Data can be added through experience and learning....but how the new data is analysed will again depend on the basic programming.
Yes, but in the process of that analysis it can - not necessarily will, depending on the state at the time, but can - update the programme itself as well.
Changing the programming is not easy. It can be done of course, but will require a major life changing experience of some kind. Normally.... it is near impossible.
I don't see that - it rather depends on how the programme has evolved in the first place. If you're open to ideas and have developed a mechanism for learning and developing, absorbing new ideas and updating your paradigm is relatively easy. Of course, it can go too far and you get people who jump on to every bandwagon going. I do think that it might well become more difficult with age - obviously children have comparatively little in the way of rigidly defined elements, whilst the older you get the more likely any given part is to have become 'sealed' from new information.
Why...many scientists and science students are unable to accept new ideas and radical theories in science itself even when presented by eminent scientists!!!
Ironically, I find that scientists are generally the most likely to accept new ideas, what they aren't likely to accept is entirely new formats of claim.
That's how stubborn some ideas and beliefs are. Great survivors...these memes!!
Except that scientific theories are not memes in that sense - they exist within a recognised framework that includes a mechanism for review and update.
Now, ideas like 'spirit', there's a meme with some staying power and little to nothing in the way of validation.
O.
