> As is often said you cannot reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
But the point here is that you also cannot reason someone out of a position that they did reason themselves into. In the first study with the suicide notes, students had decent reasons to believe they were good/bad at the task; yet even after they learned that those reasons were false, they kept believing it.
The problem, as someone who feels this way, is that you’re always bad at anything relative to someone else. If that’s how your mind sees it then being in the top 5% doesn’t help because there’s still a million people you see all the time doing incredibly better
But the point here is that you also cannot reason someone out of a position that they did reason themselves into. In the first study with the suicide notes, students had decent reasons to believe they were good/bad at the task; yet even after they learned that those reasons were false, they kept believing it.