Among the reading material I saved for myself was a paper called “Heads I win, tails you lose”: A Foray Into the Psychology of Philosophy” which mostly focuses on the “psychological phenomenon of irrational persistence of belief”, when people hold “pro-attitudes” about their beliefs and rather seek evidence that supports their beliefs more so than evidence that challenges it and sometimes even go so far to strenghten their belief once they’ve been exposed to evidence that clearly refutes it (which is explained as beliefs based predominantly on emotion rather than reason).

I wont delve too deeply on the subject. If you’re interested, read the paper. :) I wanted to point out one interesting realization that I draw from this.

In the paper, while commenting a described study it is stated:

“Baron dryly notes: “This study is disturbing, because it suggests that evidence is
useless in settling controversial social questions” (p.288)—a conclusion one might well
have reached independently, observing current debates such as whether certain drugs
should be legalised.”

What immediately sprung into my mind was that, well, why then do we have those kinds of debates in the first place? Isn’t this a pretty compelling reason why people should let each other be and live as they want so long as they don’t force anyone else to follow their lead?

Considering the prevalence of the irrational persistence of belief phenomenon and a much more simple realization that every thinker should sooner or later come to - that we can all be wrong about our beliefs, that nobody has the absolute truth, how can we ever condone forcing other people to follow any set of rules forged by others?

There really hardly is an alternative choice. Either you believe you’re right to force your beliefs, your moral standards and your culture on others or you don’t.

If you do then you are likely to support coercive governments. If you don’t then you can’t be in support of coercive governments without at the same time contradicting your own moral judgment.

Decide for yourself and face the consequences of your choice, because you are what you think and you can’t escape that.

I for one can confidently say that I don’t believe in coercive governments EXACTLY because I believe I could be wrong about whatever I believe is true. If I at the same time believed that I could be wrong and believed in coercive governments then I would essentially believe that either I should be oppressed by others or that I should oppress others. I can’t do that.