The persecution of ALG
I have recently been banned from /r/LearnJapanese for partaking in discussion about and promoting the ALG method to eager inquirers. Why do the denizens of the Internet become so triggered by any discussion or positive representation of ALG as a method or a language-learning movement? I've found only a handful of people outside of this subreddit who are partial to even considering allowing people to talk freely about the idea.
My assumptions are that it has to do with the following human traits:
People don't like to be told they are wrong. They take it as a personal attack, and very often this triggers similar defense mechanisms in them as actual physical threats would. Throughout human evolution, this has benefitted survival, and because there is significantly higher evolutionary pressure to have an overactive threat response than there is evolutionary pressure to have an underactive one, it's what we see most commonly among populations. If you think the rustling bush is just the wind, and you're wrong, you might wind up in the stomach of a tiger lying in wait. If you think it's a tiger, and you're wrong, there are almost no drawbacks aside from a few moments of fear and anxiety. These evolutionary mechanisms are the same ones still in play today, even in highly modernized platforms such as discussions over the Internet.
People don't like to believe they have wasted their time. People want to hold onto the comforting idea that the hundreds or thousands of hours of stress and effort they've invested toward achieving their goals wasn't in vain. Nobody's going to want to be told that their 6-year Duolingo or Anki streak was a complete waste of time. It's a classic example of the sunk cost fallacy.
People dislike the idea of permanent damage and fossilization. They would rather believe the comforting lie that is that you can do whatever you want and always turn your life around if you try hard enough. The fact is that if you eat like shit and fuck up your autoimmune system leading to you becoming diabetic, you can't necessarily unring that bell. That ship has sailed, and you may have to deal with that for the rest of your life. The same may be true for language learning, and there does seem to be evidence to support that idea. This is not comforting for most people, and there is a significant tendency for humans to trend toward comforting beliefs. Look to religion, for example: there is a vast portion of the human population who believe that there is a magical realm in which dead people still exist and have sensory experiences, despite the brain, which demonstrably regulates all sensory experiences, no longer functioning at all. This of course comforts people who are faced with the realities of the mortality of not just themselves, but their loved ones. The fact that they are able to console themselves with the idea that they may one day see their dead family members again in the afterlife is the exact same self-deceiving consolation that anti-ALG apologists might employ on themselves to avoid accepting the harsh reality that is that oftentimes Pandora's box cannot be unopened.
What are your thoughts on this phenomenon? Why are people so zealous in their attempts to persecute ALG and its proponents?