Let us imagine a person named Alex. Alex is, for whatever reason, totally committed to the false and absurd belief x. It would be extremely awkward and uncomfortable if Alex was the only person in the world who held the belief x, but thankfully, Alex belongs to a community where the belief in x is not uncommon. This provides him with powerful reassurance that his belief is sound — all those people who agree with him can’t be crazy, right? Absurd beliefs have network effects. The more people buy into the absurd belief, the more believable it becomes. It makes it possible for many people to collectively believe things which only a madman could believe on his own (for example, the belief that gathering sticks on a certain day of the week is an offense worthy of death by stoning).
In general, the consequences of holding false and absurd beliefs are negligible. As someone once put it, “you don’t die from a question”. Truer words have never been spoken. People who hold false and absurd beliefs are not mysteriously struck by lightning. Anvils do not magically appear out of nowhere and fall on their heads. There is no upper limit on how false and absurd Alex’s belief can be. He can believe literally whatever he wants. No one can stop him.
And yet, Alex feels a certain sense of unease. Alex likes to consider himself a rational person (even though he is not). When other people from outside Alex’s community question him about his false and absurd beliefs, what can he say? How can he convince them that his beliefs are rational? And more importantly, how can he convince himself that his beliefs are rational?
When Alex proceeds to construct a counter-narrative against the people who say that x is false and absurd, he is required to operate within the following constraint: He is not allowed to actually change his mind about the truth of x under any circumstances, no matter how false and absurd x is. So Alex finds himself in an impossible position. His belief is clearly false and absurd, but he is not allowed to change his mind about it.
Now this is the challenge: Imagine if you were Alex. How would you defend x? What are the sorts of arguments that we might expect Alex to make in defense of x? Remember, x needs to be a clearly false and absurd belief. You can choose whatever belief you want for x, as long as it satisfies the condition of being clearly false and absurd. Reptilians are running the earth, Bush did 9/11, the Moon landing was faked, the Earth is flat, etc.
If you’re struggling, you can look up the “Bush did 9/11” arguments on the internet. The creativity of the human mind is astonishing, and people who are really really dedicated to a false and absurd belief are capable creating ingenious explanations for why their beliefs are rational. I think this is potentially a very useful mental exercise for helping people understand mindset of conspiracy theorists, and highly motivated reasoners more generally. It’s impossible to perfectly emulate a mind like Alex’s. You can never know what it feels like to really believe that reptilians are running the Earth, but this exercise can help you understand the power of motivated reasoning, and how to avoid the pitfalls of motivated reasoning in your own life.
Other good examples of motivated reasoning are when atheists frantically try to handwave away obvious appearances of design, be it the anthropic principle or the origin of life, neither explainable with modern science.
Check out the Cargo Cults.