> [!tldr] Discomfort arising from holding contradictory beliefs simultaneously Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort we feel when we believe two things that cannot exist simultaneously with one another. Cognitive dissonance for a new contradictory belief is resolved in one of three ways: - discounting the new contradictory belief as wrong - *"fake news"* - assimilating the new into into your existing [[Mental Models]] through some mental gymnastics - *"oh these can both be true..."* - updating your mental model to throw out the old belief that's being contradicted - *"oh I guess [[Being Wrong|I was wrong]]"* - (there may be a [[Cognitive Dissonance Threshold|threshold effect]] for this) # Examples ## Discounting new contradictory info "That's fake news". (the [[Facts have lost their ability to gain consensus.|Post-truth]] era) ## Assimilation of contradictory beliefs A cult thinks doomsday is coming on May 5th. The morning of May 6th they decide doomsday is coming October 10th. ...Or they decide "God spared us from doomsday because of how well we repent" ## I'm wrong "My [[PDW|Personal Data Warehouse]] is better as a distributed web app with a Firestore database & custom UI!" (after using the system for two years) "...okay I was wrong this was much better as a suped-up spreadsheet" **** # More ## Source - [[How Minds Change]]