I really don't think that's the case. What makes you think so? In my experience exposure to more viewpoints, even flawed ones, increases understanding and helps critical thinking.
Experience. We've also basically seen in it in the pandemia all over the world happening in the last years. Though, this was a bit of an extreme situation for everyone.
> In my experience exposure to more viewpoints, even flawed ones, increases understanding and helps critical thinking.
Simple exposure is only helpful if the people are able to handle it, and willing to invest the time, and the one delivering it has no bad intention. The ones where it will not work, are left as the victims of this strategy. Maybe they will find their way after a long painful process. But then the harm is done.
> We've also basically seen in it in the pandemia all over the world happening in the last years. Though, this was a bit of an extreme situation for everyone.
You mean the pandemic where alternative viewpoints were systematically suppressed in the western world?
Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. A lot of social media dynamics are not reasoned arguments, they are the product emotional outbursts which can be manufactured and herded.
The world is not made up of Spock-like rationalists, and although most people are capable of rationality, many social settings are not conducive to it. Look at stampede disasters: every year people die because panic breaks out among a crowd in a constricted space and people start to operate on instinct instead of thought.
This is a very interesting perspective but I don't think it's an argument in favor of censorship. Rather I think it's an objection to the way in which current social media "spaces" are "laid out" in a functional sense. Similar to how building and fire code both take various dangers into account.
There's also an element of individual freedom involved here. If you choose to keep climbing into the boxing ring and then trying to have a reasoned discussion and failing, perhaps you are the one making poor choices. That doesn't necessarily mean that outlawing boxing rings or otherwise regulating who can participate when and how is either a good or workable solution.
This is disingenuous. I've been exposed to alternative viewpoints, saw what I consider obvious holes, and either expressed disagreement or disregarded them entirely. If someone can convincingly (from my perspective, not theirs) illustrate a flaw in my reasoning at that point I have changed my mind by definition of it being convincing.
When people say thing like "other people aren't interested in changing their minds" what they really mean is "other people didn't find my arguments convincing".
I mean this is well-known phenomenon. People not only disregard others' arguments, they even reject facts if they contradict a core worldview.[1][2][3][4]
You trying to rationalize this as "other people didn't find the arguments convincing" is a meta version of this. A deliberate ignorance of this cognitive bias even when given documentation of its existence.
