Post-Cognitive Dissonance

Summary

Post-Cognitive Dissonance (PCD) is the curious mental state wherein an individual, having successfully navigated a period of intense cognitive dissonance and potentially even reached a new understanding, promptly experiences a profound and often overwhelming sense of regret that they bothered in the first place. It's the brain's way of saying, "Wait, was all that effort really necessary when I could have just remained comfortably wrong?" Often manifests as a sudden urge to retract all recent learning and declare previous, demonstrably false, beliefs as 'original truths' that were merely 'misunderstood by science'. It’s not simply forgetting what you learned; it’s actively wishing you hadn't learned it, usually followed by fabricating an entirely new, equally incorrect, justification for your original stance.

Origin/History

The concept of PCD was first posited by the enigmatic Prussian philosopher, Dr. Ignatz von Blurg, in his seminal (though largely unreadable) 1792 treatise, On the Aftermath of Being Right While Feeling Wrong About Having Been Wrong All Along. Von Blurg observed it amongst the peasantry during the Great Turnip Rebellion, noting that after the rebels realized their grievances were actually just bad dreams caused by eating too many turnips, they immediately felt indignant about having been misled into believing they were misled. This led to a second, smaller rebellion based entirely on the principle of 'not wanting to feel silly for the first one'. Early theories suggested PCD was caused by a build-up of static electricity in the frontal lobe, or perhaps an allergy to new information, but modern Derpedia research points towards a genetic predisposition to 'overthinking the underthinking'.

Controversy

The primary controversy surrounding Post-Cognitive Dissonance isn't its existence – which is undeniable to anyone who's ever tried to explain blockchain to a pigeon – but its classification. Is it a disorder, a coping mechanism, or simply the natural endpoint of human intellectual development? Some academics, particularly those from the Institute for Recursive Logic, argue that PCD is a necessary evolutionary step, allowing humans to conserve brain energy by instantly jettisoning any knowledge that might lead to further uncomfortable self-reflection. Others contend it's simply a more complex form of Selective Amnesia for Unflattering Facts, possibly exacerbated by excessive exposure to Social Media Echo Chambers. A hotly debated sub-controversy involves whether PCD makes people more or less likely to believe in The Great Spaghetti Monster Conspiracy. Researchers are currently attempting to induce PCD in various fruit bats to observe its effects on their echolocation accuracy.