Well, props for offering a fresh outside perspective- this site could certainly use more of that.  Unfortunately, I don't think you've made a very convincing argument. (Was that intentional, since you don't seem to believe ideological arguments can be convincing?)

We can never hope to glimpse pure empirical noumenon, but we certainly can build models that more or less accurately predict what we will experience in the future. We rely on those models to promote whatever we value, and it's important to try and improve how well they work. Colloquially, we call that empiricism.

Cults, ideologies and such are models that have evolved to self-propagate- to convince people to spread them.  Sometimes they do this by latching on to peoples' fears, as you've mentioned.  Sometimes, they do it by providing people with things they value, like community or a feeling of status.  Other times, they're horribly emotionally abusive, making people feel pain at the thought of questioning dogma, engineering harmful social collective action problems and turning people into fanatics.

Our reality is built from models, but not all models are ideologies.  Ideologies are parasitic- they optimize our models for propagation rather than accurate prediction.  That's a bad thing because the main things we want to propagate are ourselves and the people we care about, and we need to be able to make accurate predictions to do that.

Is this site dangerously ideological?  That's definitely a question that deserves more attention, but it's an empirical question, not one of whether the ideology is stronger than rivals.

Can people be convinced to change or abandon ideologies by empirical arguments? Absolutely. I was raised to be a fanatic Evangelical, and was convinced to abandon it mostly by reading about science and philosophy.  I've also held strong beliefs about AI risk that I've changed my mind about after reading empirical arguments.  My lived experience strongly suggests that beliefs can be changed by things other than lived experience.

Do you find any of this convincing? I'm guessing not. From the tone of your post, it looks like you're viewing this kind of exchange as a social competition where changing your mind means losing. But I'd suggest asking yourself whether that frame is really helpful- whether it actually promotes the things you value.  Our models of reality are deeply flawed, and some of those flaws will cause us and other people pain and heartbreak.  We need to be trying to minimize that- to build models that are more accurately predictive of experience- both for ourselves and in order to be good people.  But if communication outside of the confines of an ideology can only ever be a status game, how can we hope to do that?

This is an ideological pablum of a disaffected leftist.  It's not appropriate for this forum, and should be deleted.