People rarely change their minds when you argue with them. The reason is that what people believe tends to be deeply integrated into their personal experience, their upbringing, education, and so on. Beliefs that were formed over many years aren’t going to be overturned in some brief interaction with a person who holds different beliefs.
Incidentally, this is precisely the trap that liberals fall into thinking that they just need to show people facts and fight “misinformation” to get people on their side. It simply doesn’t work, and in many cases it produces the opposite of the desired result by hardening people’s existing views.
What is productive in my opinion, is to focus on educating people who are already starting to fall out of liberal mainstream on their own. These are people who are starting to question the dogmas they’ve internalized because they’re no longer able to reconcile them with their own experience and understanding of the world. Such people have already made that crucial first step of being open to consider alternative views, and that makes it possible to have a meaningful discussion that will help steer them in the right direction.
One other thing that’s worth mentioning is that it’s more important to focus on quality over quantity. Majority of people are passive, and they’re not going to actually engage in furthering any sort of political change. Your time is best utilized convincing people who are likely to be motivated and put in their own work to further the cause.
People rarely change their minds when you argue with them. The reason is that what people believe tends to be deeply integrated into their personal experience, their upbringing, education, and so on. Beliefs that were formed over many years aren’t going to be overturned in some brief interaction with a person who holds different beliefs.
Incidentally, this is precisely the trap that liberals fall into thinking that they just need to show people facts and fight “misinformation” to get people on their side. It simply doesn’t work, and in many cases it produces the opposite of the desired result by hardening people’s existing views.
What is productive in my opinion, is to focus on educating people who are already starting to fall out of liberal mainstream on their own. These are people who are starting to question the dogmas they’ve internalized because they’re no longer able to reconcile them with their own experience and understanding of the world. Such people have already made that crucial first step of being open to consider alternative views, and that makes it possible to have a meaningful discussion that will help steer them in the right direction.
One other thing that’s worth mentioning is that it’s more important to focus on quality over quantity. Majority of people are passive, and they’re not going to actually engage in furthering any sort of political change. Your time is best utilized convincing people who are likely to be motivated and put in their own work to further the cause.