There is a book called “On Being Certain”, by Robert A Burton who’s a neurologist, discussing how we know what we know. He postulates that the sense of “conviction” has less to do with objective reality and far more to do with “a feeling of knowing.” He also suggests that we are far less self-aware than we think we are.
People see a different viewpoint and their body reactively brings up all the conditioning received from popular advice. Instinctively, they hit the downvote button, thinking that they are rightfully decreasing the noise of a dangerous idea and protecting the less aware.
Most people aren’t interested in debate nor challenging the reality they find themselves in, or even the framing and interpretation of that reality.
Is lemmy supposed to be better then other social media?
How do we make lemmy a more thoughtful place? Or how do we create meaningful spaces on lemmy for thoughtful discussion of opposing views?
the problem with transparency is we get to see how ugly we are.
and that offends a lot of people. a lot of people would very much rather be ignorant and very much champion such suppression of dissent and difference.
my read on a lot of the ‘controversial’ subreddits is that most people don’t really care if anyone jerks it off to dead bodies, they just don’t want to know that it exists. sort of like the homeless. people generally don’t care about them, and their objection is primary that they have to see them and acknowledge their existence. they want them to ‘go away’ because they serve as a vivid remember of their own fragility and capacity for ‘badness’.