The guy who did the pioneering research on cognitive dissonance studied doomsday cults. They created a system for evaluating whether or not someone would stay committed to a belief despite it obviously not coming true. It actually works perfectly when applied to the
freethinkers on here:
Condition | Effect |
---|
"1. A belief must be held with deep conviction and it must have some relevance to action, that is, to what the believer does or how he or she behaves." | Makes the belief resistant to change. |
"2. The person holding the belief must have committed himself to it; that is, for the sake of his belief, he must have taken some important action that is difficult to undo. In general, the more important such actions are, and the more difficult they are to undo, the greater is the individual's commitment to the belief." | Makes the belief resistant to change. |
"3. The belief must be sufficiently specific and sufficiently concerned with the real world so that events may unequivocally refute the belief." | Exposes believers to the possibility of their belief being disproved. |
"4. Such undeniable disconfirmatory evidence must occur and must be recognized by the individual holding the belief." | Exerts pressure on believers to abandon their belief. |
"5. The individual believer must have social support." | While an individual might be unable to resist the pressure to abandon their belief in the face of disconfirming facts, a group might be able to support each other to maintain the belief. |
Essentially, the more you invest in a false belief, the more you will just move the goal posts indefinitely. Sound familiar?

If BGOL is your social outlet and you spent months/years bloviating about 5G/covid cures/vaccines causing magnetism et al. it is much easier mentally to double down than to admit you are an actual imbecile.
The other key is that you have to know or just believe that there are others who are committed to the false belief. This is the BGOL component:
Festinger also later described the increased conviction and proselytizing by cult members after disconfirmation as a specific instantiation of cognitive dissonance (i.e., increased proselytizing reduced dissonance by producing the knowledge that others also accepted their beliefs) and its application to understanding complex, mass phenomena
Amazon product ASIN 1578988527
The book is a good read and it explains some of the inexplicable behavior by the moron class on here. In a weird way, the forum actually creates the perfect environment for the
freethinkers to continue to spiral down the drain...