Humans are social creatures, and social dynamics are as important to us as laws of physics. For better or worse, in every-day life, being right is usually less important than being liked. The basics of survival in the real world enter common knowledge, so that e.g. you know you shouldn't eat random mushrooms, or foul-smelling stuff, nor should you swim in pools of funny-colored liquids should you encounter one outside. Beyond that, you're more likely to die from being a contrarian than from common beliefs being wrong.
As people experience it, the truth about objective reality matters only if being wrong can bite you in the ass. It matters when you're working with physical stuff, where being wrong could be dangerous (perhaps indirectly by ruining your boss's profits). There's a reason science and engineering leap forward during times of war - all the social and political games, all the fraud, all the weird beliefs about the world, suddenly stop being important when the enemy is at your gates, and your survival depends on whether your soldiers' rifles can shoot straight, and the missiles they fire can hit their designated targets. At those times, being wrong about complex aspects of reality is deadly, so it's okay to defy preexisting social dynamics and get these things right.
War isn't the only situation like this, of course. The economy sometimes produces such states, however briefly. A new invention delivering real value requires being right to develop and improve... until the point improvements get more expensive than marketing, at which point truth stops mattering again.
Not everyone considers truth as a terminal value. For those of us that do, living in a world where social dynamics are more important than being right, becomes extra challenging.
Not really, that would imply they are pretending. There aren't enough people with a genuine respect for truth for that to be a factor. It is more that any signal of knowledge will be copied mercilessly if it affords any respect. If people with bookshelves get more respect, then everyone will have a bookshelf and nonetheless be confused if they meet someone who reads a lot of books.
The default assumption is that a person has no idea what they are talking about because the base rate success of that stance is rather high.
Its all us, most of the time lol. From the blog post:
> All I can do is continue looking for those people who have that respect for complexity. Some find them boring, or indecisive, or just wrong for not buying into some extreme.
Ignoring complexity and still making decisions is a key survival trait. The trick in modern society is imho to know when complexity really matters.
