This is an idea I had. I don't know if it is original or how it relates to cognitive science. You could say I'm again feeling a bit PeterMerel. So read on with care.

''Hey! I wouldn't say any of this twaddle! I'd say completely different twaddle!'' --the real PeterMerel
* There's a real PeterMerel?
* ''Shut up!''

I was MetaThinking about thinking, memes and how beliefs and opinions come to be. We often get stuck with some idea and cannot get out of it. Or rather thinking and acting on the idea or concept causes evidence to be interpreted (intentionally or unintentionally) as supporting the idea. 

This seems to be a general pattern and occurs on small opinions, but can become all encompassing as in a DogmaticFallacy.

Examples are:

* You think, that all foreigners are bad. You will treat them as such. Consequently they will treat you on less neutral average. Consequently your prejudice will be confirmed.
* Someone is treated poorly by their parents. He learns all kinds of dismissive and disrespectful patterns, but few positive ones. If later confronted with friendly behaviour, this might (at least in some cases) be misinterpreted as dismissive, simply because it matches one of the many negative patterns in a small way (but none of the few positive ones). So this leads to negative reinforcement.
* Someone is open and friendly and thinks that PeopleAreGood and gets positive feedback, confirming this view.
* SmartPeopleStuckWithBadIdeas
* ConspiracyTheory: You think that everyone is spying on you and actually detect someone as he looks at you and take that as evidence. Someone not looking is not discounted, because he just hides better.
* You search for evidence, that a god exists and find quite a lot written material about miracles and revelations and take that as evidence.

I call this MentalFixedPoint, because 
* starting from some unspecified starting set of beliefs (as e.g. determined by upbringing)
* by repeated thinking about the input provided by the environment
* reasoning converges to one or more opinions/beliefs, 
* that once reached are essentially stable against further input, 
* because further input is always interpreted at least partially as pointing into the direction of the MentalFixedPoint.
Individual input may move the opinion a little bit away from the MentalFixedPoint, but the collective effect of the "bias" on all input will keep the opinion/belief at least within a maximum distance of the MentalFixedPoint, provided the input itself is not itself permanently biased into some other direction.

There can be multiple (more or less) orthogonal MentalFixedPoint''''''s at once, e.g. once can think positively of everyone (and thusly get positive feedback), and also think that OOP is bad.

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See also: SmartPeopleStuckWithBadIdeas, DogmaticFallacy. ConspiracyTheory, TautologicalDefinitionFallacy, ParableOfTheTwoVillages, SelfSealingBelief, FeedbackEffect