Plastic2Oil Inc (PTOI)

[arvitar]

I don’t understand why believers keep persuing Heddle to restart a money-losing, nonenvironmently unfriendly process that goes against everything having to do with green technology…

"Scholars are coming to appreciate that apocalyptic prophecies are quite common in new religious movements. Overwhelmingly, these prophecies fail to come true, empirically. Yet the record shows that these failures rarely have the dire consequences common sense suggests. Counter-intuitively the majority of groups survive the disconfirmation of the predictions, and the norm is for faith in the prophetic leaders and their systems of beliefs to persist or even intensify, at least for a time.

Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter first drew attention to this unusual state of affairs in their classic study, When Prophecy Fails (1956), postulating the theory of cognitive dissonance to explain it. In the face of evidence contradicting a strongly held belief, Festinger and his colleagues hypothesized, people will be more inclined to find a means to discount the evidence than surrender their beliefs and commitments. They will resolve the cognitive tension they are experiencing by seeking to change the way the world is perceived, in line with their expectations, rather than abandon their cherished convictions. More specifically, Festinger et al. argue, people will attempt to convince others of the veracity of their views, on the premise that their ability to persuade others testifies to the continued worth of their beliefs."
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/nr.1999.3.1.60