> People who gain knowledge by adding to a consistent/stable belief system are the ones who have the most difficulty adapting to new situations and processing new information that may upend volumes of settled knowledge.
That's such an incredibly rare occurrence, that having a stable belief system far outweighs its potential drawbacks. Not to mention that rationality itself encompasses the ability to make such a switch anyway if the new information actually does upend volumes of "settled" knowledge.
A much bigger problem, though, is people lacking critical thinking skills to adequately assign probabilities to the new information being valuable/useful/correct.
Hint: it's very low. (in the current stage of civilization, there are definitely periods where it was different).
