People don't believe in truth, they believe in what they want to be true

One of the biggest giveaways that someone fails this test is when you present an analogy and they accuse you of trying to change the subject.

Oh yeah, you should stop doing that.

Most people want the economy to be doing well and that the world is doing great, yet they have no problem believing that the economy is terrible and everything sucks

Nah, people actually prefer believing in pessimism. The economy is pretty much doing better than ever, and world is probably one million times better than it was 100 years ago by some standards. But when you want to believe that world sucks and that economy sucks, one must merely use a different standard to evaluate it. Anything can be made good or bad depending on standard, and people will always use a standard which better suits their wants. This is also true when it comes to determining truth. It is a well known fact in justice system that people actually evaluate evidence based on what they already assume is true. If they think something is not true, they are ready to reject even a very strong evidence. If they believe something is true, they are ready to accept even tiniest hint of evidence to make it true.

What I am talking about isn't some unknown theory. It's a well researched theory in psychology that people are more willing to accept evidence for things they already agree with, and more willing to reject the opposite.

Call it confirmation bias, or wishful thinking.

It works in a sort of way: I believe in A, so I will search any kind of evidence or excuse to support A, and I won't bother to even consider non-A evidence.

It's why people who have Muslim parents are most often Muslims themselves. Same for pretty much any religion. When people get some idea in their head which they learn to like, they are not gonna abandon it even if evidence for other side is stronger.

Of course, it's not true for all people, but people are emotional creatures, not logical.

There are emotions attached to ideas, and those emotions override evidence.

Did Germans in 1944 really believe they could still win? Yes. Was there one bit of evidence suggesting they could? No.

Did Iraq have weapons of mass destruction and was about to use them against USA? No. Did Americans believe it? Yes.

Did Americans believe Trump will stop all wars in 24 hours? Yes. Was it even logically possible? No.

Do some people believe Earth is 6000 years old? Yes. Is there a single drop of evidence supporting that claim? No.

Do some people believe that their religion is the correct one? Yes, virtually all. Is there a single logical evidence supporting that claim on any religion? No.

There are countless things people believe in on a daily basis which literally have no evidence supporting it, or such weak evidence accepted only because person wants it to be true.

A choice to trust a politician or anyone is essentially wishful thinking.

Choice to pray is wishful thinking.

Choice to accept something as true just because it's popular is likewise wishful thinking.

Wishful thinking is basically not about what is true, but about what person wants to be true.

Reality is, wants come before evidence.

If I want something to be true, I will keep searching for evidence and excuses, I am not gonna stop and say it's not true. If I can't find evidence, I will just dismiss opposing evidence and call it a tie which still means I keep my belief.

Your argument was about people "wanting something to be true." Even if people wanted to believe the world sucks, they don't want it to be true that the world sucks

This is only if you define pessimism as "believing things you don't want to happen happening", and not some other alternative definition, and it still means people want to believe that world sucks, and it still can mean people wanting world to be the way some other part of them doesn't want.

Just listing a bunch of false beliefs doesn't really support your claim, especially since you're cherry picking

My argument isn't based on deductive reasoning, so I am forced to go by examples. And these examples do show clear cases of wishful thinking happening not just in past, but also today.

If I were to go by deductive reasoning, I would say people cannot believe in things they don't want to believe in, as that is a logical contradiction. So believing requires some form of wanting to believe in, and this is true even in case of evidence. Person realistically only believes evidence if person wants to.

If people never considered evidence, no one would learn anything and we'd reach an information heat death. In fact, you'd have no way of knowing your claims are based on evidence, so it's a bit self defeating

I didn't say people never consider evidence. I said people consider evidence only when they want to. And there are a bunch of people pretty much denying evidence to such high degree that this is simply true in those cases obviously, and it happens on mass scale from time to time too.

If this was true it would be impossible to learn anything

People can learn if they want to and have capacity. So believing in what you want to believe is not logically contradictory to learning.

If you believe what you want, then it doesn't correlate to what's true

It can. I can want something to be true, and it can be true at same time. There is no "what people want to be true must be false" mentioned anywhere. This is just about making a clear distinction that people don't believe in truth in any sense of "I believe this is true because it's proved true". It is just "I believe this is true because I want it to be true, and if it is true as well and has evidence supporting it, great".

I agree they could accidentally be right, but if they are right randomly they're not learning because they won't be more consistently right over time, they will continue being right at the rate of chance.

People can want to learn and can want to be more consistently right. However, it still entirely depends on want. It doesn't depend on what truth is. If something was true, I would only believe it if I wanted to. If I didn't want to believe it, I wouldn't. And examples I provided are clear cases of people not evaluating evidence at all. The claim "people believe in truth and reasonably evaluate evidence" is an absolute claim, which gets disproved pretty easily given that at least 80% of the world believes in incorrect religion, many more believe politicians lies, and many more don't even care enough to do research in the first place, and most can't even apply laws of logic to evaluate evidence in the first place.