Can you imagine how much better our world would be if people who formed radical opinions about things actually investigated the things they're terrified of? I'm reminded of a recent story about a community forming a reading group to actually read the books that local conservative community leaders were trying to bad from the schools, and something like 99% of the books were reinstated because the citizens group found nothing offensive about them.

But a lot of our "internet culture" has formed this "double down forever" mentality in people where we've adapted and socialized ourselves to not even READ the things that run against our current stances and opinions, to not even address arguments, to not listen to the person debating us, and so on. These kinds of stories are just going to get more and more rare, particularly as we all start growing up with AI that kisses our asses and praises our every fart.