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A humbling exercise for anyone is, for any given belief, writing down specifically what inputs and logic lead to that belief, and specifically what inputs and logic would lead to changing that belief.

Almost everyone would find that almost all of their beliefs are based on very flimsy input/logic, and the bar for changing that belief is unfairly and wildly asymmetric.

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Learning to do this formally in a college philosophy/logic class broke my brain in the best way and drastically altered the kind of person I became from that point on. For context: I came from a religious family which had trained me not to trust my science teachers, but they hadn’t warned me against philosophers.

I think most people base most beliefs on being told that they're true. Full stop. It really comes down to who you are listening to and why; most critical to this is the birth lottery.

But do they know that?

I suspect most people believe themselves quite logical as to how they've arrived at their beliefs.

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