Hacker News Reader

Comment by bhaak | Hacker News Reader

He was the first person who introduced me to the idea that if you look at a thing with different mindsets, from different points of view, you can arrive at quite different opinions about the “true” nature of that thing.

At that age, I didn’t yet understand why some people are incapable of changing their point of view. To be honest, I still don’t fully understand how ideology can cloud the mind so thoroughly that only a single way of thinking remains possible.

He had a way of describing things with a vigor that is quite rare. It was a fascinating read as a kid, blending science fiction with history and archaeology. Of course, later learning about the scientific method, or even just Occam’s razor, made it clear that the theory of ancient aliens is very unlikely, but the what if, the “wouldn’t it be cool if this premise were true,” still lingers in my mind from time to time.

A quite unique and interesting person departed this planet yesterday.

View on HN

> At that age, I didn’t yet understand why some people are incapable of changing their point of view. To be honest, I still don’t fully understand how ideology can cloud the mind so thoroughly that only a single way of thinking remains possible.

Are you describing Erich von Däniken's inability to change his mind when evidence clearly contradicted his theories?

Was it inability or simply calculation? He made a livelihood out of making up stories about ancient aliens. He was financially motivated to keep telling his stories.

Might be calculation for him. But inability for many of his believers, who had no financial gain.

I think a large part of it is wishful thinking. As a scifi fan, I think it'd be great to find out that we were aliens seeeded on Earth by some advanced civilisation. To weigh up the facts and realise that there's all the evolutionary evidence to show that we did just evolve from fish is a bit more boring.

> To weigh up the facts and realise that there's all the evolutionary evidence to show that we did just evolve from fish is a bit more boring.

Your definition of boring is different than mine. I find the reality of what evidence points at to be awe-inducing!

I watch Cosmos (original or 2.0) and I get goosebumps.

There's no need to make shit up, the universe is wondrous.

Okay, maybe "boring" is the wrong word. But just think how cool it'd be if there were bits of alien technology lying around waiting to be found rather than just a non-rusting lamppost, lines in a desert and a few pyramids?

Interestingly enough, but as a teenager, I classified his stories as sci-fi. And I was absolutely into sci-fi(that was the genre I kept reading right after Fairy tales... yes, Ive read Bible in my early teens as well - nobody asked me to do so) - it made me learn English, as I have read all the ~100 sci-fi books in my language and there was nothing else to read for me.

I've often wondered if he was sincere in his beliefs or just a grifter.

Maybe he was both, at different points in his life.

> Are you describing Erich von Däniken's inability to change his mind when evidence clearly contradicted his theories?

He wasn't that unwavering. About the iron pillar of Delhi he said in his first book that it doesn't rust and thought this being a proof for alien interference. Later he turned around and said "By now this damn thing is rusting!".

But he never changed his opinion on his basic premise. I guess it's easy to not change your theory if it can't actually be disproved. There are so many unknowns and gaps in history that you have enough space to fit a few ancient aliens in there.

For context https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_pillar_of_Delhi

> Are you describing Erich von Däniken's inability to change his mind when evidence clearly contradicted his theories?

Roughly 80% of the planet has an inability to change their mind regarding their religious beliefs.

In reality, there is more evidence of ancient aliens that there is of almost every other religion, and yet the people who follow religion aren't being vilified the way the ancient alien believers are.

I mean, look at your own question - do you routinely ask people (IRL and online) why they can't change their religion based on evidence?

> Roughly 80% of the planet has an inability to change their mind regarding their religious beliefs.

What makes you think so? Most people don't really have strong religious beliefs that they are testing against evidence, I suspect. It's mostly just a way to connect with their communities for most people.

> Most people don't really have strong religious beliefs that they are testing against evidence, I suspect.

Okay, lets go with that: that is still a lower bar than EvD theories, because he at least has some evidence while everyone else has none.

Doesn't matter if the evidence is insufficient, or if the theory has been tested and found to be wanting, what matters is that it's still operating at a higher bar than many of the people on the planet who are not drawing such ire.

I think you are quite correct to put Däniken in the corner of belief and religion, and not expect followers of his ideas to be open to rational argument by default.

Exactly - that was my point! Why do those followers get so much vitriol but we give actual religions a free pass when they have even less evidence to support their beliefs?

“Evidence” is often in time overruled by new knowledge and evidence.

Yes, but the main question is into which direction the arrow of causalality points for the main part:

Does an individual trust their image of the world, because it summarizes the evidence well? Or do they grade all evidence based on the image of the world they want to be true?

In reality it has to be of course always a mixture of the two, even for the most reflected person. We cannot go through our days questioning everything all the time if we want to remain functional, some things we will have to take for granted.

IMO the whole thing keeps boiling down to two questions:

1. Do you want to believe or do you want your world image to accurately represent the world as it is, even if there might be no such thing as objective truth in some cases?

2. Are you aware of the breadth of evidence you have (or the lack thereof)? E.g. when I develope software, I encountered grown, adult people who would talk about computers with superstition, as if it was some angry deity that had to be calmed. Now in their world there absolutely is evidence their rituals worked. But their evidence was based on an entirely wrong world model, where they treated a computer as a person, instead of treating it as a totally predictable automaton. Turns out praying doesn't help resolving a network issue, especially not if you click away the message explaining why it doesn't work without reading it.

The von Däniken question fundamentally boils down to: If you have 1 billion pieces of evidence pointing one way and one piece pointing in the way of a fantastic fantasy novel, do you go with the "boring" 1 billion pieces or do you hyper-fixate on the one piece, build a theory that explains it in the most exciting way and then ignore all points where that theory collides with the 1 billion pieces of evidence?

Right. For people who don't know the wealth of evidence we are talking about here, the Egyptians left very detailed records including wages of the people working on the pyramids[1], paintings showing the numbers of people needed to move heavy objects and how they lubricated the sand beneath the skids[2] etc

[1] They weren't slaves, they were salaried workers, and there are records of how much they got paid and how many of them there were.

[2] and the numbers check out when you do the standard "block on an inclined rough plane" thing you learn in 1st year mechanics. Check out https://sites.uwm.edu/nosonovs/2017/11/05/about-djehutihotep... where you can clearly see the pains they have gone to in order to ensure the numbers of workers are accurately portrayed

Thank you. This was well-written and made a point I think I needed to see set out in this form.

> We cannot go through our days questioning everything all the time if we want to remain functional, some things we will have to take for granted.

On reading this, it struck me how much of the world we engage with on these terms. And how much of the information soup we live in seems designed to persuade us of things being just so.

It being designed is what also should give away that it could also be designed differently.

People who create, be it artists, designers and engineers can sometimes develope that insight from their daily practise. We create, thus we have a deeper than avarage awareness that the world is created and which factors play into it being this way and not a slightly different (better?) variation on the same theme.

That’s not an argument against * any * current evidence, only sloppy thinking trying ignore evidence.

What replaces evidence is better evidence, not fairy tales that ignores reality.

And statistically, if you take all knowledge, and look at all the claims that have failed to displace it, you’ll find the vast majority of alternative claims are simply wrong.

I'm saying treat current evidence with care, not as a never changing Truth.

Aliens didn't build the fucking pyramids.

Ok maybe not the fucking pyramids.

Not anything.

Why wouldn't they built anything.

I share your confusion about how ideology clouds judgement but I have a little anecdote.

I sometimes give people the Monty Hall problem. When they get it wrong, it often falls into the category of staying with the initial pick increases chances or switching has equal odds. I then proceed to give them the example of N=100 doors, opening 98 others, leaving their pick and another closed and then asking them whether that makes a difference.

If they insist that it makes no difference, I then start to play the actual game with them, writing down the prize door before the game starts and then proceeding with the game as normal. Only after a few rounds of them losing do they accept the proofs of what the optimal strategy is.

My interpretation is that, before playing the actual game, they refuse to believe me. They don't trust me or the logic and so dismiss it. Once actual stakes are involved, even if it's their pride, only then do they start to be open to arguments as to why their intuition was wrong.

Leave it to people in the tech industry to ask interview questions that confused Paul Erdös for days and expect their interviewees to reason through things during an interview.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140413131827/http://www.decisi...

I'd get the Monty Hall problem question right off the bat, but only because I've encountered it before, not because I can naturally reason through it better than Erdös.

We used to ask job candidates a variation of the door in an infinite wall question [1]. The initial answer of many interviewees is to choose a direction and walk in that way forever, which is understandable, as infinity makes the question weird.

What is more interesting is, even after I pointed out that this answer has a 50% chance of finding the door and I'm looking for a 100% solution, some candidates refused to give it a second thought, didn't change their answer, and insisted that this is the best course of action.

[1] https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/3915578/door-in-an-...

The only reason people get confused about the Monty Hall problem is that the problem description rarely if ever makes it clear that the host knows where the car is and deliberately chooses a different door.

It's inconceivable (for example) that Paul Erdos, a world class mathematician, would fail to solve this problem if it were actually communicated clearly.

It is incredibly annoying that in the case where the host doesn't know where the car is but opens a goat door anyway, the probability goes back to 50-50

Eh, when you think about it, it makes sense.

Original rules (host knows where car is and always opens a door with a goat):

- 1/3 of the time your original choice is the car, and you should stick

- 2/3 of the time your original choice is a goat, and you should switch

Alternative rules (host doesn't know where car is, and may open either the door with the car or a door with a goat)

- 1/3 of the time your original choice is the car, the host opens a door with a goat, and you should stick

- 1/3 of the time your original choice is a goat, the host opens a door with a goat, and you should switch

- 1/3 of the time your original choice is a goat, the host opens the door with the car, and you're going to lose whether you stick or switch

So even under the new rules, you still only win 1/3 of the time by consistently sticking. You're just no longer guaranteed that you can win in any given game.

We are conditioning out the case where the host picks the door with a car, so there's only two scenarios of equal probability left. Hence 50-50.

Well yes, if you throw out half of the instances where your original choice was wrong, then the chance your original choice was correct will inevitably go up.

But if he doesn't know where the car is, how can he be sure that the door he opens is going to have a goat?

The scenario is the host doesn't know which door has the car, opens some random door, and that door happens to have a goat behind it.

If you were in this scenario, your odds of getting the car doesn't change whether you switch or not

That would indeed be annoying, but I doubt it is the case. If you only consider this scenario, it cannot be distinguished by conditional probability from the case that the host knows, and so the math should stay the same.

As usual, the problem is not an incredibly difficult problem, but just a failure to state the problem clearly and correctly.

Try to write a computer program that approximates the probability, and you'll see what I mean.

https://github.com/yen223/monty_fall/blob/master/Monty%20Hal...

The math is contingent on whether you know the host knows or doesn't know where the door with the car is. This is the counterintuitive bit.

Your program shows exactly what I mean: "Impossible" cannot be non-zero, your modified question is not well-defined.

Yes, of course it depends on the host knowing where the goat is, because if he doesn't, the scenario is not well-defined anymore. This is not annoying, this is to be expected (pun intended).

The scenario is well-defined. There's nothing logically impossible about the host not knowing which door has the car, and still opening the goat door.

"Impossible" in the program just refers to cases where the host picks the car door, i.e. the path that we are not on, by the nature of the statement. Feel free to replace the word "impossible" with "ignored" or "conditioned out". The math remains the same.

No, sorry, it is not well-defined. But I should have been clearer. What is not well-defined? Well, the game you are playing. And, without a game, what mathematical question are you even asking?

You cannot just "ignore" or "condition out" the case that there is a car behind the opened door, the game doesn't make any sense anymore then, and what you are measuring then makes no sense anymore with respect to the game. In order to make it well-defined, you need to answer the question what happens in the game when the door with the car is opened.

You can for example play the following game: The contestant picks a door, the host opens one of the other doors, and now the contestant can pick again one of the three doors. If there is a car behind the door the contestant picks, the contestant wins. Note that in this game, the contestant may very well pick the open door. The strategy is now to obviously pick the open door if there is a car behind it, and switch doors if it is not. I am pretty sure, when you simulate this game, you will see that it doesn't matter if the host knows where the car is (and uses this knowledge in an adversarial manner), or not.

The game you seem to want to play instead goes as follows: If the door with the car is opened, the game stops, and nobody wins or loses. Let's call this outcome a draw, and forget about how many times we had a draw in our stats. But you can see now that this is an entirely different game, and it is not strange that the resulting stats are different than for the original game.

Nobody said he can be sure.

> I sometimes give people the Monty Hall problem. When they get it wrong, it often falls into the category of staying with the initial pick increases chances or switching has equal odds. I then proceed to give them the example of N=100 doors, opening 98 others, leaving their pick and another closed and then asking them whether that makes a difference.

> If they insist that it makes no difference, I then start to play the actual game with them, writing down the prize door before the game starts and then proceeding with the game as normal. Only after a few rounds of them losing do they accept the proofs of what the optimal strategy is.

That is all way too much work. I draw a decision tree and let them fill in the fractions for each edge leaving a node (2/3 edges result in this outcome 3 nodes later while 1/3 edges result in that outcome 2 nodes later).

If that doesn't work, I'll just give up.

I remember when I first came across it (someone mentioned it on a business trip) leaving dinner to nip up and write a little random number simulator in Basic on the Z88 that I used for taking notes. Then coming down 15 minutes later" "OMG, you're right"

> I then proceed to give them the example of N=100 doors, opening 98 others, leaving their pick and another closed and then asking them whether that makes a difference.

Yeah this is the way I found it the easier to understand intuitively

Yeah, but Monty Hall problem is so unintuitive even very smart and logical people has hard time accepting it. Even changing it to thousand doors variant doesn't help.

But what if the car was placed behind one of the doors by aliens? This would be proof that aliens had been visiting and maybe even influencing the production offices of daytime game shows, and possibly even those in prime time. The aliens would have been treated as gods by the producers, forcing them to give away valuable prizes to the contestants to prove their loyalty and worthiness.

Consider the possibilities.

Of course, there may be other explanations.

The monty hall problem is often stated in such a way multiple interpretations are possible. I don’t know how exactly you state the problem, but have you considered you might have stated it wrongly or ambiguously?

Yes.

I have stated, explicitly, at the beginning, that the person opening the doors knows where the prize is, will only open doors without a prize and that the prize doesn't change positions.

This is demonstrated by the fact that when we actually play the game, I write the door number down on a piece of paper before the game starts.

This supposed ambiguity is touted as the key to why the puzzle is so difficult but, in my experience, it makes absolutely no difference.

The N=100 is a 'lazy' (or abstract if you prefer) way to look at it, it doesn't really explain anything.

It's hard to show how to explain the problem just writing about it, but by making them choose one of 3, and then making assumptions about which door will reveal the car, and if it is better to switch. You can easily demonstrate that in two out of three situations it is actually better to switch.

For the 3 case, since 2/3 is relatively close to 1/2, it's hard to build intuition from just a few examples.

The N=100 build intuition very quickly. I disagree that it doesn't explain anything. After playing, people quickly understand that the likelihood that they chose the correct door initially is very small and when all 98 other doors are revealed, the remaining door provides a red flag that their intuition is off.

Note that often I would explain the logic behind switching and still have them not believe me. Their intuition wouldn't be shaken by arguments or even small demonstration. Only when actually playing an the N=100 case would they start to understand.

Why doesn’t it explain anything when it clearly demonstrates the point?

Because that's just repeating a point without explaining why the underlying maths works.

> They don't trust me or the logic and so dismiss it.

This is me, the logic of Monty Hall Doors does not make sense to me, so luckily I found this one: https://www.rossmanchance.com/applets/2021/montyhall/Monty.h...

After running the process 500 times, the ratio seems insane (using the stay tactic, 67% loss & 33% wins) - it makes me able to accept "that is just how it is then", but absolutely does not explain WHY, because in my mind, once you open the door, the situation resets to 50/50 - so there should be no difference if I stay or switch. The fundamental misunderstanding of statistics is probably what is the problem.

It's funny to observe own mind in this process, and how much of a "struggle" there is to convince one-self that what seems logical and sensible is in-fact a wrong interpretation and can only exists due to lack of understanding.

> My interpretation is that, before playing the actual game, they refuse to believe me. They don't trust me or the logic and so dismiss it. Once actual stakes are involved, even if it's their pride, only then do they start to be open to arguments as to why their intuition was wrong.

That is so true - before the own idea/concept gets put to test, it's easy to be delusional about how correct your own "idea" is. As long as it is in the vacuum of your own brain, you can keep it protected and shielded from all that nasty truth that tries to bully and beat it.

There is a reason why a lot of coders do not want others to see their code and do a code review on it...

> the logic of Monty Hall Doors does not make sense to me

For me, the core is that you have a 1 in 3 chance of getting it right on your first guess, and nothing can change that. So if you always stick with your original guess, you will win one third of the time.

No no. The thing is, the Monty Hall guy is responding to YOUR choice. So if he has to open a door where you fail, it's a response to what he knows of your choice, so HE knows what YOU chose and is not only revealing the remaining losing choice but also the winning choice. Call it a coin flip except for he always has to call tails.

Therefore your choice can either be cadillac or goat, he cannot choose cadillac and has to show a goat, so the remaining option you DIDN'T highlight is that much more likely to be cadillac because it could've been either, but he doesn't get to pick randomly, he had to show which one was NOT the winning one.

Hence the result. And since it started out as one pick of three, he responds to you and then you respond to the added information by switching and that's where the 66% odds come from: two moves each responding to each other.

How does that contradict what I said? The way the game is set up, one of your choices -- stick or switch -- is guaranteed to win.

Your original door will be correct 1/3 of the time and wrong 2/3 of the time.

Therefore switching will be the winning move 2/3 of the time.

Your explanation isn't wrong, but it's never quite resonated with me because it feels almost like a magic trick than something that follows intuition. Like seeing a magician perform a trick, it doesn't quite convey to me the "why" as much as the "what", and even though I know there's no actual magic, I still feel like I'm left having to figure out what happened on my own.

The idea that finally made it click for me is that Monty has to choose one of the doors to open, and because he knows which door has which thing behind it, he'll never pick the door with the winning prize. That means the fact that he didn't pick the other door is potentially meaningful; unless I picked the right door on my first try, it's guaranteed to be the one he didn't open, because he never opens the right door on his own. His choice communicates meaningful information to me because it's not random, and that part while seemingly obvious gets left implicit in almost every attempt to explain this that I've seen.

Another intuitive way to explain it would be to imagine that the step of opening one door is removed, and instead you're given the option of either sticking with your original door or swapping to all of the other doors and winning if it's any of them. It's much more obvious that it would be a better strategy to swap, and then if you add back the step where he happens to open all of the other doors that aren't what you picked or the right one, it shouldn't change the odds if you're picking all of the other doors. This clarifies why the 100 door case makes it an even better strategy to switch than the 3 door case; you're picking 99 doors and betting that it's behind one. The way people usually describe that formulation still often doesn't seem to explicitly talk about why the sleight of hand that opening 98 of the doors is a red herring though; people always seem to state it as if it's self-evident, and I feel like that misses the whole point of why this is unintuitive in the first place in favor of explaining in a way that clarifies little and only makes sense if you already understand in the first place.

> once you open the door, the situation resets

That's the root cause error of your thinking.

The prizes aren't reshuffled and the host's choice of doors depends on both the player's choice and on information that is hidden to the player. No way you can treat that as a reset.

I think in your mind you associate "unknown" strongly with "random" and even "random with equal chances". Just because something is unknown doesn't mean it is random. And if it is random it doesn't mean it is 50/50.

Incapable: that happens when the acceptance of an idea implies that their perception of their identity is flawed and has, logically to change in order to adapt for the new reality where the idea has its place. Denial is a protection mechanism, and it is very effective when the reality is too difficult to support as it is. Identity is so essential in our beliefs, attitudes and behaviours that most of us won't accept anything that requires it to change. Unless we accept that failure is part of our identity and that this means that our identity sometimes has to evolve. But that has to be done willingly, explicitly (in our minds).

> I still don’t fully understand how ideology can cloud the mind so thoroughly that only a single way of thinking remains possible.

I'm envious of those true believer kind of people.

My father is one of them and he's held absurd ideas as 100% facts and we've had many nasty quarrels about it, BUT it also means he 100% believes in whatever his current goal is and he's achieved a lot more than I ever will because he's unwavering in his beliefs and goals, whereas I'm always doubting and second guessing.

> I'm envious of those true believer kind of people.

> My father is one of them and he's held absurd ideas as 100% facts and we've had many nasty quarrels about it,

I am not even able to fathom how this is possible; unless someone is trying to convince you to join them in their belief, how on earth does a quarrel arise from differing beliefs?

I'm a lifelong atheist surrounded by religious family (and friends, too, TBH), and the only problem is when they refuse to take subtle hints that I am not interested in reading their book and I have to be blunt with them. And even then, that is not sufficient to start a quarrel!

You're fortunate. Very fortunate.

I've had friends - they really felt like friends at one point - tell me that they don't want to know me anymore when they learned I'm an atheist. One told me that "without God there's no morality", so they can't trust in anything I say. Just like that. One told me that atheists should be branded or marked somehow, so that they can't pose as "good people". To my face. When I mentioned that history knows such policies, and that they almost always lead to massacres, pogroms, and things like the Holocaust, the person didn't see any problem with that. At all.

Beliefs, especially strongly held ones, warp a person and their perception of reality. This influences their actions, and those actions can hit you hard. If a father "100% believes" homosexuals are worse than dirt, and a son firmly believes he loves his boyfriend, that's how a "quarrel" will arise. Most people agree to "live and let live" in principle, but when it comes to details, it's almost always "but we don't want X or Y in this neighborhood".

You're really fortunate to have only met people who hold beliefs that are not in direct opposition to your continued existence in this world or in their presence. However, you need to be aware that there are beliefs that are more incompatible with yours, and that there are people who hold them - and that you will quarrel (or worse - much worse) when you happen to meet.

I would say that you are very unlucky. I know people of multiple different religions, and atheists, and agnostics, and people of no particular belief and I have never known anyone to make a comment like that about anyone else.

I know many families whose members follow multiple different religions or none in multiple combinations.

> If a father "100% believes" homosexuals are worse than dirt, and a son firmly believes he loves his boyfriend, that's how a "quarrel" will arise.

Yes, but that is atypical. It most commonly happens either with American evangelicals, or in the context of very conservative societies in certain places (e.g. in multiple African and Asian countries).

American evangelicals seem to have a peculiar obsession with homosexuality as some sort of uniquely bad sin - perhaps to deflect attention from what the Bible and Christian tradition have to say about materialism and wealth. Traditional Christianity is quite non-judgemental and optimistic - e.g. the belief, or at least the hope, at all or almost all of humanity will be redeemed.

> To my face. When I mentioned that history knows such policies, and that they almost always lead to massacres, pogroms, and things like the Holocaust

The Holocaust was carried out by people who had to invent their own religions (their variant of neo-paganism and "positive Christianity") to have religions that could be reconciled with their ideology. Their ideas were more rooted in "racial science" than anything else.

> I would say that you are very unlucky.

> or in the context of very conservative societies in certain places (e.g. in multiple African and Asian countries).

Also in a few European ones, I can personally assure you :) It's fortunately (much) less common today than it was 25-30 years ago, but the truth is, everybody everywhere has their own hellhole, and living there could indeed be seen as unlucky. Atheism in a country where 96% of the people adhere to folk Catholicism (outside cities, that would probably be 110%...) is a hard sell.

> The Holocaust was carried out by people who had to invent their own religions (their variant of neo-paganism and "positive Christianity") to have religions that could be reconciled with their ideology. Their ideas were more rooted in "racial science" than anything else.

Some of them thought they had to invent or resurrect such religions to sell their movement to the masses, yes. That movement's actual religion was that ideology and racial "science"; it kind of was its own religion. (Not that this is exclusive to nazism / fascism; the same goes for communism.)

> I've had friends - they really felt like friends at one point - tell me that they don't want to know me anymore when they learned I'm an atheist. One told me that "without God there's no morality", so they can't trust in anything I say. Just like that. One told me that atheists should be branded or marked somehow, so that they can't pose as "good people".

That doesn't actually lead to a quarrel any more than having a friend saying they want to stop being friends for any other reason.

IOW, if a friend wants to stop being your friend, does the reason matter? I don't argue with people who don't want to be friends anymore (regardless of the reason)

> If a father "100% believes" homosexuals are worse than dirt, and a son firmly believes he loves his boyfriend, that's how a "quarrel" will arise.

I can certainly see a quarrel arising from that because ... well ... what are you going to do? Stop showing up at family events because your boyfriend is not accepted? Cut off all ties with your family because your boyfriend is not accepted?

This "quarrel", though, is not like a normal quarrel about differing beliefs; this actually has an impact on the ability to remain part of the family.[1]

-----------------------

[1] TBH, though, if it's only the father in this case who objects, simply not showing up at any event he is part of will usually be sufficient to get the rest of the family to pressure him into at least keeping quiet if you do show up, boyfriend in tow.

If the father is willing to keep from having outbursts, that more than sufficient to not quarrel. You don't need to man to believe that it isn't immoral. You don't need him to accept it. You just need him to shut up about it.

> You're really fortunate to have only met people who hold beliefs that are not in direct opposition to your continued existence in this world or in their presence.

What makes you think that?

I'm non-white, grew up in apartheid South Africa; in 2026, even transgenders in first world countries are treated better than my race was in 1986.

If you think systemic discrimination is bad, try living under legislated discrimination.

> However, you need to be aware that there are beliefs that are more incompatible with yours, and that there are people who hold them - and that you will quarrel (or worse - much worse) when you happen to meet.

No, I will not. If they are morally against my existence, let them go vote for laws to that end. I'm not gonna stand there arguing with them about it.

I'm sorry. I assumed too much about you, and I'm a bit ashamed for sounding so patronizing in my previous post. You seem wiser than me, and you're definitely wiser than I was back when it happened: I tried to defend myself. That's how the quarrel happened: I believed that I cared about morality, so I didn't want to just accept the accusation that I'm inherently immoral. That led to a few more shouts than it should; but as your sibling commenter says, at such points emotions tend to run high. I could have just walked away, and that would have been wiser. Somehow, I didn't manage to.

> What makes you think that?

Because you said you're "not even able to fathom how this is possible" - honestly, I still don't quite understand that sentence, especially after what you wrote above. It looks like you're advocating stoicism and disengagement, and I agree that it's a good strategy. But I can't believe you never felt the anger of being perceived through a lens of a belief that makes you into someone you're not - and that you "can't fathom" how that anger can get the better of you, to make you "stand there arguing with them about it". I get that you're able to rein in those emotions and simply walk away from situations like that; but I can't bring myself to believe you never felt that anger at all.

> You don't need him to accept it. You just need him to shut up about it.

Yes, that's rational. It's a way to live on without turning all family meetings into war. But maybe that particular war is worth fighting? Maybe, through countless battles over the Christmas tables, society changes course? Maybe by fighting against the belief that you're something lesser than human, by turning your life into a miserable one, you're paving a way for younger family members or the next generation to live their lives a little better than you could?

I don't know, to be honest. I'm not some activist. But I think I can understand people who decide to "stand there and argue". It's probably less rational and often leads to quarrels, but I'm almost sure that beliefs that are never challenged won't ever be changed. That's why I found your "I can't fathom" line a bit strange; sorry for overreacting :)

> Because you said you're "not even able to fathom how this is possible" - honestly, I still don't quite understand that sentence, especially after what you wrote above.

Look, in context, what I said had a qualifier:

>>> I am not even able to fathom how this is possible; unless someone is trying to convince you to join them in their belief, how on earth does a quarrel arise from differing beliefs?

I am not able to fathom how this is even possible unless one party is trying to change the beliefs of the other party.

I think that's a little less ambiguous, no?

> But maybe that particular war is worth fighting? Maybe, through countless battles over the Christmas tables, society changes course?

Maybe it does, and you just need to keep fighting.

Or (my approach), wait for the older generation to die off; the younger generation has no need to change the minds of the older generation, they just have to wait.

You still end up with the following result:

> next generation to live their lives a little better than you could?

I like my way better[1], but, you know, whatever works for you, works for you.

------------------------------------------

[1] For example, in my entire adult life I have had only two serious (i.e. shouting) arguments with my father, and neither of them had to do with differing beliefs, and now that he is dead I regret even having those two arguments.

He did not approve of my beliefs, but both he and I take a live and let live approach to life. I mean, I'm atheist and I'm happily married to someone who isn't; we have yet (over decades) to have a single argument over religion!

Idea + idea2 = quarrel

Is missing out a variable. It's an action. An action e.g. it has been brought up.

Idea + idea2 + action

Merely encountering someone with an idea different to one we hold shouldn't lead to a breakdown in communication. It needs an action to e.g. discuss the idea, and this action is controllable. Most of the time we do not quarrel with people even though they are different than us.

Often we are not the ones who can control this, but we can control our reactions and stop participating in the quarrel should one start. (That's easier said then done as its all emotions by this point!)

There is a growing school of thought in academia and in some radical groups that says that we shouldn't stop participating in quarrels and that we should let our anger out and voice heard. This idea says that any call to understand the other (empathy) is therefore toxic and harmful and that it's a choice which suppresses our important story. (Usually we just say they are impossible to understand and so "other" them, which leads to de-humanisation as only humans can be understood). Often our pain needs recognition but to reject the idea of understanding another seems to lead to a worse world in any reality.

Now whilst to deny understanding is utterly fundamentally wrong in any and all rational belief systems, there is actually some truth to the idea! It will cause pain and effort to understand another. It does weaken one's own ideas and certainty about things. If I try to understand someone who opposes me on some important idea that I have, it will change me somehow. Maybe I will have less attachment to the idea, maybe I will find other ideas, maybe I will reject the idea, maybe I will not. These side effects of understanding can be dangerous.

It's Von Daniken's books that lead me here:

Why do people think funny things. What are the processes to believe things? What are the processes and ideas which keep people from changing their beliefs. What do people really desire? How are people manipulated and how do they manipulate others? How can people in a cult come out of a cult? How do cults work? How do people change the ideas inside them? How do I tell what I believe in? What does "ideology" mean? How can I tell where what I believe in comes from? How can I talk about different ideas with others?

> There is a growing school of thought in academia and in some radical groups that says that we shouldn't stop participating in quarrels and that we should let our anger out and voice heard.

I think the problem is in wanting to convince the other party to change their mind, except that humans untrained in presenting arguments just switch to campaigning instead.

Academia has always been where new ideas are seeded, germinate and flourish; this means that a lot of campaigns for change come from academia. It always has, probably always will.

The problem we have had recently (Moreso in the last 10 years or so) is that academia itself has tried shutting itself off from ideas; it's why there's safe spaces, and why people have been prevented from presenting talks at campuses, etc.

This new approach is resulting in a lot of "Nope, we won't even discuss it, nor will we allow you to discuss it to third parties".

Leading us to be in a thread about von Daniken, making fun of people who have a belief that meets a higher bar for evidence than the clear majority of the world.

The people making fun of the theories aren't even self-aware enough to realise that they interact daily with the rest of humanity who have even wilder beliefs.

> How can I tell where what I believe in comes from?

I believe (hehe) that this is where Cogito Ergo Sum came from.

Often we think someone is 100% sure but they only appear that way to us. Trying to change someone's thoughts by arguing with them never works.

Nasty quarrels might indicate an amount of uncertainty, or an amount of inability to articulate a thought. We often have ideas we don't really know why we have them, so we can help others to try to explain things to us in a way that helps them understand why too.

A "nasty quarrel" requires more than one side, and this other side is also responsible for the quarrel. I think its wise when trying to talk about difficult things to first identify and agree upon the small things you can both agree upon. If a conversation becomes heated it's no longer a conversation and you should get out before it gets worse. If you feel it's leading into fire and can still be salvaged you can then go back to these shared things and start again.

However a real conversation about ideas will also challenge and change your own view of the world. You might find your own ideas changing. People generally find this a psychologically painful process and will subconsciously resist such a movement. Generally we prefer to label the other as different, alien, us vs them. Having a quarrel is therefore even more likely as it means that your own psyche is protected from encounter with the dangerous other. Understanding that this also applies to the person you are talking with can also help reduce tensions and increase empathy. Again, starting from common shared baseline will help.

I think you are very close to explanation. Ideas in human minds can be presented as facts. If you decide that you are happy by some setting - that becomes a fact to you, while in reality that is a belief. The same about depression and sadness - you can get impacted by information you did not knew and would not be impacted if you were in blissful ignorance and some people choose exactly that choice. Some people get psychosis and their mind is hallucinating that they are on fire - that is real to them as what are your experiences, though those also are not based on facts, but serve as an information delivery to your brain.

The whole issue with human minds is that it is not built to deal with scientific facts, but with socium of other people. You can't use facts when operating with society - you have to use symbols, that they will associate with. And I think that the issue is with you(as it is my experience as well) - I can guarantee, that there are people, that will explain to your family members EXACTLY the same ideas, that you are trying to explain to them... and they will agree to that person - and not to you, because you are clearly doing it wrong.

You should try and and do what the OP is suggesting, i.e. to try and put yourself in your dad's shows and try to see the world the way he sees and understands it. I.e. this type of conversation goes both ways.

Becoming conspiracy theorist yourself is not a way to prevent dangers of conspiracy theorist. It will make the issue worst - instead of one conspiracy theorist, we now have too.

Not being like them is a good life goal.

> why some people are incapable of changing their point of view

I've thought about this and the conclusion was:

What you believe you know makes you what you currently are. You can't just believe in a contradictory position. You could believe that you have been proven wrong, which would then change your belief.

Changing your point of view, looking at things from the vantage of someone else with different life experiences and the resulting belief systems would be dishonest at best, and claiming that you are capable of changing your beliefs on a whim is like being able to rip your arm off.

You can, at best, adapt your own belief to encompass theirs with caveats or simply not care about your truths.

I think, that the people that are criticizing Erich von Däniken are doing so from modern viewpoint. People in his time had very limited POV, mostly because there was not much data, compared to how it is now, but modern people also forget that science is not a religion and it can't be based on beliefs only - it requires evidence and without any such evidence all the ideas has to be thrown out. Also, if there are better explanations - old ones are thrown out as well, because that is how it is in science. Unfortunately, no matter how good and exiting his ideas were as a read, but as a science theory they simply did not pass test of time, however IMO he has earned his place as someone as an example to have wider horizons to look around.

"People in his time"?!? He only died the other day. Until last week was "his time"! And new weird religions / cults / sects like the "Ancient Aliens" one he founded are being born all the time. The world hasn't changed fundamentally since last week, so it's still "his time".

The only place he has earned is as a successful nutjob / scam artist (about on a par with L. Ron Hubbard or Eric Dubay?), as opposed to all the less successful ones.

- most people don't like admitting to having been wrong -- they might not be right in their new viewpoints either

- some people like to preen and moralize, so changing their view is an admission that they had (and therefore have) no moral authority (this overlaps the previous point)

- most people don't like the idea that something everyone knows to be true isn't -- that's conspiracy theory territory, and they know not to go there no matter what

- even where it's not any of the above, significant shifts in opinion are simply uncomfortable

- in specialized cases (e.g., science) people may have a sunk cost fallacy going on. For example, suppose you have a new theory to replace Lambda-CDM: but you'll be wrecking a bunch of researchers' life work if you're right! This is why "science advances one funeral at a time", per Max Planck. We've seen many cases of this.

The main thing I credit EVD with is teaching me disappointment from certain fun tantalizing things not turning out to be true. This prepared me to better cope with the X-Files and Lost TV shows, as well as nuclear fusion research and faster than light space travel :grumpycat:

> why some people are incapable of changing their point of view

Do you really want the answer?

People don't always say what they think and aren't consistent because they may hold multiple conflicting beliefs. This isn't lying or a lack of curiosity. It's the opposite, and perfectly rational.

Actually, if you don't think you have any conflicting beliefs you should think about it harder or seriously question how open-minded you really are.

You can give someone all the evidence that convinced you about something, but it will only convince them if they share enough of your foundational assumptions. At the core of all beliefs lie some assumptions, not facts.

This quickly becomes philosophy, but I encourage you to seek more if you really want this answer. You are pulling on a thread that I promise will bring enlightenment. I wish more people asked this more often and really meant it. It would resolve a lot of pointless conflict.

What I see instead, especially on places like HN or Reddit, is people trying to reassure themselves because they want to settle a question "once and for all" instead of seeking better answers. They want praise for what they "know" and to take a break, but there is no perfect truth, just better answers, and this process never ends.

> the what if, the “wouldn’t it be cool if this premise were true,” still lingers in my mind from time to time.

This stops being as relevant when you're put under pressure to make real decisions based on what you believe is true. You are forced to weigh the consequences of the decision, not just what you think might be true. This is a compromise, but I struggle to call this dishonesty.

> To be honest, I still don’t fully understand how ideology can cloud the mind so thoroughly that only a single way of thinking remains possible.

From what I know, and please correct me if I am wrong; it relates to fear and cognitive dissonance. First, by creating FUD the perpetrator can cause physical narrow-mindedness within the brain, the amygdala — centre of emotions if you will — takes control which reduces reasoning capabilities. Second, by introducing multiple conflicting viewpoints in that state, you induce what we call cognitive dissonance. The brain is unable to reconcile the two opposing (or even just differing) views. This is a conflict at the circuit level of the brain, and the brain needs to reach a conclusion, and conveniently the conclusion is produced by the perpetrators of fud, those who seek to control/exploit others.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com