There is a book called “On Being Certain”, by Robert A Burton who’s a neurologist, discussing how we know what we know. He postulates that the sense of “conviction” has less to do with objective reality and far more to do with “a feeling of knowing.” He also suggests that we are far less self-aware than we think we are.
People see a different viewpoint and their body reactively brings up all the conditioning received from popular advice. Instinctively, they hit the downvote button, thinking that they are rightfully decreasing the noise of a dangerous idea and protecting the less aware.
Most people aren’t interested in debate nor challenging the reality they find themselves in, or even the framing and interpretation of that reality.
Is lemmy supposed to be better then other social media?
How do we make lemmy a more thoughtful place? Or how do we create meaningful spaces on lemmy for thoughtful discussion of opposing views?
This is basically how Reddit is, and many of the mods, especially on some larger subs actively and secretly hide views they do not agree with and perm ban anyone who disagrees with them. Reddit supports this behaviour by allowing removal of content, but in such a way that the user who posted it still sees it, but no one else.
This is why I try to promote Lemmy. Sure you might get some bad instances, obviously, but it removes centralised power.
For all it’s faults transparency does make our society better.