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From the article: A new study explored reasons why some citizens of the former East Germany chose not to view files that the Stasi, the notorious secret police force, kept of them when the archives were opened in 1991. Aside from claiming that the information is not relevant, most people stated that they wanted to avoid finding out that one of their colleagues or family members was a Stasi informant and that viewing those files would impact their ability to trust others. The study was published in Cognition.

Curiosity, the desire to obtain knowledge, is one of the defining traits of human beings. Yet there are situations when people willingly choose not to know. This phenomenon — deliberate ignorance — has been attracting a growing interest from researchers in various scientific disciplines.

When a society faces a fundamental transition, such as moving from war to peace or from dictatorship to democracy, people must find ways to interpret, remember or ignore past experiences and include that interpretation into the collective memory of the group in a way that allows the society to move forward.

> Aside from claiming that the information is not relevant, most people stated that they wanted to avoid finding out that one of their colleagues or family members was a Stasi informant and that viewing those files would impact their ability to trust others.

Hey look! Cognitive Dissonance!

I think if Aliens ever land on earth we will see a lot of this.

>Curiosity, the desire to obtain knowledge, is one of the defining traits of human beings. Yet there are situations when people willingly choose not to know. This phenomenon — deliberate ignorance — has been attracting a growing interest from researchers in various scientific disciplines.

This is not about how to solve a puzzle, or why bumblebees can fly, or how the Moon was formed....!!

This is like finding out that your best neighbor is Jewish and for some stated absurd and obscure reason you have to deal with it.

I can imagine that some folks were forced/suckered into the Stasi-situation and are deeply sorry. That doesn't make it an excuse yet finding out about them forces an opinion, and an emotion, a separation, and all that stuff we actually don't like about that world war - what we don't like about any war.

No! I won’t look!

That's not what cognitive dissonance is.

Sure it is. They care about truth but also don’t want to know it.

From Wikipedia: In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the perception of contradictory information, and the mental toll of it.

CD is clinging to an untrue belief in the face of solid evidence that they're wrong. It's not choosing to not know something.

They cling to the untrue belief that they care about truth although the evidence - the fact they'd rather avoid finding out about the past of their colleagues - contradicts it.

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> Curiosity ... is one of the defining traits of human beings.

That's a curious claim.

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I thought the dissonance was how it makes you feel, aka the feeling of unease at realizing information you believe is contradictory

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Cognitive Dissonance is the belief in contradictory information which is exactly the issue here.

It’s that too.

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No. Not even close.
Commenting off the headline alone should be a bannable offense in this sub...

I think that applies in some very specific situations. Generally the more knowledge/skills/abilities someone has, the more adaptable they are. Could be wrong, but ability to adapt generally helps out with survival from what I understand.

The same reason why some choose to beleive into 2000 years old fairy tales… makes life easier.

Not better… not more fulfilling… average person perfectly happy if tomorrow is as today… as a matter of fact, they will stay “happy” even if tomorrow slightly worse than today… especially if you can point to other people and “explain” that they are the reason.

Nope. That decision was post-GDR.

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>most people stated that they wanted to avoid finding out that one of their colleagues or family members was a Stasi informant and that viewing those files would impact their ability to trust others

Anecdotally: it didn't work, though, as the former denunciants knew who they informed on and either came out (didn't hear that from my parents) or acted different and thereby dropped hints.

IMO the water on that is seriously muddled, as

• files and viewing opportunity have been available for 20-30 years, mixing now nostalgia and real reasons back when the decision had been made
• files were given out incremental, making experience worse: files aren't even complete yet (a lot of paper had been shredded manually and money wasn't made available to recover the files)
  (Anecdote again: my father abstained from asking for _further_ files later.)

That you spend your days on the internet incessantly making this argument like it matters, or will change someone's mind, or that the imaginary points that some random strangers will give you for regurgitating it validate you paints an interesting picture

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Interesting consideration.

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It takes practically no time in his commenting history to see that he doesn't do that, particularly incessantly.

You've got a burr under your saddle around people pointing this out ever don't you?

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To be fair… I do have very little patience with religion(s) in general and institution of “church” in particular. And you probably can find dozen comments from me on the subject (though considering how old my Reddit account is… it most likely will be less than 1 comment per year :) )

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The human psyche can only take so much distrust and despair before self destructing. This is a protective mechanism imo

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Only because many animals are curious.

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Isn't this how religions persist?

>Curiosity ... is one of the defining traits of human beings.

humans are cats, confirmed.

So, the author of the study with an amazing high number (/s) of 22 people condemns those who want to just live their lives and leaving the past behind. That smells like really bad science to me.

What contradictory information?

The term “ignorance is bliss” is true. The more you know, the sadder you become.

Yes - I immediately had the same thought. Its rare religions people want to talk about their religion, its history, its purpose, its meaning and what their beliefs really are.

But this is only a thing because people are almost always introduced to religion when they are children and accept everything as the truth no questions asked.

If religion was introduced as another "theory" about life/world/society when you are 12+ like most other theories (that are actually based in science and observation) - instead of being presented as "the ultimate truth" to a clueless child from its parents - religion would play a much smaller part in the world.

when you allow for lazy and asshole humans...you get poop in the punchbowl.

They want to believe that people around them are honest and trustworthy so they are choosing to ignore what they know will contradict that. Thus they know the information is contradictory. They are simply not looking to avoid the specifics.

There’s a proverb for this:

“Look ye not though keyholes, lest ye be vexed”

Yep. exhaustive sigh

Lazy assholes will always exist - the system is strong enough to support them.

What tips the scales is allowing individual wealth to exceed the GDP of smaller countries without oversight.

Billionaires cause homelessness, not homeless people.

That is also a reason why some things repeat themselves. Only with all knowledge can we repair or prevent things as a society.

This also the case with abuse and racism. If enough people forget or don't want to know it keeps going in some form. The reason why people don't want to know is the same, to make their suroundings better in their mind. That is why some families ignore or even hide sexual abuse. If it is not happening in your mind it can not be true. But it is just pushed deeper and has lasting effect, the mind remembers more then we know.

>>Curiosity ... is one of the defining traits of human beings.

>That's a curious claim.

Especially on Reddit!

Say they're right without saying they're right. Religion is just copium, especially when it's your personality.

> so they are choosing to ignore what they know will contradict that.

No, if you had actually read what this is about, you would know that they don't want to find out who it was. They don't already know and have no way of knowing.

Also "Look not at witches, lest ye be hexed"

My motto is: be sure you want to know what you are going to find out.

Have you considered the possibility that it might be true?

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Not OP, but yes I have. It’s definitely a hard sell to believe that we are made in the image of an all-knowing being that we need to worship or be relinquished. And if this being is all-knowing and allows the tragedies I see around me every single day to persist, to truly innocent people, then what would that make me if I worshipped it?

I mean, yea. Anecdotally, just about every mother I know does this with her kids. They simply don't want to know if they are gay, doing drugs, homicidal maniacs, etc...

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Fair enough reasoning. Just curious.

What might be true? Shinto? Islam? Hinduism? Christianity?

Have you given equal thought into those and what they say about a moral code, the afterlife, and how likely it is they are the actual true religion, or are you just asking about whatever religion you grew up with, and that people aroumd you believe in?

If the latter, have you re-read the scripture as an adult, to see if it describes an ethos you actually agree with?

If your religion has a core set of rules or ways to live your life, are their teachings something you see reflected in the actions of your fellow faithful, or more importantly, your priests (or equivilents?)

What do you think?

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There is no contradiction, not everyone was part of Gestapo etc.

I did read it. They know that it’s likely some people they currently trust would no longer be trustable if they looked into it. So they choose not to do so. That’s the entire point of the article.

Right but they know if they look, there’s some chance that someone they currently trust would no longer be trustable so they choose to not look.

You don't have to think your dad are trust worthy to not want to know if he was a part of Gestapo.

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I agree. Some things are just too much to handle. It's often not worth the pain. Curiosity is driven by a reward/risk ratio. I can't say I wouldn't want to just ignore it and put the past behind me either.

Yes. Religions are usually centered around fear and conformity. If you go your whole life believing in something as deep as the answer to life itself, it would probably be extremely traumatic to suddenly find out it's not true. I remember the day I decided I didn't believe in God anymore. It was honestly pretty scary. Fortunately, this happened when I was a teenager and I couldn't quite grasp the insanity of it all. I can't really imagine doing it as an adult. Not to mention the social repercussions.

Interesting, so do you believe Zeus is the almighty king of the gods, and we should sacrifice goats to him?

The point was they knowingly chose not to find out if someone they knew was not trustworthy to avoid being unable to trust them.

The conflict is between believing they are trustworthy and knowing they may not be.

Indeed. Faith is not wanting to know the reality.

This is exactly why I never look at the fingernails of the waiter. I look away. I just don't want to know in what condition they are.

I think you're confusing some agencies. Stasi was a post-war agency in UDSSR occupied East Germany.

Gestapo was what you're writing about.

My favorite part of posts critical of group think/faith/religion/etc is that inevitably some religious person will get so triggered that they will unwittingly prove the point made by the critics. Its like clock work. They cant help themselves.

Thank you. Well said.

+134 polled. still not enough, there's more than enough people alive that you could poll on this

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You're right....

That definitely worked more on fear and control. Knowledge that could potentially be dangerous to be curious about.

20 people is considered the minimum threshold for sound data in psychology

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Thanks for the info! But seems pretty low though.

They consider 95% accuracy to be significant findings. Other fields require much higher accuracy

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It is very interesting to observe where the feeling of curiosity and love increase and decrease relative to each other depending on what they were caused by.

For example: Just about every mother you know decides to stay ignorant about the bad parts of their kids; so, you can make the assumption that their love for them is greater than their curiosity. That is very interesting.

Anecdotal, but in my own experience with faith: it's not about not wanting to know the reality, but rather about fervently wanting to know and experience a reality that doesn't exists.

Rambling here, but i think you can argue faith is the desire for a certain idea of reality to exist, or the belief that that idea of reality does indeed already exists, or doesn't exists yet; the word "yet" being fundamental to that whole belief system.

Classic "don't ask questions you don't want the answers to"

Some of the better advice others have given: "Don't ask questions if you don't want to hear the answer."

I’m intrigued. Your medical records or someone else’s?

Deliberate lack of curiosity is appropriate and adaptive in some cases. I worked as a physician at a prison and one of the pieces of advice I got was to purposely avoid knowing what anyone was locked up for. It didn’t matter for my purposes and it would definitely not help me provide better medical care.

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It’s called healing. And the article is soft style capitalist propaganda

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You can argue that but I dunno it tracks. Religion is still around because humans can't accept their mortality and to outgroup others. There's nothing really about reality in it at all since it's not grounded in anything real... just belief.

I definitely mourned the loss of faith and all that came with that. I think that I'm still dealing with the PTSD of being subjected at such a young age.

I did.. when I was a child. But I have up childish things once no longer a child.

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"Don't start digging if you're not ready to find dirt"

Perhaps considering the hierarchy of needs would be helpful here. In that model, psychological safety is foundational. Meeting that need is critical before we can start to expand on our human journey and take risks. Then again, i could be wrong.

But why the assumption they believing them to be trustworthy?

Because the article says they are deliberately choosing ignorance. The only way that makes sense is if they already trust them. If they didn’t trust them, they’d be more likely to want to confirm their distrust by getting more evidence that supports it.

You sit around making assumptions from your point of view as if you matter regarding why these people chose to do something.

I’m not making any assumptions. The article makes this abundantly clear.

No, it does not.

From the article:

“…most people stated that they wanted to avoid finding out that one of their colleagues or family members was a Stasi informant and that viewing those files would impact their ability to trust others.”

And? That doesn't mean they find people trustworthy to begin with.

Deductive reasoning. These are people close to them (friends and colleagues). The only reason to avoid learning the truth about them is that they already trust them. If they don’t trust them, then finding out the truth would only further confirm that they are right not to do so. This is basic human psychology.

>The only reason to avoid learning the truth about them is that they already trust them

You keep writing this, but that is not a logical conclusion.

Yes, it is. In fact, it’s the only logical conclusion and is the entire point of the article. This is getting tiresome.

No it isn't.

Maybe i worded it wrong, but everytime i used the word "reality", i didn't meant the real reality. The reality they believe in is a conception, an idea.

I thought it was clear, but sorry if it wasn't. English is hard for me.

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Your comparision is absolutely incorrect.

It's not about HOW Stasi worked, HOW you were observed and reported.

It's about WHO snitched on you.

Opposite to most racism and abuse, there is no one denying the crimes and its victims.

In a lot of cases, the victims already narrowed down who might have known. Looking into the folders means finally finding out, if it was the neighbours, the mailman, the plumber, the parents (quite unusual), or one of the 5 family friends. In those 30 years after the "Wende", the victim moved away (no contact to neighbours, mailman or plumber), father has died, mother is in a senior home, and 3 of the 5 friends are also out of the picture. The consequence, typically a hold or downgrade in career is also 38 years ago.

So this the standard case:

- no need for proof, people believe you when you just tell them

- a thought of "it doesn't matter almost 40 years later, it won't improve my life"

- and a thought of "either it was omeone I will never see again, or it was someone that I would forgive anyway, but before it would hurt a lot.

And here we are...

I am not comparing what happened, but instead why they chose not wanting to know. The reasoning for that choice is the same.

So not how but why people don't want to know the possible bad things done by neighbors, friends and family or country. This was and always is a possibility thus fear will influence that choice. Even if you already have suspicions or know you can choose to believe otherwise by ignoring real evidence.

That same influence happens with abuse and racism. This is something people sometimes choose not to believe or ignore because it could be somebody you trust, a best friend or family member you love.

What people find more important also influences that choice. You can choose somebody you know or yourself over what somebody did.

So my comparison is indeed about the influence of who on a choice. For bystanders and victims.

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Ignorance is bliss, and people wanna be happy

Yea people don't wanna find out that grandpa held the rope at the lynch mob, etc.

Ignorance is bliss knowledge is power