I agree that tribal et al is a factor, but there are other significant factors. One is that a belief is not a singularity, it is a part of a web. If I believe t

I agree that tribal et al is a factor, but there are other significant factors. One is that a belief is not a singularity, it is a part of a web. If I believe that the world is flat, then a gaggle of other beliefs are then impossible. If you tell me you sailed around the world I will not believe you, not because of your statement but because your statement contradicts an assumption which is part of my belief fabric. In addition, humans are not completely rational creatures. The concept of not knowing why you feel the way you do is common. And yet we are primarily driven by those things we feel but often cannot understand. Beliefs arise from emotions, not the other way around. At the present time in the US we live in a society which increasingly divided into two parts because the experiences of those people are distinctly different. We have the concept of social inequality - the Gini function - but we often do not realize that the higher the Gini function the more likely it is that we will have divided belief fabrics. As we do. Many people in the US (I'm only speaking for what I know ) live in a far different world than the readers of HN. They work just as hard if not harder than the readers of HN. The belief fabric of those people is far different because their experience sharing the benefits of our society is far different. The emotions of being treated unfairly give rise to a rejection of the predominant belief fabric as a whole. Imagine that you have repeatedly lost friends and family who sailed off the edge of the world because they accepted the official line that the world is round? Not a great example but perhaps a bit useful. So when we say "tribal" or "friendship" we need to understand that tribes or friendships tend to cluster around belief systems. Trying to change someones mind by thinking about a scale of 1-10 does not work when they are using a completely different numbering space. (edit changed "because they are using" to "when they are using".)