> At that age, I didn’t yet understand why some people are incapable of changing their point of view. To be honest, I still don’t fully understand how ideology

> At that age, I didn’t yet understand why some people are incapable of changing their point of view. To be honest, I still don’t fully understand how ideology can cloud the mind so thoroughly that only a single way of thinking remains possible. - most people don't like admitting to having been wrong -- they might not be right in their new viewpoints either - some people like to preen and moralize, so changing their view is an admission that they had (and therefore have) no moral authority (this overlaps the previous point) - most people don't like the idea that something everyone knows to be true isn't -- that's conspiracy theory territory, and they know not to go there no matter what - even where it's not any of the above, significant shifts in opinion are simply uncomfortable - in specialized cases (e.g., science) people may have a sunk cost fallacy going on. For example, suppose you have a new theory to replace Lambda-CDM: but you'll be wrecking a bunch of researchers' life work if you're right! This is why "science advances one funeral at a time", per Max Planck. We've seen many cases of this.