15 ms·

A gentler, better way to change minds

• andsoitis 4y ago
  Not paywalled: https://archive.ph/2022.04.22-170337/https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/04/arguing-with-someone-different-values/629495/ https://archive.ph/2022.04.22-170337/https://www.theatlantic...
• echelon 4y ago
  > Stop wielding your values as a weapon and start offering them as a gift. It's about time this was put forth. I've been screaming from the bottom of my lungs for ages that woke virtue signalling only makes enemies. If you tell your opponent you're better than them, you're engaging in high school football rivalry. You'll never come to a meeting of the minds. It only makes the disagreement more bitter. The left and the right, at the end of the day, really aren't that much different at all. There are only a few concepts we disagree upon. Yet we're engaging in petty team squabbles and letting the lizard parts of our brains turn it into tribalistic "us vs them". An analogy, probably incorrect, is the hygiene hypothesis. An under-exposed immune system in a clean room learns to attack its host instead. Similarly, since we're not regularly engaging in tribe vs tribe, fighting off assailants that would throttle us in the night, or staying by the fire to stay away lions and bears, we turn that defense mechanism against those with different ideals. At the end of the day, we're all suffering and dying together.
  • Forgeties79 4y ago
    > I’ve been screaming from the bottom of my lungs for ages that woke virtue signaling only makes enemies That sentence right there makes me seriously skeptical of how well your conversations turn out, as well as how open minded you are when talking with people you disagree with.
    • annyeonghada 4y ago
      Well, I could say the same for your comment. I would be skeptical that anyone who dismisses an observable phenomenon is "open minded".
      • Forgeties79 4y ago
        When did I dismiss the opinion? I’m saying you’re way of engaging the topic is part of the very problem you’re claiming to highlight.
  • tdeck 4y ago
  • boplicity 4y ago
    > I've been screaming from the bottom of my lungs for ages that [insert opinion] only makes sense There you go.
  • ok_dad 4y ago
    You have a great point. I think you could agree your point would have been made better without the cheap shot to score points against woke bogeymen. To your point though, we need to stick together as humans, from every country, because the common person from China has more in common with the common person in America than either common person has with those in power trying to split us up by race and ideology. Divide and conquer doesn’t work if you don’t buy in to the divisions!
    • annyeonghada 4y ago
      >cheap shot to score points against woke bogeymen. Why denouncing something that tries to bring division and aggravate difference is called a bogeymen? Have you considered that it may be a real phenomenon?
      • Forgeties79 4y ago
        You would do well to note how many people called what you said a cheap shot. You’re bemoaning a lack of discourse by spiking the conversation. Does that not strike you as odd? Or at least counter productive?
  • bee_rider 4y ago
    The idea that one side of the political discourse is engaging in "virtual signaling" and "wielding their values as weapons" is not a new one. Surprisingly enough, it is always the side that the disagrees with the author, that is totally disingenuous in the expression values, go figure.
  • ajross 4y ago
    > woke virtue signalling only makes enemies I'm not following. The very term "woke virtue signaling" is itself a loaded, aggressive frame that is designed to "make enemies". You don't think, to pick an example, that vegans eat vegan because they want to and not to signal to you? What's your solution for them to change your mind except to... eat meat with you in solidarity I guess? The point being that what you're picking up as "virtue signaling" is largely in your own interpretation. Most of the hippies are just living their lives. But yeah, sometimes that involves being trans or gay or whatever in a way that isn't invisible to you.
  • tchaffee 4y ago
    > woke virtue signaling > tell your opponent you're better than them. You just did the latter. By assuming your opponents are not sincere in the former.
  • tunesmith 4y ago
    "woke virtue signaling" is the same thing that "political correctness" was ten years ago, right? I mean, when I hear people complaining about "woke virtue signaling" I don't know what that means other than "being respectful" and "modeling good behavior". If you're limiting that description to actual hypocrisy, then that's one thing. But in the absence of modeling good behavior, the only alternative is behavior that gets worse and worse. Because as soon as someone tries to stand up for a higher bar, it's "woke virtue signaling". The phrase almost sounds like an incantation at this point, like it has no meaning other than to express a grievance. Alternatively, after climbing past that initial resistance, joining in trying to raise the bar can actually be kind of fun, if the intent is more in improving one's own behavior than in just (hypocritically) judging others.
    • annyeonghada 4y ago
      >I mean, when I hear people complaining about "woke virtue signaling" I don't know what that means other than "being respectful" and "modeling good behavior". Come on, it's not that. "Just being respectful" is very different from the coercive tactics of the zealous kind we have seen in the recent years.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
• goethes_kind 4y ago
  Shouldn't different people in different circumstances of life, have different opinions/philosophies/ideologies anyway? How about this: if you want to change people's minds, work on changing their circumstances first.
  • mikepurvis 4y ago
    This is Michael Shellenberger's philosophy around saving the planet/climate. Basically, that economic justice has to come first because only people who are comfortable and middle class can afford the mental and emotional costs associated with caring about that stuff. And yes, achieving that result on a global scale may well involve the construction of a bunch of new oil and gas infrastructure in places like Africa and South America— well meaning westerners should focus on what can be done at home to reduce, and stop protesting exactly the kind of thing that helps more people enter the middle class.
    • petermcneeley 4y ago
      I wonder if there is a group of people that is even more comfortable than the "middle class" that could afford this cost.
      • mikepurvis 4y ago
        Sure, but that's a much smaller group. The historical argument is that the rise of the environmental movement in the US coincided with the postwar boom. Yes, some people became very wealthy during that time, but millions of people became wealthy enough that they started wanting things like national parks, clean rivers, breathable air, and so on. The strength in numbers is worth a lot more that asking a few zillionaires to make it happen single-handedly.
        • ethanbond 4y ago
          Not when the few zillionaires are in command of zillions of dollars of capital, which is by far a more effective lever to do just about anything these days than any lever available to middle class and below.
• bee_rider 4y ago
  Honestly, I do not really think most online commenters want to convince anybody of anything. For most of history, discussion of current events by normal people has just been venting to your likeminded friends in the pub. The problem I think is on the part of people who expect convincing rhetoric in online conversations.
  • zopa 4y ago
    Debates are about convincing onlookers, not the person you're arguing with. Online, in the pub, everywhere.
    • bmacho 4y ago
      Debates are about checking that your own views are indeed correct.
      • RealityVoid 4y ago
        Both are correct. If you indeed know your views are correct, dangerous ones _need_ to be challenged, onlookers need to see that bad ideas have opposition and there are other ways of approaching an issue. At the same time, you also need to acknowledge if someone has a point and have honest discussion. If you always debate and never ever think... "Huh, this guy has a point" then you most likely are not intellectually honest.
        • oceanplexian 4y ago
          I fundamentally don’t agree that ideas can be dangerous (Ironically, I guess this is an argument). However actions are dangerous and people should be held to account by their actions. If you disagree with someone’s ideas you should debate them, or articulate your point of view, not challenge them.
          • LocalH 4y ago
            I do agree that ideas can be dangerous, most of those revolve around bigotry and hatred. I don’t know the best solution, but I understand how the ideas are dangerous to others in a very direct way.
• blondin 4y ago
  why should we try to persuade or change minds? are we happier now that we can reach millions of minds? or were we happier with smaller circles of family and friends? is there a great injustice that needs each and every one of us to play the persuasion game?
  • elefanten 4y ago
    Well, terminally the alternative is always violence
    • somenameforme 4y ago
      Or acceptance of difference. The underlying notion many seem to believe is that they are inherently right and so all they need to do is express their "mind-space" to somebody else, and that other person will come to feel the same. But the thing one forgets is that the other person also often feels exactly the same. And it's not even a matter of one person being right and another person being wrong. In any sort of reasonably complex topic, people can see the same data and make informed conclusions that are mutually exclusive. Seeing successful persuasion or violence as the only ends largely simplifies down to violence being the only end. Or, "The History of Humanity."
      • int_19h 4y ago
        > Or acceptance of difference. That only works if both sides do it. The problem is that there are many political ideologies across the entire spectrum that are unwilling to accept the difference to the point of resorting to violence to remove it.
      • woojoo666 4y ago
        Except certain resources are exclusive. For example, global human effort. How much global effort should be expended towards fighting climate change? In cases like these, people can't just accept their differences, a choice has to be made.
      • adrianN 4y ago
• patientplatypus 4y ago
• wnscooke 4y ago
  "screaming at the top of my lungs", and "from the bottom of my heart". Seems two idioms were mixed up here.
  • saghm 4y ago
    I assume that this was meant to reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33217608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33217608 rather than a top-level comment? Either way, this just makes me think of the Strongbad Email about how to be a metal singer (i.e. to sing not from the top of your lungs, but from the bowels): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V72NKRyX1NA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V72NKRyX1NA
• kypro 4y ago
  I find it odd that people seek to change minds to be honest. For some reason I'm a hard-core libertarian so I kind of hate my own core values. I'd even go so far as to acknowledge that my ideal world would be close to hell for most people. I don't want to be this way. I just seem to have a preference for it. I realised several years ago that if I ever got my own way it would make the world objectively a worse place for the average person to live and therefore I have an ethical duty to vote against my own self interest and instead try to vote for what I believe is in the interest of the collective good. I think a lot of political division we see today just stems of a lack of empathy and understanding. Instead of trying to find ways we can compromise and share this Earth together we seek to force our own values on to others. And this seems to be true at all levels of society, from Twitter debates about trans rights, to democracy vs autocracy debates at the level of nation states. Plus I think most disagreements we have can generally be solved with more localism and secessionism. Here in the UK for example I don't know why I don't just let Muslim communities practise Sharia law if they wish and allow communities who dislike immigration set their own rules on who is and isn't allowed to live there. But like I say, I know people disagree with me on these things.
  • peacefulhat 4y ago
    How do you determine who is in the community and subject to the community law?
  • cgrealy 4y ago
    People seek to change the minds of others because their opinions (and subsequent actions) often affect the people themselves. A simple example of this would be abortion.
    • clairity 4y ago
      abortion itself, being a personal decision/action, doesn't seek to affect the thoughts and behaviors of other people. perhaps you mean anti-abortion, since that attempts to be positively coercive of others?
      • 4y ago
• civilized 4y ago
  Offering your values as a gift still seems way too presumptuous. I think you can express how you feel about things and why if someone's interested, or if they express their feelings first. Anything more than that is unwelcome to the vast majority of people.
• Ztynovovk 4y ago
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• rickdicker 4y ago
  I find it strange that this article presumes that you have all the right answers and that there isn't the possibility that you are the one who needs their mind changed. It points out that listening is valuable, but not because there's a possibility that the person you're talking to is in the right, no, you should listen to other people because studies show that listening to other people will manipulate them into seeing things your way. I feel like if you really wanted to live in a world of open-minded people, you should probably start by being open-minded yourself. Here's a good trick I picked up for discussing contentious things - if you're ever tempted to dish out a sick burn, try to rephrase the point into a genuine question. Then the other person will have to walk through the logic of it, and if it turns out there is a real logic to their side of things, you don't get your ego bruised, cause you just asked a genuine question.
  • dr_dshiv 4y ago
    > if you're ever tempted to dish out a sick burn, try to rephrase the point into a genuine question Can you give an example?
    • phailhaus 4y ago
      Great example!
      • dr_dshiv 4y ago
        Ok, but now I want the sick burn
        • rickdicker 4y ago
          Something like instead of saying "well more people die of the flu every year than die of COVID!" you would ask "how do you think the severity of this disease compares to other things we deal with, like the flu?"
    • Nition 4y ago
      "The government's using COVID as a means of population control." "Why does the government want a lower population - don't they usually want more people to grow the economy?"
• jondeval 4y ago
  I do think there are a subset of people who are genuinely open minded. These people are actively curious and looking to iterate toward a more accurate view of reality. When you meet people like this there are no 'tactics' ... it's just about presenting the truth in good faith as you see it and listening actively to understand their point of view. The problem I encounter is that many people posture as 'open-minded', but in reality they want to hear your opinion for the same reason an opponent wants you to show your cards after they've folded to a successful poker bluff. In this case it simply tells them "what side you're on" or "which tribe you belong to". As a heuristic, I've found it's very difficult to formulate thoughtful questions if you're not genuinely curious about a topic. Therefore, I tend to use the 'questioning level of thoughtfulness' (QLOT) of my discussion partner as the signal of whether or not I'm dealing with someone who desires a good faith discussion.
  • stefandesu 4y ago
    I guess I should try to get better at asking good questions. Even if I'm genuinely curious about something, I always have trouble coming up with thoughtful questions, especially on the spot. (I guess for me, "thoughtfulness" requires putting thought into something, and if I'm actively participating in a conversation, I can't do that. It's way easier if I have already invested time into the topic at hand at some point beforehand.)
  • oceanplexian 4y ago
    > When you meet people like this there are no 'tactics' ... it's just about presenting the truth in good faith I will argue with tactics, but it’s not necessarily out of bad faith. Usually people are terrible at having an open-minded conversation, and you need to peel back the layers because most individuals won’t tell you why they believe something. You’ll get all these canned responses and talking points from mainstream media (Or, if we’re talking about technology, the analog would be taking points from a particular corporation or vendor). But people won’t outright say “I don’t agree with that policy because I don’t trust that person” or “I got screwed over by a traumatic experience with X therefore I’m against X”. Most people aren’t capable of engaging on that level without a great deal of emotional maturity; of course, we’re far away from reality and facts at this point but humans are emotional creatures and emotion drives our decision making.
• zzzeek 4y ago
  let's posit two historical events that every American knows about, which represented pretty fierce disagreement: 1. the Civil War and Slavery 2. the Holocaust each event featured "sides" that disagreed pretty strongly. They were life-or-death conflicts involving millions of people. Do we try to apply these "lets find our shared morals" / "present our side with the joy (of a missionary)" practices in these situations? Probably not. They were wars. Kind of the ultimate "disagreement". If you are open to the view that conflicts happening today are fast approaching the scale / seriousness of the above two events, things like, one political party trying to overthrow the US government by force, widespread corruption of the rule of law and police, draconian rules meant to terrorize or imprison whole populations of women and immigrants, destruction of democratic norms, kids living their lives in terror of school schootings, then it's hard to take this article seriously. If the above paragraph OTOH sounds ridiculous and one is of the view that things are pretty normal except for a little messiness on this social media thing, then by all means, present your view to that reality as a gift given with joy.
  • andrewflnr 4y ago
    As of yet in America, the people willing to actually engage in things like 1-6 are a very small minority, and the ones willing to offer defenses for it are mostly those who feel trapped, that there's no other way their values can be preserved. These people can still be reached. But giving up hope prematurely is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Anyway, I'm not sure what your counter-proposal is. I assume it's not "just get the civil war started already", but if you actually give up on convincing your political opponents, there's not much left. Oh, there's "go vote!", I guess, but we already knew that one.
    • zzzeek 4y ago
      I'm not saying to forego discourse altogether, im saying that approaching the problem like a missionary ringing your doorbell who will then happily "debate" spirituality is not advised. religious missionaries have literally eternity to get their message across. dire issues like the loss of democracy can't really wait and can't really be reduced to "let's debate and wait for someone to win". "debate" with the goal to "convince one's opponent" is not really what's going on with the discourse that we're seeing. it is a war of sorts, where the "sides" are looking to engage their "side" as much as possible and to demoralize and humiliate the other "side" as much as possible, thereby creating a public impression that it is hoped will sway major political events, primarily through the psychology of who's perceived as "winning" and "losing". also, virtually the entire Republican party from top to bottom supports the 1/6 insurrection, their methods, and their goals, and the party is actively electing attorney generals and governors who will actually see the insurrection through at the state level on the next go-around. The situation is in fact very dire.
• midislack 4y ago
  After years of shouting at Trump voters, calling them names, racists, fascists, and Nazis, and that not working. Why not try some sanctimonious nose peeping? At this point I simply don't dialogue with people on political subjects. I nod, smile, agree, then pull the farthest right lever in the voting booth I can.
  • tynol 4y ago
• raydiatian 4y ago
  > Stop wielding your values as a weapon and start offering them as a gift. This is incredibly spot on. I might even say it differently as “Stop treating your values as an indication of your superiority, and start treating them as a relatable story of growth.” A lot (I mean a lot) of people I talk with are constantly trying to put on a display of how what they are is some kind of superior way of being. And it’s impossible to listen to them because they’re speaking with a childish “I’m this and your not” way of thinking.
• seydor 4y ago
  ... or maybe consider that if people consistently reject your claim, you re the one who s in the wrong
• nuc1e0n 4y ago
  The idea of even trying to force or 'encourage' others to change their minds is horrid. Let people make up their own minds. Do people ever think that maybe their ideas are the ones that are stupid? Only giving advice or recommendations when they are sought is the genuinely gentler approach.
• Giorgi 4y ago
  Ok, now try that on invading Russians.
  • sascha_sl 4y ago
    Try a less clear cut debate topic. One where intuition works against you. Like the wave of anti-trans legislation and framing of our mere existence as grooming in red states. It's much harder to see the outright wrongness and evil. It's easy with the Russians. We got propaganda pieces where the message to foreigners is always "we fight nazis in Ukraine" and the message inward is "we fight against having to go to pride parades and having our children turned gay by satanists". [1] Now trans people? Hardly anyone bothers to read up on us, but we're the wedge anyhow. Even most democrats seem to have little interest in defending us beyond some surface level posturing. This debate solely exists to mobilize republican voters with a heavily framed appeal to their intuition and disgust reflex. We're just the next cataclysmic threat that can only be averted through national rebirth (hey, wanna make america great? again?). Because apparently CRT lost steam. I think I earned the right to be cynical about both bloodsport-type debates and this "just be like, nice, dude" because the outcome of this debate has a really good chance at fucking up my life. [1]: https://twitter.com/KateGoesTech/status/1580141225138536450 https://twitter.com/KateGoesTech/status/1580141225138536450
    • catiopatio 4y ago
      From the other side of this debate: we genuinely believe what we’re selling, just like you. It’s not “intuition and disgust reflex”, but research, questions, and genuine reasoned thought that brought people like me to a very different point of view. I’m not directly addressing the issues we disagree on in this comment - just making the case that I’ve thought through these things in great detail, believe that my thinking is as close to objectively correct and ethically correct as I can reasonably manage, and yet, have likely come to a completely different set of conclusions than you.
      • sascha_sl 4y ago
        I’d probably question your motivations before your arguments. You really can’t deny it is in the spotlight because we have elections coming up and this is a polarizing topic to mobilize voters with. Many of which will not understand any of the nuance. And then I’d be wondering if your point requires dismissal of wide consensus (or - I have experienced this - sociology as a legitimate field of study all together) in favor of few outliers. Also, I’m genuinely not sure which conclusions we are talking about here. I purposefully avoided sports and early medical transition and mentioned the DeSantis groomer / libsoftiktok stochastic terror against trans healthcare thing first - because that’s as close to objectively bad as anything related to this topic gets.
• paulpauper 4y ago
  I don't' take rejection personally but it still sucks.
• lapcat 4y ago
  I sometimes argue, because I feel an inner compulsion to do so — maybe as a kind of performance art — but I've given up on trying to change anyone's mind. I spent years as a graduate student in a philosophy PhD program, and what I found is that, essentially, no professional philosopher changes any other professional philosopher's mind about anything important, ever. We're just endlessly arguing. Intelligently, usually respectfully arguing, but accomplishing nothing, getting nowhere. And philosophers are supposed to be, at least nominally, the most "rational" among us. This is not to say that philosophers never change their minds: they occasionally do. But not as a result of arguing! It's usually more self-correction than other-correction. I think it's better to read books than to argue. There's less personal ego involved, because you can "engage" with the author of a book in a way that's not like a sporting event. There's no winner and loser. You don't have to admit to the author that you were wrong, because you never even have to talk to the author, and the author will probably never even know that you read the book. You're almost forced to argue with yourself in this situation. You can change your own mind even if you can't change other minds.
  • gverrilla 4y ago
    Philosophers are paid thinkers, and they fulfill an important social function, like theologians to a God, in this case the Market. To understand them it's important to pay attention to what they ignore, most importantly: this is where all of them will agree - pawns in the great game being played by the Invisible Hand against itself.
    • mistermann 4y ago
      Are there any examples of specific things philosophy tends to lack discussion or are you just speaking in general?
  • adrianN 4y ago
    When you argue publicly, your goal shouldn't be to change your opponent's view, but to influence the people in the audience who don't have a strong opinion yet.
• _gabe_ 4y ago
  > But just as you are not your car or your house, you are not your beliefs. While I get what the author is trying to say here, this doesn't feel like a great analogy to me. If I'm not attached to my beliefs, wouldn't that make me aloof? Most people's beliefs are their identity. And if you detach yourself from your beliefs, it's almost like you're trying to detach yourself from self. It feels like a very relativistic mindset, which is fine, but antithetical to some worldviews.
  • inkblotuniverse 4y ago
    Identifying yourself with your beliefs seems like a surefire way to stop you from changing your mind on things you might be wrong about. I think it's better to identify with something arbitrary and static, like your heritage/nationality/ethnicity/family. Your roots. That way the identity-seeking part of you has a nice, firm rock to hold on to, and you can freely evict ideas and beliefs that aren't effectively predicting your experiences - without destroying your self-identity. Belief-as-identity strikes me as really pernicious. It's a big problem people have with religions with orthodoxy like Christianity or Islam; these systems sustain themselves in part by training people to tie their sense of self to a particular belief about the nature of god/the universe. Identifying as an Atheist, or Liberal, or a Conservative, or anything just lets that thing get its hooks into you. I'd like to be able to drop and change my political beliefs if it turns out I'm wrong about which form of economics leads to the greatest amount of human flourishing, for example. Each individual ideological meme, in contrast, really wants you to build it into your self-identity, to spread its roots so deep that to extricate it would be spiritual suicide. All beliefs 'want' this, and while it's impossible to not be a slave to some meta-meta-meme, you can at least not be a memetic zombie for some object-level one! If a belief stops paying rent in useful predictions, I want it evicted, out on the street! Loyalty to people, not ideas.
    • aeneasmackenzie 4y ago
      The idea that object level beliefs are bad is wrong. Meta level arguments are just tricks to try to confuse you into thinking one situation is like another.
    • 4y ago
• sega_sai 4y ago
  I always try to separate facts, deduction and values. * We can agree and disagree about the facts. This is the worst case and it is probably not worth discussing and try to change someone's mind if we disagree about basic facts. * One can discuss the logic/deduction that goes from these facts. That's probably the most meaningful thing to discuss and one can try to change somebody's mind on that. * People have different value systems (i.e. what's important for the society and how much). And here there is no right or wrong. At best one can agree that our values are different, and it can be worth discussing (but likely nobody will change their mind)
  • IIAOPSW 4y ago
    I'd say the last one is the worst case. For we might disagree on facts, but if we both have shared values with respect to which methods and forms of evidence are valid ways of obtaining facts about our shared reality (and which ones are not), then in principle disagreements of fact can be resolved by giving evidence. Eg, if we both agree with the standards of journalistic integrity and can thus agree that certain outlets are reputable enough to publish retractions when they get things wrong, then we can at least agree on facts published in reputable news outlets. But, if we do not have a shared value in the form of respect for the process of journalism, then one side is free to reject any fact they don't like as "fake news", and neither the amount nor quality of news sources cited will ever change this.
• mhneu 4y ago
  Author is Arthur Brooks, longtime head of AEI. https://www.npr.org/2018/05/15/611199663/arthur-brooks-head-of-american-enterprise-institute-to-step-down https://www.npr.org/2018/05/15/611199663/arthur-brooks-head-...
• imgabe 4y ago
  As someone who's wasted too much time arguing with people online, I find it very unlikely you'll change anyone's mind that way. If your values are so great, live them. Show by example why your values are the best way to live, by emobdying them and having an enviable life that people want to emulate. I think that would change far more minds than arguing.
  • kleer001 4y ago
    > Show by example why your values are the best way to live > I think that would change far more minds I don't find one's personal status (in any dimension) transmits well across the internet. We may not be truly anonymous, but nobody knows you're a dog, basically. IMHO there's no way to back up a well lived life through text. And nobody is doing a docuseries on everyone.
• sammalloy 4y ago
  I don’t necessarily agree with all of the points in this article, but I think, from personal experience, this is the strongest point: > Empathetic listening, of course, is an act of generosity—a gift It really works. I’ve had people come up to me, years later, to tell me how much they valued me listening to them, even though we are on opposite sides of the value spectrum.
• Slava_Propanei 4y ago
• uwagar 4y ago
  seems like the article is a cope about how to deal with anti-vaxxers. listen to their point of view, but offer the vaccine as a gift. as others have said, if you genuinely listened your mind may itself be changed, then you are now influenced by the 'misinformation'.
• tacitusarc 4y ago
  The article is paywalls and I don’t have access. So I have to start by apologizing, since I’m commenting on something I haven’t actually read, but I think this is important. Many people wiser than I likely learned this sooner than I did, but they failed to tell me so I ended up learning it on my own, and I feel I would be remiss if I did not share. The truth is, you cannot change the mind of another person. Only they can do that. All you can do is plant seeds, and be patient. If they were the right seeds, and planted in the right way, you may observe them growing but it takes time. Sometimes as little as hours or days, but often months or even years. Every belief has a context it is built on. When you try to change a mind, it involves challenging that context, which is painful for most people. But contexts evolve as experiences are gained, so plant the seeds which will be watered best by those new experiences. And as you do that, who knows? Maybe you will find seeds from someone else have taken root, and have grown into new beliefs you hold.
  • ncr100 4y ago
    ref https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33217577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33217577