To be fair, it is difficult to rebuild one’s understanding of the world after finding out that your previous understanding was built on fundamentally wrong ideas. Not that I’m excusing people who respond to cognitive dissonance by digging deeper into willful ignorance — after all, the reason why I know it’s hard is because I’ve done that work myself (a couple of times). I do have some sympathy though.
IMO it has nothing to do with being interesting, it’s about not admitting they’ve been wrong this entire time.
Why not both? If they keep pursuing some set of tangents, they never have to admit anything to anyone. They’ll just keep moving the goalposts.
To be fair, it is difficult to rebuild one’s understanding of the world after finding out that your previous understanding was built on fundamentally wrong ideas. Not that I’m excusing people who respond to cognitive dissonance by digging deeper into willful ignorance — after all, the reason why I know it’s hard is because I’ve done that work myself (a couple of times). I do have some sympathy though.