Why Don't Facts Change Our Opinion?
Economist JK Galbraith once wrote: When faced with the choice of changing your mind or proving that you don't have to, most people engage in proof.
Leo Tolstoy had more courage. - The most difficult subject can be explained even by the most stupid person if he has no idea about it yet. But even the most intelligent people cannot articulate the simplest things while firmly believing that they already know without a doubt what lies ahead.
Why don't the facts change our opinion? However, why would anyone continue to believe false or false beliefs?
The logic of false belief
In order for man to live, he needs a certain degree of accurate worldview. When your model of reality is so different from the real world, you struggle to take effective action every day.
But truth and accuracy are not the only things that are important to the human mind. People likewise appear to truly want to have a place.
I wrote in Atomic Habits - Humans are beasts of burden. We want to fit in with others, connect with others, and gain the respect and approval of our colleagues. Such processes are necessary for our survival. For a large portion of our evolutionary history, our progenitors lived in ancestral units. Separation from the tribe or worse, exile was a death sentence.
Understanding the truth of the situation is important, but so is staying part of the tribe. These two desires often work well together, but sometimes conflict.
In many situations, social communication actually helps us in everyday life more than understanding the truth of certain facts and ideas. As Harvard University psychologist Steven Pinker says: One of the functions of the mind is not to look to the believer for its beliefs but to have the greatest number of allies, supporters, or maybe having a belief that leads to the disciples' beliefs that are more likely to Very true
We don't believe things because they are always right. Sometimes we believe things to make ourselves look good to the people we love.
Kevin Shimler wrote, which I thought summed up well: - If the brain expects to be rewarded for accepting a particular belief, it will happily do so, so it doesn't really care where the reward comes from or whether it is practical. Is. from colleagues), or a combination of the two.
Deceptions can be helpful from a social perspective, regardless of whether they are not valuable in the genuine sense. I might call this approach "factually wrong, but socially correct" because I can't think of a better term for it. When faced with a choice, people often choose friends and family over facts.
This insight not only explains why we keep our mouths shut at dinner parties or roll our eyes when our parents say something offensive, but it also helps us change the minds of others. It also shows a better way.
Facts do not change our opinion. There is friendship
Convincing someone to change their opinion is actually the process of persuading the tribe to change. If you let go of your beliefs, you risk losing social connections. You can't expect anyone to change their mind if you destroy society as well. You have to give them a place to go. No one wants their worldview to fall apart if loneliness sets in.
The method for altering individuals' perspectives is to get to know them, coordinate them into your clan, and bring them into your circle. Now they can change their beliefs without the risk of social abandonment.
British philosopher Alain de Button suggests that you should only share a meal with someone who disagrees with you.
Sitting at a table with a group of strangers has the odd advantage of making it a little harder to hate them with impunity. Ethnic prejudices and antagonisms foster abstraction. But the closeness required for dining - handing over a plate, unfolding a napkin at the same time, asking a stranger to hand over salt, etc. - is not something that a foreigner in unusual clothes and speaking a certain language can do in his own way. It distorts our ability to maintain this belief. Individuals in a unique way should be sent home or beaten. None of the large-scale political solutions proposed to settle ethnic conflicts are as effective in promoting tolerance among suspicious neighbors as forced dinners together.
Perhaps it is the distance that creates tribalism and enmity, not differences. As familiarity increases, so does understanding. I'm helped to remember Abraham Lincoln's words, I could do without that man. I really want to realize him better.
Facts do not change our opinion. Friendships do.
Belief spectrum
Years ago, Ben Casnocha told me an idea that I still can't shake. It's the people we agree with on 98% of the issues that are most likely to change our minds.
If someone you know, like, and trust believes in a radical idea, you're more likely to give it merit, and value, and consider it. You already agree with them in most areas of your life. You might want to change your mind about this as well. But when someone so different from you comes up with the same radical idea, it's easy to dismiss that person as a weirdo.
One way to visualize this difference is to map beliefs on a spectrum. If you divide this spectrum into units of 10 and find yourself in position 7, there is no point in trying to convince someone in position 1. The gap is too wide. When you are in position 7, it is better to spend time connecting with people in positions 6 and 8 and gradually draw them towards you.
The most intense debates often occur between people on opposite ends of the spectrum, but learning often comes from those closest to you. The closer you get to someone, the more likely it is that a belief or two that you don't share will creep into your mind and shape your way of thinking. The further an idea is from its current position, the more likely it is to be completely rejected.
When it comes to changing people's minds, it is very difficult to jump from one side to the other. You can't jump the spectrum. You have to pull it down.
Ideas that are completely different from the current worldview feel dangerous. What's more, the best spot to ponder undermining thoughts is in a harmless climate. As a result, books are often a better vehicle for changing beliefs than conversations and debates.
In conversation, people should carefully consider their posture and appearance. They want to save face and not look stupid. When faced with a series of uncomfortable truths, we often tend to double down on our current situation rather than admit our mistakes.
Books resolve this tension. With books, the conversation takes place in one's mind without the risk of being judged by others. It's easier to open up when you're not feeling defensive.
Controversy is like a head-on attack on a person's identity. Reading a book is like planting the seed of an idea in one's brain and letting it grow on its own. There is enough fighting going on in one's head when trying to overcome existing beliefs. They don't have to fight you either.
Why wrong ideas persist
Another reason for the persistence of bad ideas. That's because people keep talking about this idea.
Silence is death to every thought. Ideas that are never spoken or written down fade away with the person who came up with them. Ideas are remembered only when they are repeated. They are only believed when repeated.
We have already mentioned that people repeat ideas to show that they are part of the same social group. But there is an important point that most people are unaware of.
People also repeat it when they complain about bad thoughts. Before you can critique an idea, you have to refer to it. You repeat ideas that you want people to forget, but of course, they can't because you keep talking about them. The more you rehash an ill-conceived notion, the more probable individuals will trust it.
Let's call this phenomenon Keller's Law of Regression. The number of individuals who accept a thought is straightforwardly connected with the times it has been rehashed in the previous year, regardless of whether the thought is off-base.
Every time you attack a bad thought, you feed the monster you want to destroy. As one Twitter employee wrote, every time you retweet or quote an angry person's tweet, it helps them. BS spreads them. Hell is silence for the thoughts you moan. Have the discipline to give it to them.
Better to invest your energy shielding smart thoughts than battling ill-conceived notions. Take the necessary steps not to relax around sorting out why misinformed contemplations are terrible. You only fan the flames of ignorance and stupidity.
The best thing that can happen to an unrealistic thought is that it is ignored. The best thing good ideas do is share them. I remembered the words of Tyler Cowen. Spend as little time as possible talking about other people's mistakes.
Feed the good ideas and let the bad ideas wither.
The Intellectual Soldier
I know what you are thinking. - James, are you serious? Should I leave these idiots alone?
Let me be clear. I'm not saying that pointing out mistakes or criticizing bad ideas is never helpful. Yet, you need to ask yourself, What is your purpose?
Why would you want to criticize a bad idea in the first place? Maybe you want to criticize bad ideas because you think the world would be a better place if fewer people believed in them. In other words, they believe that the world would be a better place if people changed their minds about some important issues.
I don't think you need to criticize others if your goal is to actually change your mind.
Most people insist on winning, not learning. As Julia Golf aptly puts it, people often act more like soldiers than scouts. Soldiers make clever attacks to defeat those who are different from them. Winning is an emotional act. Scouts, on the other hand, are like intellectual explorers who slowly try to map the earth with others. Curiosity is the driving force.
If you want people to accept your beliefs, you have to act like a scout, not a soldier. At the heart of this approach is a question beautifully posed by Thiago Forte. Do I have to win to continue the conversation?
First, be kind, then be right
The famous Japanese essayist Haruki Murakami once composed: Consistently recollect that triumphant a contention implies smashing the truth of the individual you are contending with. Losing reality hurts, so be gentle even when you're right.
At this moment, it's easy to forget that our goal is to connect, collaborate, befriend, and integrate them into our tribe. We are so caught up in winning that we forget to communicate. It's easy to spend more energy labeling people than working with them.
If you have any doubts,Please let me know