agree, psychology textbooks and papers are informative - however, I think it's much more interesting if you observe the overwhelming amount of available evidence first hand: internet arguments. What you describe here is not surprising if one is considering people's System 1 powered, realtime intuitive reaction. But more interesting is that people regularly (and on some topics, usually/always) are literally not able to release themselves from a belief, or often even question their belief - individually, or with assistance. And even more hilarious: very often this occurs in a scenario where the individual in question is mocking the intelligence of other people...and often the people they are mocking are literally artifacts of their imagination.

Were this not so common[1] and therefore taken for granted as an unavoidable part of reality like the weather, I think it would get massive amounts of attention. And that it doesn't get hardly any attention (other than people complaining about it incessantly) suggests to me that there is something very, very strange about "reality".

> I would say it comes down to intentionally constructing processes of interrogating our beliefs as a culture. What's much more important than your base level of intelligence entering into a conversation is your willingness to actually explore concepts within that conversation. To truly engage in a dialog. To not feel threatened by entertaining conflicting beliefs. If that itself can become part of our group identity, this process is no longer existentially threatening.

Ah....now this is something I rarely encounter. Isn't it weird that with all the "experts" in the world, many of them on payroll in relevant positions, and with all the calls for "more critical thinking" we hear in the media, *no one seems to have put two and two together? I mean, you and I are surely not dummies, but are we that much smarter than others? Or is there perhaps something else going on?

> Again though, I'm not saying there is actually a "one true way" to view the world objectively. It's a process we can choose to attempt to engage in, which we will never perfect, but brings much better results over time.

Maybe aiming for objectivity is not the correct goal? If the problem space is fundamentally subjective (I believe it is), aiming for objectivity will fail indefinitely. I think is is perfectly plausible that our success and obsession with science may now be causing net harm to us, and maybe has been for quite some time with no way for us to realize it (since that would at the very least require thinking, and that topic has become as taboo as questioning religion was a hundred years ago - it is literally enforced at several levels, including the government and mostly all media).

[1] There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water"?