It is pretty much a necessity that humans will believe contradictory things, if only because consistency checking each new belief with each of your current beliefs is impossibly difficult. Cognitive dissonance won’t occur if the contradiction is so obscure that you haven’t noticed it, or perhaps wouldn’t even understand exactly how it contradicts a set of 136 other beliefs even if it was explained to you. Even if you could check for contradictions, your values change drastically from one hour to the next (how much you value food, water, company, solitude, leisure, etc), and that will change all your beliefs that start with “I want …”. Most likely you actually have different bits of brain with different values vying for dominance
Moreover, many times a belief is part of a group membership (eg “I support [cause]”, or simply feels good (eg “I am a good person”). People will not appreciate if you point out contradictions in these things, possibly because they are instrumental and not epistemic beliefs. There is no doubt that professing contradictory beliefs can be highly beneficial (eg “Republicans are fiscally conservative, want small government, cut taxes, more money for the military and enforcing morality”, if you reject any of that you’re not a viable candidate)
It is pretty much a necessity that humans will believe contradictory things, if only because consistency checking each new belief with each of your current beliefs is impossibly difficult. Cognitive dissonance won’t occur if the contradiction is so obscure that you haven’t noticed it, or perhaps wouldn’t even understand exactly how it contradicts a set of 136 other beliefs even if it was explained to you. Even if you could check for contradictions, your values change drastically from one hour to the next (how much you value food, water, company, solitude, leisure, etc), and that will change all your beliefs that start with “I want …”. Most likely you actually have different bits of brain with different values vying for dominance
Moreover, many times a belief is part of a group membership (eg “I support [cause]”, or simply feels good (eg “I am a good person”). People will not appreciate if you point out contradictions in these things, possibly because they are instrumental and not epistemic beliefs. There is no doubt that professing contradictory beliefs can be highly beneficial (eg “Republicans are fiscally conservative, want small government, cut taxes, more money for the military and enforcing morality”, if you reject any of that you’re not a viable candidate)