> You can never convince someone of something by using reason and evidence, and your counterparty will suspect (rightfully so!) that your "evidence" is just the

> You can never convince someone of something by using reason and evidence, and your counterparty will suspect (rightfully so!) that your "evidence" is just the sort of rhetoric-disguised-as-dialectic that I'm talking about. I personally agreed with your general idea, but the place where we are today was developed intentionally via propaganda systems designed to question the validity of expertise. If a person believes that government bureaucrats are all ineffective, that vaccines are dangerous, that all scientists believed a new ice age was going to start back in the 80's, then it is very easy to deny anything that experts say, and that your gut is right most of the time. This, of course, couldn't be further from the truth. There are huge swaths of humanity that are willing to change their opinions based on the presentation of evidence. What is clear is that they are not good at generating enough political power to start the grand collective ideas that are necessary to fight homelessness locally (I know that I'm having trouble pushing housing first ideas - I think that Americans are punitive, culturally), or to fight climate change globally. Still a dismal conclusion.