- cross-posted to:
- confidently_incorrect@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- confidently_incorrect@lemmy.world
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.
https://youarenotsosmart.com/podcast/
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.
This is just the Socratic method. It’s like…the oldest formal rhetorical strategy.
I don’t think so? The Socratic method wasn’t necessarily a strategy intended to carefully persuade someone by bypassing psychological blockers. If anything, Socrates’ counterparts were often antagonized and angered by his questions because he exposed contradictions.
I think the ethos behind it was that Socrates presumed he knew nothing, other people seemed like they knew things, so he asked them what they knew, since others were so bold as to make knowledge claims.
Shhhh don’t burst his bubble.
(Psst it’s not actually the socratic method)
This is like a meta level recursion.
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 try real hard to not only change my mind but vocally (typographically) acknowledge when I was wrong because it’s so goddamnit rare and infuriating.
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.
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