Agreed. The fallacies are simply a toolset for confirmation bias IMO.
Personally, I think cognitive dissonance is a major problem. People in general have opinion set A at any given moment, and when a direct contradiction to one opinion in set A occurs, they either fight it, or flee.
There's a lot of science behind the idea that most people use their reptilian brain in arguments, emotionally defend their already engrained views, and then try to logically defend it after the fact.
The real challenge is while defending your own views, to try and attempt at discerning whether or not you are simply emotionally responding to a cognitive dissonance, or whether you are rationally defending a built up worldview with foundations in knowledge and insight.
I'd like to say I do the latter, but I'm sure everybody would like to agree with that...
Personally, I think cognitive dissonance is a major problem. People in general have opinion set A at any given moment, and when a direct contradiction to one opinion in set A occurs, they either fight it, or flee.
There's a lot of science behind the idea that most people use their reptilian brain in arguments, emotionally defend their already engrained views, and then try to logically defend it after the fact.
The real challenge is while defending your own views, to try and attempt at discerning whether or not you are simply emotionally responding to a cognitive dissonance, or whether you are rationally defending a built up worldview with foundations in knowledge and insight.
I'd like to say I do the latter, but I'm sure everybody would like to agree with that...