Cognitive dissonance

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The related phenomena of causation, correlation, cognitive bias come together in the idea of congnitive dissonance - how one person can hold separate ideas in her head whose underlying values, premises and assumptions contradict each other.

You will be familiar with the experience of arguing with to someone who's holds a contrary idea. If you're not, what the hell were you doing at university? The atheist who heckles the born-again preacher - or vice versa - will know this feeling. So will Marxits and capitalists, climate deniers and eco warriors. This kind of arguments is utterly fruitless, but thoroughly entertaining for the protagonists until one pushes one got button too far, and it's all out war.

It is fruitless because everyone who holds a view will accept any fact which seems to support it as immutable proof, and will explain away, dissemble or at the limit flat-out ignore any fact which tends to contradict it. Sample arguments include as hominems, reductio as absurdams, analogising to the Third Reich and if you're really rattled, the old correlation does not imply causation chestnut, but the most reliable of the lot is just ignoring utterly.