Argument from analogy

First, let me tell you a story of someone, a conservative, (unsurprising, I know) on an internet forum. After my grievous mistake of actually trying to educate them, pointing out each logical fallacy, explaining how logical mistakes in an argument are akin to arithmetic mistakes in solving an equation, the end result is you must accept the fact what you did was wrong, period, because any problem you attempt to solve with 7+2 = 72 is not going to work out too well in your favor. Their retort was, "I don't want to be logical about everything, people aren't supposed to be  computers." Of course, this is like saying, "I don't want to correctly do arithmetic,  people aren't supposed to be  calculators."  What you notice, other than the depressing fact that someone living in the modern age could possibly say something so ignorant, is that I made an analogy, and since math and logic are fundamentally analogous, it works as an argument from analogy. 

Arguments from analogy are always particularly interesting, because in truth they're extremely difficult to actually make properly. The fact is, arguments from analogy need to be, (and I eagerly await the gasps of shock) analogous. Unfortunately, given the average person doesn't know the difference between Modus pollens and  Modus tollens, (Which, as far as logic is concerned, in effect is not knowing the difference between addition and subtraction) the possibility they can make a proper logical analogy, even on extremely simple topics, is unlikely. Given that dolts look at complicated topics, don't understand the most fundamental concepts of the topic, and attempt to make analogies, well... we can say that it's more than a little obvious that there will be shortcomings. 

Arguments from analogy can be extremely useful, however, even if they're not complete analogies. In my analogy in the first paragraph I use math as an analogue for logic to point out to someone with no understanding of logic, that, like with math, there is doing it right, or doing it wrong, period. There is no wiggle room on what "7+2" equals. Like with math advanced logic doesn't preclude debate, however. Theoretical physicists can properly do math and argue for different hypothesis, much like philosophers can use proper logic and argue for different hypothesis. Another analogy, this one may in fact be flawed under scrutiny, but still reasonably accurate, I feel. 

While the analogy may not be, strictly speaking, perfect, the differences in them don't seem to factor in to change the argument. The reason is simple: despite the fact P.T. and philosophers are both vastly different professions, both are using analogues, math and logic, to argue plausible hypothesis that are not flawed by virtue of the math or logic behind them, at least not at face value. Most people, however, when attempting to make an analogy will not go into that level of depth to understand where the analogy does and does not work. I pride myself on often being able to tell the level of ability for someone to 'think' by reading a few paragraphs of personal opinion they happen to write. Any opinion or argument uses logic, just like solving any equation uses mathematics. Someone who is an expert in mathematics can easily look at a few attempts to solve problems and can then estimate the level of competence the person has. The same goes with logic, each sentence someone uses with logical content I get to peer at and then can estimate their competence. Arguments from analogy are actually often even more telling than other attempts at an argument because they vary in accuracy so much.  Not only do I get to see their lack of ability to see the logical analogues between the two concepts, I get to see how little they understand about each concept in their attempt to equate them. In short: The greatest way for the a person to make a mockery of themselves to anyone who knows what they're doing is to simply attempt an argument from analogy.

Cognitive Dissonance as stupidity.

Intelligence and stupidity, while words oft thrown around -- and I'm no exception to doing so -- are very hard to pin down properties.  The current idea I've been toying with is that stupidity, and as a corollary, intelligence, is either a result of, or simply an abundance of, cognitive dissonance and intelligence being the lack thereof.

Cognitive dissonance, for this blissfully unaware enough to know, is when a person holds two mutually exclusive beliefs at the same time. If you speak to someone long enough, you'll often find these. Now, before I start on examples, let us speak of logic for a moment. In logic, if you have a contradiction ,you can prove anything; math is the same way. Since people are more familiar with basic arithmetic than symbolic logic, I'll use a quick math example. If you have 1=0, you can use the rules of math to prove anything. Since 1=0, you can add 1` to one side, and and subtract 0 from the other, since they're equal. 1=0 means any number equals any other number, which means of course, you can mathematically "prove" anything.

Now, I don't believe "beliefs" are logic are analogous. (I'd explain, but that'd take half abook) while not analogous they have similarities.  Now, I'm not sure which causes which, is stupidity is the cause of cognitive dissonance, or if cognitive dissonance, once implanted tends to lead to stupidity, but either way there seems to be an undeniable correlation.  A person with a large amount of cognitive dissonance is undeniable stupid, because the way they form beliefs results in multiple ones which cannot be sustained together. Any process of belief formulation which results in mutually exclusive beliefs is so flawed that the formulation of accurate beliefs is unlikely, if not impossible and thus the person and their beliefs must be considered stupid.

Let it be noted that, in a logical system, a single contradiction can lead to a proof of anything. In a human mind, the system is far less... proper. It's a tangled mess of evolutionary and social bullshit that leads to a semi-functioning mind. A single case of cognitive dissonance does not imply stupidity as a property, but frequent cases of it cannot be seen as anything else. As an example: I've known, sadly, multiple atheist/agnostic people who have the belief in ghosts. Of course, to have the belief there is no supernatural deity, but to believe there is a sort of personal spirit or soul are two beliefs that are, while not directly mutually exclusive, is extremely close to being so. This is an example of the sort of inane belief structure that makes it difficult for people to render proper beliefs. If you have a structure that conflicts, the structure cannot stand. Now, the most obvious cliche' is religious beliefs. There are a laughable number of cognitive dissonances once you start prying there. But that's not the point, the point is any system which has them results in an unstable system, and any unstable system is without a doubt one that can be called stupidity. (Drunken Rough Draft)

Identity through time

A rather...odd happenstance happened to me a bit ago. Odd, perhaps, is not the best word, but a lining up of two once-occurring events in a way where they meet, due to timing. It's the internet version of walking down a path you've never taken since it's longer, just to kill 10 extra minutes, then getting hit by lightning due to your travel route. Still, uncommon events still occur, that's what makes them uncommon rather than impossible. Regardless, I digress, the point is that, ignoring the details of the boring but exceedingly unlikely event, it brought to the forefront of my mind something I think about on a semi-regular basis, but have yet to write about -- Identity through time.

Identity through time is one particularly interesting problem to me, particularly since, as a philosopher, my views are far removed from the general populous (Thankfully). However, my views even in the philosophy clique are rather uncommon, making me twice removed. However, before I delve into the vehemently anti-intuition mindset that is my own, I need to explain some things.

This is a complex topic in which you can write a PhD thesis on, so many things will be assumed, ignored, or otherwise not discussed in here. There is the psychology and physiological arguments for identity through time, a ton of variations of those, and many things that otherwise could be explained but won't, however, I'll lay out some of personal beliefs of the best accounts and go on to explain my more general view.

Personal Identity, for me, is in effect a purely psychological occurrence, that is to say physical effects can change personal identity (head wound, for example) but aren't part of it. That is to say, the biological identity of something can be non-changing, while personal identity does. For example: A person who has an accident which damages their mind such that they lose all memories and act differently completely, is still the same biological object, but the personhood has changed such that pre-accident and post-accident people are, in fact, as different as any two random people picked out the globe. Now, there can be a vigorous debate about this, but just assume it's unquestionable, so I can get to my real point.

There is a problem with small changes in a large system, a gradient problem.  In essence, it is the ship of Theseus problem. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_theseus.

Now, gradient problems like this exist in many areas of inquiry, and I can go on a whole tangent about them, but in short, I say this: I reject it as a problem. We either try to define objects into intuitive categories, (which I find inane given the human mind is a sad kludge-together of evolution  and the thought intuition and categories that we assign things somehow are a reflection of reality is absurd) or we give in and accept that each change creates something new, so that it doesn't matter how large the leap in the gradient, it is different, and no matter how small, it is different.

What this means, regarding personal identity through time as far as I'm concerned, is that each change no matter how small in effect, creates a new, different, person. Oh, of course, since the changes are in fact so minor that between two seconds we cannot detect any real change, but I'd gladly argue it is there. The changes in, twenty of thirty years, however, might be so vast that if we exclude chronological data, the same biological person is, as far as the mind is concerned, a different person. While the future me rises out of the current me, and as such is likely to be vastly similar, as time goes on each incremental change has the possibility of veering my personally in such a different direction that most similarities could even  dissipate through time, albeit the most fundamental traits will probably endure, but still, that's not nearly enough to consider them the same person, otherwise we'd have two strangers being the same person on a regular basis.

So, that is where I get removed from the norm, I consider each chronological movement to, in effect, create a new person. Unintuitive, yes, but I don't see why that's a problem logically. Of course,  people can point of problems with this, most if not all I dash with ease, or so I feel... but nonetheless, it is an odd position, I'll admit, though by no means I'll admit it is wrong. The fact is, since the two people that exist at the two closest chronological intervals are going to be so vastly similar, there is no reason to treat them any differently. That is, while in reality they are different people, there's no reason to treat them as something else, until we jump larger periods of time where the similarity to the pervious person may not be quite so similar after all. So then, a person I knew in high school may be in some if not many respects similar, he is a new person.  The idea of 'catching up' is in essence meeting the new person. Now, under normal circumstances the changes may not be so vast (though in this range, is probably most likely to be larger than normal), but other circumstances can aggravate changes as well. A kid in high school and a war vet may be six years apart, but... as far as personality goes, can be so vastly different. The person you knew exists in the past, a remnant of time, dead infinite times over, only to be reborn based on the world around them, and their deeds. Reincarnation, writ large.

Now, everything prior to this I'll gladly defend (excluding my little bit of mediocre poetic prose) and admit, the next part however is more silly, but I still find it a fun idea to toy around with, in the vein of Berkeley type bullshit philosophy. I won't go on long about it.

Let us take Plank Time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plank_time and apply it to my personal identity through time. Using a film analogy we can draw a similar conclusion. Plank time in essence cuts the universe, or at least, the stages of observing it, into absurdly small pieces, but the speed of them in rapid succession creates the illusion of a singular, constant, event. Much like with a movie, separate pictures seen in rapid succession creates the same illusion. So, then, personhood through time is an illusion as much as movement of pictures rapidly creates a scene that has movement. Perhaps time itself, at least how we see it, is the same.

Projection

Projection is an interesting concept, probably because it's the inherent way the mind tries to understand others. Being stuck in your own mind limits your ability to comprehend other mindsets, subjective experiences are just that, subjective. The key to diminishing the problems with projection is to first accept it and try to edit perceptions of people not through your own feelings in similar situations, but rather their actions. By this, I mean, you can see actions and understand the possible motivations of those actions without coloring them with your own bias. This is why, I so commonly exclaim how I cannot fathom the thought process of the average person. The logical fallacies, psychological cliches, cognitive dissonance all displayed so freely makes it impossible for me to form an image of their mind that is similar to my own.

Imagine the typical brag/taunt. There is an assumption in there. If a child taunts another child with the fact he has a bunch of candy, the presumption must be that the child with candy believes the second child also desires the candy. If the child did not want the candy, the taunt would be moot. The same sort of psychological projection happens to stick with people throughout their lives, typically, if not exclusively.

What this means, of course, is that when someone attempts to taunt someone or brag, the underlying assumption is that the person being taunted has a desire for the object held, metaphorically, over him. However, all this should go without saying, but the important part is this: Most often, what a person attempts to taunt another with is projection, and not a rational outlook of the person and finding out what he desires. In short, if someone tries to taunt you with something, it's because they put value on it, not because you do. The average person doesn't have a level of rational introspection well developed enough to realize non-idiots have different weights.

So then, imagine someone yells, “Haha, I have more jars of shit than you do!” There are two conclusions we can draw from this: The very, very, rare idea the person understands you, and knows that you, specifically, value jars of shit... or more than likely, he values jars of shit, and is projecting his value of them onto you(lets ignore the obvious satirical points for the example.) For idiots, projecting is all they can do, and since the majority of people are idiots, it works well enough, since they tend to put weight on similar objects.

From all this, we can then learn some very significant things from people by virtue of how they attempt to taunt and/or mock you. Not like they would understand, but often times the value they place on things actually mock themselves, and it's painfully obvious. The jar of shit example, of course, is hyperbole, but just barely, it would seem. Lets take another example, I've found someone, in an argument constantly reference his wife as an obvious attempt to make someone jealous. Let us be serious: getting married is in fact less impressive, statistically, than graduating a community college with a degree in interior design. Even worse, in fact. It's just as bad as trying to brag about being a community college dropout. It's no joke, significantly more people are, or have been, married then have either gotten any degree, or even enrolled and dropped out. However, this person was in fact trying to use this fact, that is so absurdly trite and unimpressive, in order to brag is a terrible reflection on him. You're more of an elite by enrolling in community college for a semester and dropping out and bragging about it. However, this person is projecting the fact they got married onto someone else as something they should be envious of... it shows such a profound lack of insight towards that the person has that you can tell they have little going on in either their mind or life.

Now, let me clarify, there's nothing wrong with being happy about being married. Nor is there anything wrong with being happy about getting a degree from a community college, or even your G.E.D. Improving your education is always good. The problem is, when you believe others, particularly people who are not in a similar situation to you, should be envious of these traits it makes a mockery of you. Someone who is unintelligent putting forth lots of effort to get a G.E.D. because they value education, despite being bad at it, deserves respect. Being more educated, or smarter than the average doesn't inherently make you a better person anymore than being taller or stronger or having better eyesight. The problem is that, by trying to mock someone the average person not only mocks themselves, but also reveals significant things about themselves, very unintentionally. Think about someone short trying to mock others by referencing that others are too tall. In this society, it is utterly inane, as being short is not a property that gives advantages, generally. Well, this behavior is commonplace when it deals with many other topics.

So, let us continue but now give some more applicable examples of people projecting their mind on to you.

Take words that you'd find on any standardized test given to 9^th graders; that is high school freshmen (about 14-15years old.) If you use these words in a conversation, more so to someone who is aggravated towards you (and guaranteed on the internet) they will say things that reflect so painfully poorly on themselves it absolutely boggles me that they don't understand they're mocking themselves. Now, I know they don't understand but at the same time... I simply cannot comprehend the mindset that would not realize it. It's something that is factual, yet at the same time difficult to fathom. It is the quantum physics of the mind. So, anyhow, use words such as these in a conversation, just a couple that I've found as a first-week freshman vocab list: admonish, efface, relinquish, spurious, perennial, as a few examples. If you use these words it's all but a certainty that this person will call attention to them, proclaiming you're “looking at a thesaurus,” or “what are you, in college and think you're smart” “tryhard” “Trying to impress with big words.” Now, let me be clear. These are high school freshman words, a fourteen year old is expected to know at least 7/10 of them. Yet, these words are so out of the ordinary and impressive to these people they feel the need to call attention towards them when used.

Now, the person who says things like, “you're looking at a thesaurus” or “learned some new words today in college lolz” is really attempting to insult you, but the sad fact is they're insulting themselves and are too stupid to realize it. By speaking using words at the level of a fourteen year old child, you've impressed these people so much, they begin to project, putting themselves into a position where they would use those words. Since a 9^th grade writing level is beyond them, it must be beyond others and thus, you must be putting forth significant effort by using normal, unimpressive words that simply are both the most accurate and fit the prose well. The projection is simple, “For me to write at this level, I must use a thesaurus, thus, he is using a thesaurus to write at this level.” This is one of many, many, areas where a person unwittingly reveals their lack of education and intelligence, mocks themselves while doing so and is still too stupid to realize all of that goes on.

Honestly, projection is, if anything, as much a logical fallacy as a psychological fact. It's simple, “argument from self”. I do X in position Y, therefore he does X in position Y. This is no different than any dullard committing any other fallacy, and one can spot it just as easily.

Seeing someones mind.

Firstly, this is going to be a large multi-post project about me rambling on about a general topic, using how an idiot tries to insult you to understand things about them, how they psychologically project and how much they reveal about their intelligence, or lack thereof, by mocking themselves attempting to mock you. The intellectual version of trying to punch someone, tripping, knocking your head on the corner of a table and knocking yourself out. The only sad part is that stupid people suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect, and don't realize how idiotic they show themselves to be. Anyhow, lets begin.

Language is an interesting construct, it is a construct intended to exchange information, emotion, ideas... but the inherent effect of this is that it also reflects strongly on the people using it, by virtue of how people attempt to use language to exchange this information.

When you use language you are in fact not simply using words but you are taking aspects of you mind, your thought processes, and everything that comes along with it and attempting to put that into the system of linguistics. So, then, when you communicate you're not only simply showing a sentence to the world but revealing significant portions of your mind.

Now, this may seem like a bit of hyperbolic and overly verbose absurdity, but it's really not. Just look at stuff like cold-reading for so called psychics, techniques that allow them to manipulate their victims because in their ignorance they reveal things and then conveniently forget, memory-edit or otherwise ignore that they freely handed all the information to the person conning them. This stuff is commonplace. People don't use words, they reveal facts. [Note: Cold Reading poor example, might edit blog to clean up later]

Now, let me give some examples, nothing too complex.

Imagine a child is angry and wishes to express his anger towards you. “You're a poopy-face” she says, in all seriousness. For a child, this is a fairly acceptable way to express anger towards a person. If an adult said that, in all seriousness (and that excludes the possibility of satire or sarcasm, or mental disability)... well, it'll give you insight to their mind. They have the belief that calling you a poopy-face is not only an expression of their anger, but one that intends to insult you.

The same example applies to any sort of random, non-empirically backed, word with a negative connotation used as an insult. The person is not using words that express a fact (Your face is made of feces) but rather, they're expressing an emotion they have and using words to do so. In reality, what “You're a poopy-face” means is 'I'm angry with you because you're a mean person.' None of the words the child uses has any factual content in it. There are 0 words that mean anything that correlate to reality. The notable part, however, is that the difference between the person saying, “You're a fag” and the child saying “You're a poopy-face” is effectively nil. The intent, an expression of anger towards someone, with a random word with a supposedly negative connotation, with no realistic grasp of the sentence's content. With the child, it's an understandable expression of anger. With an adult, it's literally someone so intellectually dead that they don't understand the sentence they're saying, quite literally, has no meaning – no truth value. It's just emotion bundled up in incorrect word usage because they're too stupid to express themselves.

Yes, the “adult” for lack of a better term, is on the same intellectual level as the child. No hyperbole, no sarcasm, it's a fact; the same inept flailing and predictable actions are there, because they're essentially the same. No factual content, no real insult. No picking a personal character flaw and bringing it forward and putting a voice to it, to cause anger, mock, hurt or cause any emotional upset to a person. Simply a random word chosen with a negative correlation, because they do not know how to express anger, and they're too ignorant to even know how to insult you.

Furthermore, the use of the word fag gives insight to a person's mind that said person uses that word in such a way they believe it has a negative connotation that it, somehow, would be scathing. Of course, anyone who isn't a dullard finds that about as offensive as... well, an adult calling you a poopy-face realistically, it's a joke. In fact, poopy-face is more hurtful, as at least there are reasons in which having a face of feces is severely negative... calling me homosexual is as hurtful as saying I'm attracted to brunettes, it's simply nonsensical to believe saying it is somehow insulting towards me. It merely mocks you, because you're stupid enough to believe it's offending and insulting me. You're calling me a poopy-face, in all seriousness and think you're insulting me instead of making me laugh at you. That's a level of stupid that's incurable.

Now, when someone says something like “You're a fag” they obviously don't intend to mock themselves, though they unwittingly do it by having the exact same wit, grace and reaction as a six year old. That, however, is the subtext of their use of language. That is one of the many facets you can peer into and see a person's mind. The belief that calling someone a poopy-face is not a mockery of themselves, but is in fact attacking the person they're directing it towards, is a significant insight into how that person thinks. Obviously, you're not mapping out a person's entire persona based on a single data point, but since everything a person does is a point of data we can gather enough information for inferences of varying accuracies rather quickly. So, when someone says something, that has no factual content, no wit, grace, prose, or even the slightest evidence and wishes that sentence to cause you offense... well... the person is beyond stupid. It is, as it often is, projection. If a person is trying to insult you by saying “You're a fag” it's most oft because they would be offended if someone said to them, “You're a fag” and I will say this: No one intelligent and witty, ever, will do anything but laugh at a person who believes that insults them.

Perfection

Perfection is a word that is, sadly, rather common; however, some time ago I've come to the realization that perfection is an incoherent concept. Interestingly enough, perfect has two major uses, one being the case of redundancy, if something must be perfect to suit a definition. The second and most significant problem is, outside vague and nonsensical use of the word, the idea of perfection is one that can be in virtue of a specific goal only. Something is perfect only in the sense it is idealized for a specific situation and/or for a specific goal and that any sort of universal or multiple areas of perfection is inane, which effectively defeats the idea of perfect.

What do I mean? Well, firstly lets look at the redundancy point. The phrase “A perfect circle” is redundant, because by definition a circle is perfect, or it is not a circle; likewise with square. Some phrases also use this, like “A perfect fit” well, obviously it either fits or it doesn't. If it's not a perfect fit, it is slightly loose, or slightly tight perhaps, but, really, it either fits or it doesn't.

The second use of perfect is interesting, since it's so damned silly. Let us define perfect, as a quick and by no means final but just for the purpose for this example, as “Any changes to the object/action will render it less effective or appealing, and no possible changes can make it more appealing or effective.” However, make note that this means it can only be in virtue of a person's perception or an intended use. Imagine the perfect sandwich. Well, it's perfect only due to the person eating it. One person's perfect sandwich is another person's mediocre sandwich. Even worse, one person's perfect sandwich on Wednesday may not the same as the perfect sandwich on Friday, for the same person. It stands to reason that, unless human biology changes, a sandwich which would reach the definition of perfect for a person can easily, later, be non-perfect as a different type of sandwich would be more desirable to eat, thus rendering the previous sandwich, which was perfect, to become non-perfect. The big problem? How can something that is perfect and cannot be changed to make it better somehow become non-perfect when no changes could possibly make it better? Well, because it's only in virtue of it being the most satisfying sandwich for a specific person at a specific time... which would be nice, but far from what the use of perfect tends to imply. The change in something outside the sandwich renders it perfect or imperfect, which means the properties of the sandwich, interestingly enough, is not what would make it perfect, or at least not in totality.

The idea of perfection is incoherent because it's only in virtue of a specific goal. A shoe that is a perfect size for me is only perfect due to the fact it fits in foot and any changes in size to the shoe would make it not fit. That does not make it a perfect shoe, however, as a perfect shoe must be universally a perfect fit for everyone, as a shoe that doesn't fit can't perform the intended use of a shoe. A ball is the perfect size only depending on what you need that size to be. A baseball is the “perfect” size to play baseball with. Likewise, the basketball is the “perfect” ball to play basketball with. That sort of renders the word perfect worthless, however, since there could be no “perfect” ball which suits both categories at the same time. A key can't fit all doors, so it becomes perfect only if the goal becomes to unlock the specific door that it opens...which makes it simply a key. Now, imagine the perfect key, the only way I could possibly think that it would be perfect is that opened all locks. Despite it being physically impossible... it would now render locks worthless and as such, the perfect key is no longer a key, but rather something that destroys the function of a lock. Perfection for the key means the impossibility of a perfect lock, suddenly. These physical examples are just showing that physical objects and actions can't be perfect, but still the most absurd use of perfect is for abstract or non-physical things.

Of course, the most inept use of perfect is a religious one. The phrase “God is perfect” is completely meaningless. Well, lets say someone goes “It means God has no flaws” which likewise is inane... because it really is just repeating the problem with the idea of perfect. Replace a sandwich with no flaws to me is going to have flaws to someone else. Furthermore, as I've said, perfect can only occur in virtue of a goal, so without a goal merely using the word perfect becomes, in the face of all logic, twice as meaningless. God is perfect in regards to what? Or, if you like, God is flawless in regards to what? Is God perfect at being a circle? Is God the perfect/flawless sandwich? No, you moron, you just use the word perfect because it has a positive connotation and you use it to try to express your emotion without trying to convey any meaning. Abstract things face the same problem with perfect. What could possibly be the perfect idea? The perfect number? It's all in virtue of context and goals, which renders perfection as a property completely impossible.

And with that note, I'll hint at my next post which no one will see, regarding language as degrees of impressionism.

Being Right

A stupid person once said to me, “Everyone likes being right.”, and like most things stupid people say, it's incorrect.

Being right is an intellectual virtue. The thing that people want to do is feel right, which is an emotional drive. For example, this person re-posted a picture in this thread while complaining about reposted pictures. Some other guy called him out on it. This idiot made two separate forum posts saying the person must have seen it on another website, rather than spending thirty seconds going back and looking for the picture, as to not prove himself a moron.

This trite little story helps bring to light my point. This person did not care about being right, he wanted to feel right. He would make a post saying that someone else is wrong despite the fact it would take mere seconds, literally, to get the evidence that would overturn his statement. People who want to be right open a book before they open their mouths, the dullards who want to feel right will argue without a shred of knowledge on the subject. The creationist feels he's right. The Libertarian feels he's right. The Flat-Earther feels he's right. The Christian saying “Gays can't raise kids as well as heterosexual couple” will argue with me. It takes journal access and a couple minutes to dig up a ton of studies proving that statement to be inaccurate. The desire to delude yourself into feeling correct is an evolutionary fact. Stupid people, however, are the worst of it because they have the desire to feel correct without the intellectual virtue of wanting to be right, as well as lacking knowledge of the subject that would even allow them to understand how foolish they are (See: Dunning-Kruger effect). The average creationist is probably the physical incarnation of this fact. The people who desire to be right actually appreciate when someone corrects them if they're incorrect.

Being right is less fun than feeling right, because when you're right and you see someone spouting ignorance, you have two options: Ignore it and build up some more spite for idiots, or try to educate a moron who obviously doesn't care about being educated and build up twice as much spite for trying to get someone to learn only to have them be as ignorant as ever.