this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2025
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There are two types of people: People who are open to receiving new information about the world, including information about people they are interacting with. Their reaction is something along the lines of, "Oh, that's cool, I didn't know that. I'm going to go with the assumption that you're not just lying to my face or just wrong about everything, or something along those lines, an assumption I would have arrived at for no reason at all."
Then there's the other type of person, who regards new information as an attack, against which a defense must be mustered.
Worryingly we may all be both types. The problem is that we’re typically the first when the new information aligns with the world as we think we understand it, and the second when it conflicts. Information that calls into question our understanding of the world around us makes us feel threatened and through that threat activates our fight or flight instincts. Since we can’t run from information we’ve already heard the only choice is to fight back against it either publicly or in our own minds.