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Hi LW, first time commenting on here, but I have been a reader / lurker of the site for quite some time. Anyway, I hope to bring a question to the community that has been on my mind recently.
I have noticed an odd transformation of my social circle, in particular, of the people whom I have basically known since I was young, and are about the same age as me. I'm wondering if this is something that most people have observed in other people as they moved into adulthood and out into the world.
I would say that ever since I was a teenager I considered myself a "rationalist". What that has meant exactly has of course been updated over the years, but I would say that my approach to knowledge hasn't fundamentally changed (like I didn't suddenly become a postmodernist or anything). As soon as I understood what science and empiricism were about, I knew that my life would revolve around it in some way. And, what made me very close to the people who would be my best friends throughout high school and college, is that they felt pretty much the same way I did. At least I very much believed they did. My happiest moments with them, when I was about 16 to 18, involved lengthy, deep, and enjoyable discussions about philosophy, science, politics, and current events. I was convinced we were all rationalists, that we were fairly agnostic about most things until we felt that we had come to well-argued conclusions about them, and were always willing to entertain new hypotheses or conjectures about any topic that we cared about.
Fast-forward about ten years, and it seems like most of those people have "grown out of" that, like it was some kind of phase most people go through when they're young. All important questions have been settled, the only things that seem to matter now are careers, relationships, and hobbies. That's the impression I get from my various social media interactions with them, anyway. There are no debates or discussions except angry political ones, which mostly just consist of scolding people, or snarky comments and jokes. Politically, most people I know have gone either hard-left or hard-right (mostly hard-left, since everyone I know grew up on the west coast). But what's striking to me is how hivemind-ish a lot of them have become. It's really impossible to have a good discussion with any of my old friends anymore. I realize that sounds a little complain-y, but what I emphasize is that this a particular observation about the people I grew up with, not the older people I've known like family members, and not the people in my current social circle.
Ok, sure, it's possible that I just picked bad friends back then. But I think this is a little bit unlikely, since the reason we were drawn together in the first place is our shared interests and similar way of thinking. But I feel like I have basically stuck to the same principles that I had even back then. I've tried to avoid becoming too deeply attached to any one subculture or "tribe" - and there have been many opportunities to do so. What makes me believe my observation might be a more common phenomenon is that it seems to be shared by the people I'm close to now. It appears to me that there is something that alters a person's psychology as they move into adulthood, and through college in particular. And that this alteration makes people less "rational" in a way. And whatever causes that is traumatic enough that it encourages people to cluster into groups of very like-minded individuals, where their beliefs and way of life feel extremely safe.
I'd also like to emphasize that I'm not saying that our views and beliefs have simply diverged. This has mostly to do with the way that people think, and the way that they communicate ideas.
I wonder if anyone else has had this observation, and if so, what the possible explanations might be. On the other hand, maybe I have gone through the same change in my psychology, but simply fail to notice it in myself.
I've had the overall impression that the older you become the stronger you hold your beliefs, a metaphor can be the hardening of neural networks. I am making a relation right now between that and the part of the personality known as 'openness' which according to Roland R. Griffiths decrease as people become older.
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org... (read more)