as some of you know, I was raised in a fundamentalist proto-maga environment, and so I have extensive first hand experience with cognitive dissonance and cult tactics
I wanted to point out that if someone wildly disagrees with you: theyâre not lying. No matter how stupid or obviously wrong you think their take is, theyâre not lying to you about what they believe; almost no-one does that.
To be clear, Iâm not talking about national politicians or billionaires or obvious influence campaign bots. Iâm talking about real, normal people that you know perfectly well are real, normal people but their take is so ridiculous or extreme to you that you feel tempted to conclude theyâre lying.
There are real, actual reasons they believe those things and real, actual reasons they feel the need to tell you about it. If you canât engage with that, youâve not only already lost any chance of convincing them, but youâre setting yourself up to believe patently untrue things yourself, because you have taught yourself to shut down contrary thoughts with âtheyâre lying.â
accepting that the people I was told were agents of Satan *werenât lying about their beliefs just to hurt me* is a big part of how I got out of fundamentalism.