# What truth do most people in society refuse to accept? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 15, 2016, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-truth-do-most-people-in-society-refuse-to-accept/774762 "2016-12-15T12:12:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![femmejean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/0ea827/32.png) [@femmejean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/femmejean)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2016, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-truth-do-most-people-in-society-refuse-to-accept/774762/1 "2016-12-15T12:12:58Z")
I saw this question on Reddit and I thought we would have a more in-depth discussion here. We all know the world is not as it seems and that sometimes people believe in lies to comfort themselves from the cognitive dissonance that would arise from accepting the truth. In your opinion, what truth is this? ---
**Author:** ![femmejean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/0ea827/32.png) [@femmejean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/femmejean)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2016, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-truth-do-most-people-in-society-refuse-to-accept/774762/2 "2016-12-15T12:25:33Z")
I’ll do mine ‘Appearances don’t matter’ or ‘Beauty is mostly subjective’. BS in my opinion. Excluding sexual attraction, aesthetic attraction in similar cultures is almost **always** the same. If I find an adult woman pretty, cute, chances are that most people will agree with me. It doesn’t mean that **everyone** will find her attractive or look at her and say ‘Wow, she’s pretty’, but chances are the vast vast majority of people will have a positive reception of her if she’s polite, friendly, intelligent \*way \*more than they would for a man or woman. I’ve asked many people and they view Lupita Nyong’o less favorably than Ivanka Trump. Who do you think was seen as more attractive? ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2016, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-truth-do-most-people-in-society-refuse-to-accept/774762/3 "2016-12-15T12:49:50Z")
That they are being politically hypocritical. And or racist. Ask an average conservative about Trump’s excesses (his flouting of CIA intelligence, appointment of cabinet members with questionable credentials, the obvious nepotism, his arrogance, his lying, his respect for a foreign tyrant, his uncouthness, his lack of transparency, etc.) and they will shrug and say something like “I have faith and trust in our dear leader.” Prez Obama showed none of these traits. Probably one of the most stand-up presidents we’ve ever had. Yet the average conservative still thinks he’s some kind welfare-leeching gay Kenyan ISIS sleeper. Never once did they grant him half the respect that they’ve shown Trump. Trump’s polishing Putin’s knob at every opportunity, but Obama is the one who is a commie pinko who’s gonna take your guns. Right. “B-B-B-But it’s DIFFERENT!” they always say when the dissonance is pointed out to them. “You mean like one guy is black and the other is white, right?” ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2016, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-truth-do-most-people-in-society-refuse-to-accept/774762/4 "2016-12-15T12:53:07Z")
> [@femmejean](#): > > I’ll do mine > > ‘Appearances don’t matter’ or ‘Beauty is mostly subjective’. BS in my opinion. > > Excluding sexual attraction, aesthetic attraction in similar cultures is almost **always** the same. If I find an adult woman pretty, cute, chances are that most people will agree with me. It doesn’t mean that **everyone** will find her attractive or look at her and say ‘Wow, she’s pretty’, but chances are the vast vast majority of people will have a positive reception of her if she’s polite, friendly, intelligent \*way \*more than they would for a man or woman. > > I’ve asked many people and they view Lupita Nyong’o less favorably than Ivanka Trump. Who do you think was seen as more attractive? I find the exact opposite, at least in many places. In my travels, and conversations with (mostly straight male) world travelers, especially to non-western and less traveled places (most notably big chunks of sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia), the locals often are baffled by the women that the tourist men are attracted to and approach – the locals think the tourists ignore the most beautiful and choose the ugliest, by the local standards of beauty. As to skin color and beauty, I see no reason to believe that western preferences for lighter skin are anything other than cultural in nature, especially considering that these skin color preferences, on average, have changed over time and are sometimes even different by gender (dark skin being considered acceptable/desirable on men but unacceptable/undesirable on women, for example). As for Lupita Nyong’o vs Ivanka Trump, if I asked most of my friends and family, they’d view Lupita far, far more favorably. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2016, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-truth-do-most-people-in-society-refuse-to-accept/774762/5 "2016-12-15T12:53:20Z")
That the world is always changing, that even if their view of the past is accurate (which it rarely is) that world is gone for good, and that something new and uncertain is always coming. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2016, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-truth-do-most-people-in-society-refuse-to-accept/774762/6 "2016-12-15T12:55:37Z")
> [@femmejean](#): > > I’ve asked many people and they view Lupita Nyong’o less favorably than Ivanka Trump. Who do you think was seen as more attractive? Lupita, evidently. For starters she doesn’t look like she was stolen from a boutique’s window. One that I find many people avoid is the knowledge that, no matter how healthily we live, we all die. ---
**Author:** ![Eonwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eonwe/32/240_2.png) [@Eonwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eonwe)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2016, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-truth-do-most-people-in-society-refuse-to-accept/774762/7 "2016-12-15T13:03:17Z")
That we have free will; that we make choices based on ration and logic as opposed to fundamental chemical/emotional reasons. ---
**Author:** ![WOOKINPANUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wookinpanub/32/132_2.png) [@WOOKINPANUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WOOKINPANUB)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2016, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-truth-do-most-people-in-society-refuse-to-accept/774762/8 "2016-12-15T13:06:51Z")
It is mans’ nature to want to self medicate. We like and have always sought ways to feel “better” or at least “other”. Prohibition? Banning drugs? Waste of time. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2016, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-truth-do-most-people-in-society-refuse-to-accept/774762/9 "2016-12-15T13:53:42Z")
The more strongly someone feels about something, the more it must be true. Most people never really get over that falsehood. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2016, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-truth-do-most-people-in-society-refuse-to-accept/774762/10 "2016-12-15T15:16:26Z")
Honestly, I think the most common and impactful error people make is that\*\* they assume their memory is right.\*\* People tend to make life decisions, form opinions, and manage almost every aspect of their lives through how they remember the past, as opposed to objective records of the past, because they go on the assumption that their memories are essentially accurate except for when they actually completely forget something, like what the capital of Idaho is or where the damned car keys are. In actual fact, _almost no one as an accurate or reliable memory_. You absolutely cannot trust your memory to correctly assemble a picture of the past, calculate probabilities, or most anything. The fallacies of human memory are almost too long to list here and I can’t remember them all (ba dum ching! Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week) but a cursory Google search on “memory accuracy” “Experiments on memory” and such will reveal how astoundingly inaccurate our memories are. You literally cannot trust your recollection of things that happened twenty minutes ago, and the more strongly you feel about it the likelier you are to be hopelessly wrong. But people almost always trust their memories, rather than writing things down, consulting the records of things, asking other people what they remember, or applying a degree of common sense, or just accepting that they may misremember stuff. We structure crucial parts of our society around the assumption that memories are accurate; to use an obvious example, we usually trust eyewitness testimony in court despite eyewitness testimony being comically inaccurate. If you would like to improve the way you manage your affairs, a great place to start is to immediately start distrusting your memory. _Write things down._ Have a notebook or an agenda or an app on your phone or a diary. Write stuff down, and when it comes to matters of public record, consult the facts. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2016, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-truth-do-most-people-in-society-refuse-to-accept/774762/11 "2016-12-15T16:28:51Z")
The truth that no creator exists who possesses the attributes that are described by established religions. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2016, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-truth-do-most-people-in-society-refuse-to-accept/774762/12 "2016-12-15T16:34:13Z")
The physical nature of the human mind, inseparable from the human brain, and thus the absence of any form of afterlife whatsoever. ---
**Author:** ![Sattua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sattua/32/11906_2.png) [@Sattua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sattua)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2016, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-truth-do-most-people-in-society-refuse-to-accept/774762/13 "2016-12-15T16:35:13Z")
That mankind is kept alive by bestial acts. ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2016, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-truth-do-most-people-in-society-refuse-to-accept/774762/14 "2016-12-15T16:58:11Z")
That most people don’t act rationally and logically. Emotions far more often than not, result in irrational behavior by most people. ---
**Author:** ![SpoilerVirgin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@SpoilerVirgin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpoilerVirgin)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2016, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-truth-do-most-people-in-society-refuse-to-accept/774762/15 "2016-12-15T17:09:25Z")
That everybody’s different, with different likes, dislikes, and priorities. Most people assume that most _other_ people are pretty much like they are - however they feel and think, they assume that other people feel the same way, and that the ones who don’t are either outliers or deluded. We see this a lot on the SDMB with regard to religion. The religious think that the non-religious are just not seeing what is obviously the truth, while the non-religious think that the religious are deluded or just plain lying. ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2016, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-truth-do-most-people-in-society-refuse-to-accept/774762/16 "2016-12-15T17:18:41Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > That they are being politically hypocritical. And or racist. > > Ask an average conservative about Trump’s excesses (his flouting of CIA intelligence, appointment of cabinet members with questionable credentials, the obvious nepotism, his arrogance, his lying, his respect for a foreign tyrant, his uncouthness, his lack of transparency, etc.) and they will shrug and say something like “I have faith and trust in our dear leader.” > > Prez Obama showed none of these traits. Probably one of the most stand-up presidents we’ve ever had. Yet the average conservative still thinks he’s some kind welfare-leeching gay Kenyan ISIS sleeper. Never once did they grant him half the respect that they’ve shown Trump. Trump’s polishing Putin’s knob at every opportunity, but Obama is the one who is a commie pinko who’s gonna take your guns. Right. > > “B-B-B-But it’s DIFFERENT!” they always say when the dissonance is pointed out to them. > > “You mean like one guy is black and the other is white, right?” Yes, this. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2016, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-truth-do-most-people-in-society-refuse-to-accept/774762/17 "2016-12-15T17:57:06Z")
> [@Sattua](#): > > That mankind is kept alive by bestial acts. :dubious: I assume you’re not talking about engaging in bedsport with other species, but rather acts of savagery (either violence or indifference) generally attributed to amoral non-human animals? If so, are you saying that such acts of violence/indifference are necessary to keep the whole of humanity from going extinct? Can you elaborate? ---
**Author:** ![Heracles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heracles/32/487_2.png) [@Heracles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heracles)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2016, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-truth-do-most-people-in-society-refuse-to-accept/774762/18 "2016-12-15T18:12:01Z")
> [@SpoilerVirgin](#): > > We see this a lot on the SDMB with regard to religion. The religious think that the non-religious are just not seeing what is obviously the truth, while the non-religious think that the religious are deluded or just plain lying. I think it’s often the reverse: the religious thinking the nonbelievers are just acting silly for kicks, and/or have a god (Darwin, etc.) but don’t want to admit it. I agree with RickJay on the memory thing. My contribution : The belief (in Western, rich societies) that life is fair: that there’s a mechanism whereby the bad guys will eventually pay and the good guys will eventually be rewarded. That the books are balanced, basically. Maybe we get this silly notion from movies, but I think older societies invented karma, reincarnation and (Christian) eternal life as a way to perpetuate the belief that the books really are balanced if you wait long enough. ---
**Author:** ![Flyer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/flyer/32/7298_2.png) [@Flyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flyer)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2016, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-truth-do-most-people-in-society-refuse-to-accept/774762/19 "2016-12-15T20:39:55Z")
This is a somewhat controversial one, because society has by and large forgotten relatively recent history. But it’s true nevertheless. A very large percentage of adults are sexually attracted to teenagers, even younger teenagers. ---
**Author:** ![femmejean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/0ea827/32.png) [@femmejean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/femmejean)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2016, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-truth-do-most-people-in-society-refuse-to-accept/774762/20 "2016-12-15T21:30:24Z")
> [@Flyer](#): > > This is a somewhat controversial one, because society has by and large forgotten relatively recent history. But it’s true nevertheless. > > A very large percentage of adults are sexually attracted to teenagers, even younger teenagers. hmmm…would that be gender specific in your opinion; because most people would agree that it’s males who are attracted to women for fertility. Youth signifies the ability to bear healthy children But most women I’ve met say that they would **never** fall for teen guys once they reach their early 20s, unless he’s extremely wealthy and charismatic or some other super unique trait, the average young man just isn’t attractive to an average woman. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-truth-do-most-people-in-society-refuse-to-accept/774762.md?page=2)