[ExI] Holding contradictory beliefs is very common

[Gadersd]

> STronger ones, like being a SUnday school teacher and not really believing any of the miracles, or heaven and hell, etc. create lots of dissonance.  I had this one and it was excruciating (pun intended).

Did you lose your faith while being a Sunday school teacher or did you not have any faith to begin with?

> On Apr 6, 2023, at 12:26 PM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> 
> I can't argue with any of that.  But what we are leaving out is the strength of the contradictions.  Little ones, like occasionally eating ice cream while on a diet, are not going to generate a lot of dissonance.  
> 
> STronger ones, like being a SUnday school teacher and not really believing any of the miracles, or heaven and hell, etc. create lots of dissonance.  I had this one and it was excruciating (pun intended).  I finally quit the church, and it caused a huge reaction, with members trying to get me back and so on, which I anticipated and which made it harder.  This one was impossible to repress or ignore.
> 
> bill w
> 
> On Wed, Apr 5, 2023 at 3:51 PM BillK via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>> wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Apr 2023 at 21:21, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat
> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>> wrote:
> >
> > Thanks! But if they say that a person can walk around with conscious cognitive dissonance and just ignore it with no consequences, I will disagree with them.  Dissonance is a feeling of conflict,and therefore there is no such thing as unconscious dissonance.  Dissonance only occurs when the conflict is conscious.  Anxiety is usually there, and that is something you physically feel.  I do think that your unconscious can overlook your conscious mind and produce some memory/belief that leaks into your conscious mind, like something trying to escape for repression a la Freud.  But the last time I looked (quite a while) repression still had no experimental evidence for it.  The idea of unconscious conflicts, the resolution of which was the goal of psychoanalysis, was that mental energy was tied up in the fighting ideas.  I don't think that idea has any physical basis.  Energy just doesn't sit there.  Neuron centers don't just idle like reverberating circuits, trying to get expressed.  bill w
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> 
> 
> I didn't quote the complete article where they go into a bit more detail.
> (And probably in the book the article comes from as well).
> They say -
> One is to follow the “it depends” strategy: You make a mental note
> that your beliefs aren’t really contradictory. Instead, one belief
> holds in one set of circumstances, and the opposite holds in other
> circumstances. This has the benefit of being cognitively true.
> ----------
> 
> So they do talk a bit about how the brain rationalises holding contradictions.
> They probably explain more in their book, though it seems to be
> intended for a popular audience rather than a science audience.
> <https://www.amazon.com/Brain-Briefs-Answers-Pressing-Questions/dp/1454919078/ <https://www.amazon.com/Brain-Briefs-Answers-Pressing-Questions/dp/1454919078/>>
> 
> BillK
> 
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