Humans are rationalizing creatures, much more than rational ones. Our first gut reaction is trying to make sense of why we think what we think and why we behave how we behave, rather than trying to figure out if it does actually make sense. If this natural tendency could be changed, the world would be far less of a shithole.
This is why, rather than slapping people in the face with a mountain of research, I try to ask them questions that lead them to the conclusion I want them to reach. Oh we discuss along the way, but you get a lot less of the black and white thinking bold statements that someone entrenched in their beliefs tends to make
The research backs up your statement. Especially if you yourself are genuinely interested in the conversation, and also willing to update your own thinking, along with helping get everyone in the conversation to start understanding the real answers.
In case you haven't listened to it, the You Are Not So Smart podcast covers the topic of how to get people to change on a pretty regular basis. It's a great podcast that talks a lot about conspiracies, misinformation, and how to combat them.
My favorite part of this podcast is that if you listen to it from the start (nearly 300 episodes at this point), you can hear him slowly become very jaded and pessimistic, but then as the podcast goes on, he starts turning around his opinion and gets exited and optimistic about all the progress that is made. It's a really great podcast and makes me excited for the future.
We're also to some extent innately combative creatures. People will say "Oh, I showed people the facts and they still didn't change their mind. They're just idiots stuck in their ways." Okay, cool. When you tried to present these facts, did you do it in such a way as to treat them courteously or as an equal, or did you do it in such a way that you got to feel like you were dunking on them rhetorically? Because it's not as simple as presenting someone with facts. It's doing so in a way that doesn't make it feel like you're trying to establish some kind of superiority over them. Because then they're not presenting facts to you, they're just attacking you and your position. And these are very different things, conceptually and emotionally.
That is - IMO - what critical thinking is meant to be .... thinking about alternative explanations and evaluating their viability or probability.
Unfortunately a lot of people use the term "critical thinking" as just another way to rationalize why they are against something, without actually weighing the options.
same here, even when someone hasn't changed my mind 100% I'll often acknowledge if any of their arguments made me want to delve deeper into a topic and think more about my opinion on it
politics is reality and you just want fantasy... but if you keep reading fantasy, you'll eventually notice something horrible about it. Spoiler alert: its politics
Fucking everything is political. If you think something is too political its because your not political enough.
Your weekend is political, the 8 hour work day is political, the fucking air you breath and the pollution it is fucking political. EVERYTHING IS FUCKING POLITICAL!
If there's one I've learned after being on the internet for 17 years, it's this; you can throw an entire mountain of evidence at a conspiracy theorist and they STILL won't believe you.
On the internet your identity is a collection of the opinions that you wrote under that name. So if you changing your opinion on anything you're changing your identity.
All the more difficult if you use your own name as your identity and you have acquired followers because of the opinions you've expressed.
Pretty sure this meme originates from an actual, specific Twitter exchange. Which became so legendary that people just repeated it secondhand, and now the secondhand repetition of it is getting screenshotted and posted.
I think there is a difference between being exposed to evidence of the contrary and sitting on it for a while. I don't think you can change someone's mind in a conversation. Rarely so. But if the person is "forced" to think about the topic and the evidence, eventually they will change their mind.
It is morally as bad not to care whether a thing is true or not, so long as it makes you feel good, as it is not to care how you got your money as long as you have got it. - Edmund Way Teale
Damn, everyone could have been right if the OG just relented. He changed his mind to agree people don't change their minds? Chess grandmaster move right there... What a missed opportunity.
In 1 minute, you can find 5 papers to back up a claim .. 30 minutes with GPT and you can write your own fucking paper. …
Of course, there are often a further 5 papers out there arguing opposite, because that’s how research works. But nobody seems interested in that. Someone just names “two papers !” And you are sold. Just. like. that. The argument is over for you.
I have to ask, Are you 12 ? Or brand new to the internet or something ?