Explaining the persistence of non3adaptive architectural typologies
reveals the opposite of what one is led to believe about progress in contemporary
architecture and urbanism. There is in fact a built3in resistance to new ideas outside
conformity, even when accepted practices are demonstrated to be failures. We can
understand this contradiction as irrational groupthink and the resistance to change
within the framework of social learning and evolutionary adaptation. Studies in
political science and psychology reveal strongly innate mechanisms for preserving
misinformation. Human physiology leads intelligent persons who have acquired
demonstrably false beliefs to stubbornly persist in holding them. “Cognitive
dissonance” is a state of physical anxiety, and instinctive defensive reactions are meant
to counteract its occurrence. Methods of handling contradictory information within
settings requiring urgent action, while obviously appropriate at the evolutionary level
of early humans, wreak havoc with our present3day rationality. People have inherited
both a mechanism for conforming to group beliefs, and a stock of tools to fight against
any idea that conflicts with already held beliefs. Rational arguments have no affect
whatsoever