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billswift comments on Closet survey #1 - Less Wrong
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Aren't all of these kind of obvious?
Gotta ditto BrandonReinhart's point.
(Many/Most) doctors won't give me useful information even if I complain about their unhelpfulness.
Most people not only believe that doctors do far more good than harm, but act offended if any other position is suggested even hypothetically.
And that goes double for circumcision. Most people won't even consider the possibility that it's not well-justified, much less that it's harmful.
(edit) Since I don't think I expressed myself well:
There is at least one person who posts on these boards that I once tried to discuss these issues with. Not only did he insist that they weren't (non-negligibly) possible, but without hearing any of my reasons why I was unsure about them or offering any points of his own, he insisted that I was stupid for even considering them.
I would say that generally, he's far more rational than most people, but on certain issues, he became totally irrational. (Not necessarily wrong, just irrational.)
And my experience suggests that happens very, very commonly.
If they are, then why do they persist as sources of harm?
There are a lot of persistent sources of harm in the world. Some of it is down to game-theoretic limitations (Arrow's paradox, prisoner's dilemma, etc.). Most of it is down to stupidity.
People's attitudes can be changed by changing their behavior. Get someone to do something, and they'll rationalize why they did so if they can't think of a good reason. Get someone to do something that distresses them, and they'll rationalize very strongly, especially if their self-image isn't compatible with a negative assessment of the action.
Think of really harmful hazing. If no such tradition existed, people wouldn't react well to someone trying to start it. Once people go along with minor hazing, there's less of a psychological barrier against it and more of a barrier against viewing it as bad. It then becomes easier to progress to more serious hazing. Finally people try to force others to do really stupid, risky, or even certainly-harmful things, while never really considering the costs or consequences.
People are consequentialists. If a consequence of believing X "that an action is harmful" is to conclude that they've done harm, people will tend to deny the possibility of X.