Time preference is another factor informing decisions, and most people's is out of whack after a lifetime steeped in trash society.
Another hallmark if idiocy is inflexibility. I'm on record on here as being a bitcoin maximalist, but that has completely changed in light of new information and experiences. Many people get trapped, partisanized.
Someone resurrected an old thread and you were in it advising people not to eat too much bacon - and you did simply acknowledge that you had completely changed since then. Fair play.
I think this kind of flexibility is indeed a positive trait. I'm sure we've all seen that thing about how arguments - even if correct - are not nearly as effective as one expects in persuading people to change their stance - and that is normally discussed from the perspective of the person making the argument, what they should do instead and so on.
But I wanna know, why doesn't such a thing change someone's mind? And if i am a person who, when presented with a correct argument which makes my position untenable, still refuses to abandon it, then I think that makes me an idiot (when I read back I see we both used the same word here).
I think it was George W Bush of whom someone at that correspondents' dinner thing said "He's a man of conviction who believes on Wednesday the same things he believed on Monday - no matter what happened on Tuesday".
So, it may be true that most people do not reconsider when presented with arguments and facts which should make them do, but I don't want to be part of that "most people". I hope that I am someone who can be persuaded by argument and new developments and so on, and if I'm not then I should aim to become one.