I really do try to keep an open mind and I think it gets me into trouble. It's hard to fit in with other people if you accept some of their views, and some views they hate. It's really hard to talk to people who agree with you one minute then think you're a fascist or communist the next. Especially in bipartisan America, where simple concepts are made out to be magnitudes more polar than they are, where free healthcare is made out to be some Marxist communist agenda and border control is thought to be some fascist xenophobic ideal. Once people decide that your view makes them upset, it doesn't matter how you present it, they will fight it vehemently. The effect is real. People are pretty fucking stubborn when it comes to this stuff, and I think it's pretty dangerous and prevents real progress. We could be agreeing and compromising a lot more than we do, but we're obsessed with slinging mud instead.

We're pretty tribal. If you want to fit in with a community, you do have to subscribe to all their views or at least pretend you do. Here and there maybe you can disagree, but there's a real limit to how different you can be before people don't want to associate with you. And we're social animals... you kind of have to follow suit to survive.

These things will always be detrimental to human progress I think. It's just the way we're built. We can apply the scientific method at a societal level, but not at an individual level when it comes to our own hypotheses that we accept as fact. Data doesn't influence people nearly as much as just knowing that people around with you agree with your sentiment. Joe, Bob and Billy agree with me and there's only 5 of us here, so you're wrong because you're the only one presenting that idea!