21 April, 2016

Vromrig comments on TIL: Facts are increasingly ineffective at convincing people to change their minds and in fact will only root people deeper in their original beliefs.

Vromrig comments on TIL: Facts are increasingly ineffective at convincing people to change their minds and in fact will only root people deeper in their original beliefs.:

My brother has basically gone head over heels for Reddit and tumblresque style abrasive, "anyone who disagrees with me is literally killing science" kind of stupidity. He can be right about things, sometimes he even is, but he swaggers in with this air of superiority to put other people down and acts constantly indignant when he tries to explain things to people by talking down to them and they shut the door on his face.
This comes up a lot over evolution. Believe it or not people in Louisiana aren't huge on evolution. Again, it just doesn't come up in their day to day lives very often and even if they believed it, who cares? Mix some people with some fervant biases against evolution and you get more people not believing in it than believing in it.
There's my brother's way of approaching the situation. Telling people they're wrong, they're idiots, they're brain washed yokels, acting like he's doing them a favor by gracing him with his conclusions, all the while snidely talking out the side of his mouth as though he's distressed he has to actually explain this to anyone.
Maybe this satisfies his ego, maybe it makes him feel good about himself, but what it doesn't satisfy is convincing 40 year old farmers and their sons about evolution. It doesn't actually benefit his end goal any longer, he's not going to convince anyone by talking down to them like that.
And maybe it's for another discussion, but I don't think he wants to change their minds, I think he wants to feel vindicated and validated by belittling them.


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