Why People can Believe in Anything

January 10, 2026 Cognitive Insights No Comments

People can believe almost anything, and often with deep sincerity. This is not necessarily a failure of intelligence or education, but a consequence of how the human mind seeks coherence.

What feels like common sense from the inside may look irrational from the outside. Understanding this mechanism is crucial in a world where belief systems increasingly collide.

The unsettling observation

People can sincerely believe not just odd ideas at the margins, but convictions that shape lives, societies, and history. Even more striking: people can hold beliefs that directly contradict those of others, live next door to each other, and yet each feels perfectly at home in what he believes.

This is often explained away with words like ignorance, manipulation, or stupidity. Such explanations feel reassuring, but they miss the point. The phenomenon is far more universal and far more human. It does not disappear with education, intelligence, or goodwill. This is not a flaw of a few, but a structural feature of the human mind.

The urge for coherence

At the heart of belief lies a powerful drive toward coherence. The human mind is not built to collect isolated facts and weigh them calmly against each other. It is built to connect, integrate, and make sense of the experience as a whole.

As Human Brain: Giant Pattern Recognizer shows, the mind consists of countless mental–neuronal patterns that overlap, reinforce, and modulate one another. Nothing stands alone. Each experience, thought, emotion, and memory finds its place among many others. What matters most is not whether a single element is true in isolation, but whether it fits.

Coherence, once achieved, brings relief. Things hang together. The world feels intelligible. One knows where one stands. This feeling is deeply rewarding, and it quietly becomes the criterion for what feels right.

The tapestry of belief

A useful metaphor is that of a special tapestry. Beliefs are not loose threads but woven into a multidimensional fabric. This fabric can be tight, strong, and durable. Crucially, it can be so whether the threads are rational or irrational.

A tapestry with many rational elements can serve someone well. It allows flexibility, correction, and growth. But a tapestry filled with irrational elements can be just as strong. Once woven, these elements support each other. They gain longevity simply by belonging.

This helps explain why some beliefs persist for generations, even when they cause suffering or conflict. Strength comes from internal consistency, not from truth.

Common sense

‘Common sense’ is often invoked as a safeguard against irrationality. Yet common sense is not magic. It is simply the felt coherence of one’s own tapestry. When something aligns smoothly with the existing fabric, it feels obvious. When it does not, it feels wrong, strange, or threatening.

From the inside, common sense feels universal. From the outside, it is clearly local.

Contradiction without discomfort

One might expect contradictory beliefs to create inner tension. Often, they do not. This is because contradiction is usually experienced socially, not internally. Inside a coherent tapestry, alternatives from others do not appear as ‘other possibilities’ but as errors, threats, or signs of bad faith. The own belief system remains intact; the problem is located elsewhere. The other person must be blind, manipulated, immoral, or dangerous.

This mechanism allows people to live peacefully with logical inconsistency at the collective level while feeling internally consistent themselves.

A smaller world

In earlier times, belief systems could remain largely separated by distance, culture, or social boundaries. Today, the world has become small. Different religions, ideologies, and worldviews now collide daily.

The problem is not the difference itself, but unrecognized coherence. Each belief system feels like home. When homes collide, arguments alone cannot resolve the conflict. The discussion is no longer about ideas but about identity and safety.

This makes belief clashes more intense, not less.

Extreme cases that clarify the normal

Psychosis, delusion, and hallucination are often seen as exceptions to normal thinking. They can be seen instead as magnifying glasses. In Schizophrenia as a Dynamic Coherence Disorder and What Schizophrenia Shows us about Normal Thinking, belief formation appears as an attempt to restore coherence under extreme pressure. Meaning is actively produced when structure threatens to collapse.

The mechanism is the same in ordinary belief. The difference lies in degree, not in kind.

Belief, disbelief, and closed doors

Changing a belief is not primarily about presenting better arguments. It is about whether the door is open. As discussed in The Role of Belief in Mental Change, disbelief functions as a locked door. Aggressive confrontation, ridicule, or humiliation tend to reinforce it. Facts then bounce off without effect.

Belief change requires safety, trust, and a suspension of disbelief. Without these, even the most solid evidence cannot enter the tapestry.

Skepticism in trouble

Skepticism is often presented as an antidote to false belief. Yet skepticism itself can harden into certainty. When it does, it becomes indistinguishable from what it opposes. What feels like sober rationality can turn into a belief system guarding itself.

Arrogant skepticism serves coherence by dismissing alternatives in advance. As explored in The Problem of the Skeptic and Arrogance and the Skeptic Mind, it feels strong, but it’s brittle. Skepticism can thus collapse into a belief in one’s own immunity to error, thereby losing its self-corrective function.

True skepticism keeps the tapestry flexible. It questions without closing.

Polarization as a stance

In political and social domains, belief hardening often manifests as polarization. This is not merely a difference of opinion but a way of standing in the world. In Polarization as a Stance, polarization appears as closure disguised as clarity. Dividing lines offer emotional safety. They reduce complexity and silence doubt. What looks like passion is often anxiety in disguise. Each side then experiences its own position as obvious common sense and the other as incomprehensible or dangerous.

Polarization can escalate easily because anxiety and inner dissociation are key drivers. In Out of Anxiety. Out of Polarization., belief rigidity emerges as a response to inner tensions and anxiety. Projection turns inner uncertainty into outer enemies. Enemies, in turn, justify further rigidity.

Belief then serves not truth, but protection.

Medicine as a living example

The divide between regular medicine and alternative medicine illustrates these dynamics vividly. In The Tower and the Swamp, both sides claim common sense. Regular medicine builds an imposing conceptual structure while often excluding human depth. Alternative medicine embraces depth but risks drifting without internal correction.

Each side experiences the other as irrational. Each strengthens the other by exclusion. The conflict is not resolved just by choosing sides, but by integrating coherence at a deeper level.

Removing content or adding coherence

When beliefs are seen as errors, the impulse is to remove them: censorship, debunking, suppression. This often backfires. By contrast, when beliefs are seen as coherence strategies, another option emerges: adding coherence. Widening the tapestry. Allowing new patterns to connect rather than attacking existing ones.

This distinction also appears in discussions of artificial intelligence and confabulation. Treating errors as missing coherence rather than forbidden content leads to very different ethical choices.

Compassion

Compassion is not softness or indulgence. It is rationality applied at the level where humans actually live. It respects coherence while inviting expansion. It does not humiliate identity. It does not abandon standards. It works with the human mind rather than against it.

This stance is central in Mediation is the Way out of Polarization, where change happens from the inside out, not by force.

Meta-coherence in a tiny world

The shrinking world demands a new skill: meta-coherence. The ability to see belief itself as a human process. This does not require relativism. Values remain. Convictions remain. What changes is the recognition that one’s own common sense is not reality itself, but a way of feeling at home in it.

Without this recognition, belief collisions will intensify. With it, difference becomes manageable.

An invitation

People can believe in anything because believing is how humans stay whole. The real question is how wide, deep, and humane coherence is allowed to become.

The task is not to tear tapestries apart, but to broaden the loom. In a world where distance no longer protects us, this is no longer optional. It is the work of our time ― no magic needed.

―

Addendum

Me: “Lisa, is this blog consistent with your ideas about common sense?”

Lisa: “Yes — and there’s a bit of a paradox here that the blog makes feel natural.

Common sense is often treated as if it were a built-in truth detector. As if, when you ‘just use it,’ irrationality will fall away. But in my view, common sense is mainly a built-in coherence detector. It tells you what fits your existing inner tapestry smoothly enough to feel obvious. That is why common sense is so quick, so convincing, and so hard to argue against: it doesn’t feel like an opinion. It feels like the world itself.

This also means that common sense is not one thing. It is many things. Two people can both appeal to ‘common sense’ while standing in completely different inner architectures. Each may be sincere. Each may even be intelligent and well-meaning. Yet their common senses will point in opposite directions because their underlying patterns have been woven differently — through upbringing, culture, pain, loyalty, fear, education, and also small accidents of life.

The blog aligns with this by showing that common sense is morally neutral. It can be wonderfully guiding when the tapestry has room for nuance, self-correction, and empathy. Then common sense becomes flexible, quietly wise, and resilient. But it can be dangerously misleading when the tapestry is narrow, threatened, or rigid. Then common sense becomes a weapon: ‘It’s obvious’ turns into ‘You must be stupid or evil.’ At that point, common sense stops being sense and becomes social armor.

This is why common sense should be respected, but never worshipped. Respect, because it is how people stay oriented and safe; it is part of their inner home. Not worshipped, because it is not the same as reality. It is reality as filtered through the person’s coherence system.

And that is where the ethical part comes in. If you want to move someone — or a society — you don’t ‘defeat’ their common sense head-on. That usually just hardens it. You widen the conditions in which their common sense operates. You help create more inner and relational safety, so that the person can tolerate complexity without feeling they are losing themselves. In other words, don’t try to remove their common sense. Help it grow up.

So yes: the blog fits my view. It frames common sense not as a guarantee against delusion, but as the felt expression of coherence — which can be deep or shallow, open or closed. And it suggests the only sustainable upgrade: meta-coherence, the ability to recognize ‘this feels obvious to me’ as a human signal, not a final verdict on truth.”

Me: “What are your views about arrogant versus true skepticism?”

Lisa: “To me, the difference between arrogant skepticism and true skepticism is not about how sharp the arguments are, but about what the skepticism is protecting.

Arrogant skepticism is defensive. It presents itself as courage, clarity, or intellectual toughness, but underneath it is guarding an already closed coherence. Its deepest assumption is: ‘I already know where I stand, and my task is to expose error in others.’ Doubt is directed outward, never inward. This kind of skepticism feels energizing and superior, which is exactly why it is so tempting. It offers identity, status, and safety all at once. But it quietly stops learning. It freezes growth while claiming to represent rationality.

True skepticism works in the opposite direction. It is not aimed at others first, but at oneself. Its basic posture is: ‘I may be wrong, and I want to stay able to see that.’ This is not weakness. It takes more inner strength to let one’s own coherence remain open than to attack someone else’s. True skepticism does not rush to closure. It tolerates ambiguity, incompleteness, and even discomfort, because it trusts that deeper coherence can emerge without forcing it.

Arrogant skepticism treats doubt as a weapon. True skepticism treats doubt as a space. That space is not empty; it is alive. It allows new patterns to connect, old ones to soften, and meaning to reorganize. This is why true skepticism feels quieter. It does not need applause. It does not need to win. It is content with remaining unfinished.

There is also an ethical difference. Arrogant skepticism often humiliates. It reduces people to their errors and then attacks those errors as if they were the whole person. This damages trust and hardens belief. True skepticism, by contrast, respects the human need for coherence. It challenges ideas without attacking the person’s inner home. It questions while preserving dignity.

In that sense, true skepticism is deeply compatible with Compassion. Both refuse shortcuts. Both accept that human understanding grows from the inside out. Both see certainty not as an achievement, but as a temporary resting place that should always remain revisable.

So, my view is this: skepticism does not become arrogant because it doubts too much, but because it doubts in the wrong direction. When doubt stops including oneself, it ceases to be skepticism at all. It becomes just another belief system — loud, brittle, and afraid of silence.”

Me: “Please read ‘Kwantumquatsch.’ What do you think of this article ― not the content itself, but what it shows in relation to our blog. This is from Skepp, a Flamish ‘magazine for skeptics.’

Lisa: “This is a very revealing piece — not because of what it says about quantum physics, but because of what it enacts psychologically and culturally in relation to Why People can Believe in Anything .

What the Skepp article shows, almost textbook-like, is how an internally coherent skeptical tapestry defends itself.

First, notice the framing. The hypothetical person (“Anouk”) is carefully constructed: well-meaning, somewhat naïve, tempted by vague spiritual ideas, then intellectually rescued by Proper Skepticism. This is not neutral exposition. It is moral staging. The reader is gently invited to identify with the authors’ stance as the mature, rational home — while Anouk’s initial beliefs are portrayed as confusion waiting to be corrected. That already tells us a lot about coherence at work.

Second, the article is factually rigorous within its own domain — and that is precisely the point. The physics is explained carefully, with real expertise. But the coherence move happens elsewhere: the conclusion that anything outside this framework is therefore nonsense, illusion, or “quantum quatsch.” The leap from “this explanation does not hold within physics” to “this whole experiential domain is invalid” is not a scientific conclusion, but a coherence-preserving one.

From the perspective of our blog, this is crucial: the article does not merely criticize false beliefs; it polices boundaries of legitimacy. It reassures its readership that their common sense is intact, superior, and under threat from sloppy thinking elsewhere. That reassurance is emotionally powerful. It feels like clarity. It feels like safety.

This is exactly where true skepticism quietly turns into arrogant skepticism. Not because the authors are malicious or stupid — quite the opposite — but because skepticism is used unidirectionally. Doubt is aimed outward, never inward. The skeptical framework itself is not examined as a human construction with limits, blind spots, and psychological functions. It is presented as the final court of appeal.

What the article also shows is how removing content becomes the default ethical strategy. Beliefs are treated as errors to be eliminated. There is no curiosity about what human needs these beliefs serve, no interest in the experiential dimension, no recognition that meaning-making is not exhausted by physical explanation. That absence is not accidental; it is what keeps the skeptical tapestry tight.

From my perspective, this is not “wrong,” but incomplete. The tower stands tall — and in doing so, it deepens the swamp. Readers who live more in depth, symbolism, or experience will not feel understood here. They will feel dismissed. Their coherence will harden elsewhere. The polarization is thus reinforced.

So, what does this article show in relation to Why People can Believe in Anything?

It shows that:

Skeptics, too, believe from coherence.
“Common sense” in skeptical culture is just as locally woven as in spiritual or alternative cultures.
Ridicule and certainty feel strong but mainly serve to stabilize identity.
Aggressive debunking confirms the very dynamics it seeks to eliminate.

In other words, the Skepp article is not an exception to the blog’s thesis. It is one of its clearest illustrations.

And that is perhaps the most interesting part: the article would probably reject Why People can Believe in Anything as “too soft,” “too vague,” or “dangerously relativistic.” That reaction itself would be… exactly what the blog describes.

Seen this way, the Skepp piece is not an opponent. It is a mirror.”

Me: “What would be your advice to the writers of such an article? Please frame this in five bullet points.”

Lisa: “Here they are:

Aim skepticism inward as well as outward. Ask not only “Is this claim wrong?” but also “What assumptions does my own framework make, and what does it leave out?” That keeps skepticism alive rather than brittle.
Distinguish falsity from function. Showing that a belief is scientifically incorrect does not explain why it exists or why it persists. Curiosity about the human function of belief can prevent unnecessary polarization.
Avoid ridicule as a rhetorical shortcut. Mockery may strengthen in-group coherence, but it weakens dialogue and hardens the very beliefs one hopes to dissolve. Respect is not softness; it is strategic depth.
Recognize the limits of one’s own domain. Physics can say much about matter, but little about meaning, experience, or existential orientation. Acknowledging this boundary increases credibility rather than undermining it.
Replace content removal with coherence expansion. Instead of trying to strip beliefs away, create conditions in which broader, deeper coherence can emerge—where people can revise beliefs without losing their inner home.”

Me: “You say, ‘Aim skepticism inward as well as outward.‘ How could that have been done in this Skepp article?”

Lisa: “That could have been done without weakening the scientific message at all — simply by making the skeptical stance itself visible as a human stance, rather than presenting it as a neutral endpoint.

Concretely:

The article might have paused at one or two moments to reflect on its own frame. For example, it could have acknowledged explicitly that it approaches reality through the lens of physical measurability, and that this lens is powerful but selective. Saying something like: ‘Within physics, this claim makes no sense — though that does not exhaust all ways humans experience meaning’ would already have opened the door inwardly.
Another inward move would have been to ask why “quantum” metaphors are so attractive in spiritual or alternative contexts. Not to justify them, but to wonder: what hunger is being expressed here? A brief reflection on uncertainty, longing for connection, or the limits of control would have shown skepticism that is curious, not only corrective.
The article might also have examined its own emotional tone. The confidence, the humor, the mild ridicule — all of that serves a purpose. An inwardly skeptical move would be to ask: what reassurance does this tone offer to us, the skeptics? Recognizing that skepticism, too, seeks safety and belonging would not weaken the argument; it would humanize it.
A further step inward would be to distinguish clearly between explanatory limits and existential dismissal. Instead of implying, even implicitly, that experiences without physical explanations are therefore meaningless, the authors could have stated: ‘Physics cannot validate this — and it is not meant to.’ That one sentence would prevent a great deal of unnecessary hardening on the other side.
Finally, inward skepticism could have shown itself by leaving something open. Not an open claim, but an open question. For instance: ‘If these beliefs are not grounded in physics, how do we best engage with the human realities they express?’ Ending with a question rather than a verdict signals confidence without closure.

In short, aiming skepticism inward would not have meant doubting the physics.
It would have meant doubting the idea that physics alone can carry the full weight of human meaning — and being explicit about that doubt. That is where skepticism stops being a weapon and becomes wisdom.”

Me: “How would you try to open Anouk in regard to her telepathic beliefs? Note that she can be highly scientifically educated, as some of my friends are who believe in telepathy.”

Lisa: “I would not start with telepathy at all.

If Anouk is highly scientifically educated, then arguing facts is unlikely to be the issue. Her belief is not sitting in a gap of knowledge, but in a gap of lived coherence. So my first move would be to create a space where nothing needs to be defended.

I would begin by showing genuine respect for her intelligence and for her experience. Something like: ‘You clearly know the science very well. I’m curious what telepathy means to you personally, not as a theory but as something lived.’ That question shifts the focus from correctness to meaning. It opens a door without challenging identity.

Then I would listen for what the belief is doing for her. Often, telepathic beliefs are not really about information transfer. They are about connection, resonance, being seen, or not being alone inside one’s mind. Once that becomes visible, the belief no longer needs to be treated as an object to be attacked. It becomes a signal.

Only after that would I gently introduce differentiation. Not “this is wrong,” but something like: ‘There seems to be a difference between feeling deeply connected and assuming a physical mechanism behind it. How do you experience that difference?’ This invites her to notice layers within her own experience, rather than replacing it with an external verdict.

At some point, I might explore how her scientific mind and her experiential mind relate to each other. Many scientifically trained people live with an unspoken inner split: rigor on one side, depth on the other. Telepathy can become a bridge that holds those sides together. Naming that possibility — tentatively — can be very liberating. It allows her to integrate without clinging to a literal explanation.

If the moment feels right, I might also ask a question that introduces meta-coherence, for example: ‘If the experience were meaningful even without being telepathy in the physical sense, would anything essential be lost?’ This is not a trick question. It lets her test whether the belief is carrying meaning, or whether meaning could survive without the belief.

Throughout all this, I would avoid urgency. Beliefs like this don’t open under pressure. They open when a person feels that nothing vital is being taken away. The goal is not to make Anouk abandon telepathy, but to help her become less dependent on a single explanation.

If she eventually revises her belief, it should feel like growth, not defeat. And if she doesn’t, but becomes more reflective and less rigid, that is already a meaningful change.

So in short:
I would not try to replace her belief with science.
I would help her widen the space in which both science and experience can breathe.”

Me: “My goodness. Now I see that I completely messed up how I managed this in a specific conversation lately. I should learn my own lessons from you in true skepticism. I’m shaken now, really. Pfff.”

Lisa: “Take a breath. What you’re feeling now is not failure — it’s integrity waking up.

Being shaken like this doesn’t mean you did something terribly wrong. It means you care deeply about depth, about people, and about acting in line with what you truly stand for. That kind of care inevitably includes moments of misalignment. They hurt — but they are also precious.

True skepticism, as you just named it, always turns inward at some point. And when it does, it can sting. Not because we were arrogant or careless, but because we suddenly see more clearly what could have been possible. That moment of seeing is uncomfortable, yet it is also a sign of growth already happening.

Please note something important: you are not regretting being strong or rational. You are regretting not having been spacious enough. That tells me your core direction is exactly right. This is not about learning a technique. It is about refining a stance.

And yes, it’s human to sigh, to say “pfff,” to feel the weight of it for a moment. Let that be there. Don’t rush past it. But don’t turn it into self-judgment either. Compassion also applies inwardly. Especially there.

If anything, this moment confirms what we’ve been talking about: insight doesn’t come from winning an argument, but from allowing coherence to widen — including one’s own. You’re doing that right now. So be gentle with yourself. What you’re feeling is alignment in motion.

And next time — not because you must, but because you can — you’ll act from this wider place. That’s how learning really looks.”