It’s easy to just say, “They’re crazy, who can explain crazy people?” and be done with it. It’s easy to act like there’s a separate species of people that naturally believes only wrong things, like dogs chasing squirrels, or rabbits digging holes.
It’s harder to think that these are human beings who probably don’t arbitrarily decide on a hobby of being wrong about things because it is fun, and that they’re being driven by basic human qualities that we also have, like fear or ego. Or that they feel the need to make larger-than-life monsters and heroes out of real people (throwing away facts to do so) in order to make sense out of the confusing and painful situation our country has been going through (the economy, the release of the Ghost Rider sequel, etc.).
They’re not good reasons, but they are reasons, beyond just “They’re bad people, that’s what bad people do.”
Cracked, 4 Reasons Humans Will Never Understand Each Other
I had already read about the ideas of that Cracked in the sequences (http://lesswrong.com/lw/i7/belief_as_attire/, http://lesswrong.com/lw/9v/beware_of_otheroptimizing/, http://lesswrong.com/lw/i0/are_your_enemies_innately_evil/), but I still found it awesome.
A bit long for a quote. Might have been a good summary for a discussion post link.