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Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange ("abadidea") wrote:
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: they’re not lying. No matter how stupid or obviously wrong you think their take is, they’re not lying to you about what they believe; almost no-one does that.
To be clear, I’m not talking about national politicians or billionaires or obvious influence campaign bots. I’m 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 they’re 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 can’t engage with that, you’ve not only already lost any chance of convincing them, but you’re setting yourself up to believe patently untrue things yourself, because you have taught yourself to shut down contrary thoughts with “they’re lying.”
accepting that the people I was told were agents of Satan *weren’t lying about their beliefs just to hurt me* is a big part of how I got out of fundamentalism.