Once someone is told something, and believes it, it's so difficult to convince them of something else.

Why is society so closed minded?

Your mom is very open minded, ask her about last night.

people are too lazy to think for themselves

this.

I think that people generally don't put a high value on truth, at least in the current western society. People would rather have a lie than the truth in any given instance.

Um, what? You'd rather hear a lie than the truth?
I think it's pretty safe to say that most people would rather have the truth. It's the availability and convenience of the truth that seems to be escaping us.
More on topic, though, it's human nature to be stubborn. Christianity plays off this pretty well.

This post was edited by 01100110 on Oct 4 2009 10:05pm

Sometimes you see someone making a statement and you ahve studied the opposite and know you are right and indeed lets assume youa re right and you can easily prove it. Why is it then that the other person still doesn't believe. One likely explanation is that despite two things are the opposite they are both true. For example look at behaviorism vs genetics. They seem to be totally opposing but nevertheless both true at the same time. In an argument you focus more on your own argument rather than another one, so you focus more on the truths of your argument so you might not even realize that the other one is right as well. However most importantly you believe your argument to be true and as the other argument is opposing it you dont even consider it as being right because it just has to be wrong due to the fact that it is oppossing yours and yours is true. Thats the key point

Ofc there are also lots of other reasons. You often stick to wahtever you got most knowledge about it because the more knowledge there is the more associations and understanding there is. Whereas if you wanna convince someone of something elce it might take some time till that someone gets enough knowledge in the other topic and tries to understand it more fully.

This post was edited by MyAccountIsOsterHues on Oct 4 2009 11:44pm

Sometimes you see someone making a statement and you ahve studied the opposite and know you are right and indeed lets assume youa re right and you can easily prove it. Why is it then that the other person still doesn't believe. One likely explanation is that despite two things are the opposite they are both true. For example look at behaviorism vs genetics. They seem to be totally opposing but nevertheless both true at the same time. In an argument you focus more on your own argument rather than another one, so you focus more on the truths of your argument so you might not even realize that the other one is right as well. However most importantly you believe your argument to be true and as the other argument is opposing it you dont even consider it as being right because it just has to be wrong due to the fact that it is oppossing yours and yours is true. Thats the key point

Ofc there are also lots of other reasons. You often stick to wahtever you got most knowledge about it because the more knowledge there is the more associations and understand there is. Whereas if you wanna convince someone of something elce it might take some time till that someone gets enough knowledge in the other topic and tries to understand it more fully.

Well, I'm not arrogant. I always look at both arguments.

Most people would rather have the APPEARANCE of truth, it makes life easier and requires no effort on their part.