Yep, I have been there. Example (sorry to use another finance story): the market today is overvalued by any logic. Valuation, 0% returns for next ten years. Equity risk premium, max 2% real. Contributions that are valued most heavily are complex and surprising. If you say the market is overvalued when it has gone up 15%/year for a decade then people are expecting something very big...not some nerd talking about equity risk premia.
I think this is the difference between how humans reason emotionally and how humans reason logically.
Finance is a bad example because most people lose it when money is involved. But you see this in other areas where it is very hard to make a contribution if that contribution isn't surprising, controversial, or shocking in some way. It has to have emotional valence. This isn't universal. Some areas of study don't have that culture, some organizations have clear decision-making processes that try to stop this...but everyone is prone to emotional reasoning.
This seemed so idealistic and a bit silly when I was a kid, but now (especially now) ...
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with wornout tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run—
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
I think this is the difference between how humans reason emotionally and how humans reason logically.
Finance is a bad example because most people lose it when money is involved. But you see this in other areas where it is very hard to make a contribution if that contribution isn't surprising, controversial, or shocking in some way. It has to have emotional valence. This isn't universal. Some areas of study don't have that culture, some organizations have clear decision-making processes that try to stop this...but everyone is prone to emotional reasoning.