Oddbean

In my discussion with normies lately I have been trying to get to the real root of our differences. One of the major things that comes up over & over is just how much most people rely on status, or official titles, & other forms of social proof for what is true. It's literally one of the worst heuristics & yet it seems to he the most popular. How do we break people out of their herd mentality?

Maybe, but I lean more toward thinking that only works with a small % Non-violent communication is an exceptionally good book & I think the approaches there are likely more effective. Being hostile actually gives the more emotional people the evidence they need to classify you as simply evil & uninterested in being kind & making the world a better place.

Sure its an art to be effective. Think for a minute the historic perspective for how the dolts were reasoned with if at all. I will read the synopsis of what appears to be some sort of gay, effeminate 21st century understanding of eternal problems.

It's really not gay or effeminate at all. It feels a bit like some sort of coversational jujutsu where you kind of use your opponent's energy against them by identifying & repeating back the real driving or underlying issue. I mean, nothing is magic, but I think it lines up pretty well with the advice in Never Split The Difference too & that book has also helped me quite a bit.

You're not wrong. But I am thinking that there is a range of what constitutes "receptivity" & if we can find key weak points in a person's mental framework then we can craft messages that reach a greater number.

My observation of Christian evangelicals is that they are most successful when presenting to children and also broken people who need a new model to rebuild their life on. You rarely ever hear of a secular adult who has their shit together converting to a new religion. Bitcoin is not Christianity, but that recruitment model seems to work. In fact it’s more or less the same one the military uses come to think of it. Dunno if that helps.

You mostly won't be able to. We're a social animal and honestly it's us who are bizarre for not relying "social proof". It's much more important to most people to be aligned with approved opinion than to be correct.

It may be entirely temperamental, and not something that can be changed by reasoning. Take a look at Jonathan Haidt’s work on Moral Foundations. He identifies about 6 foundational moral values that people exhibit in different amounts. While everyone’s exact weightings differ, there are identifiable clusters for conservatives, progressives and libertarians. What you’re probably seeing, IMO, is that you’re talking to conservatives who place higher weight on the Authority/Subversion moral foundation than you do. Not everyone has the capacity or inclination to reason from first principles. The world is too complex. So instead, people use heuristics, and the Authority and Social Proof heuristics work for many people much of the time. See also Cialdini’s book, Influence, for a discussion of the Social Proof heuristic in persuasion.

You don’t, you can’t. You can only do Isaiah’s job. If the NPC is not ready for their entire world view to be broken, they will vehemently and irrationally fight you, rather than discuss / debate any topic.

I can't give a good answer, only an example of my response to this attitude from an offshore relocation company: ----------- On page 2 of your brochure, you state: “Our clients range from billionaires and celebrities to everyday entrepreneurs” We entrepreneurs created flight, electricity, computers, the Internet, reusable rockets and date all the way back to the invention of the wheel and later cars, medicine, AI, quantum computers and robots. We are not everyday. Billionaires are a subset of this group, but also include 2nd+ generations who contribute nothing. Celebrities create nothing but distraction and have no value. -------- Needless to say I didn't use their services 😂

I'd say only their circumstance can. Until one realizes that status, label or ego are doing them deservice in a tough, life changing moment in their life; only then they can break out of the herd. There is nothing bad about the herd mentality, it is in our human nature. It becomes a challenge when the herd could be the undoing of what we ought to break free from or we seek to protect. 🤓☺️

You can't. It's a fundamentally human characteristic. There is a small group of individuals who prefer to lead, and a vast majority who prefer to be led. It's each person's nature to be one of the two.

Meh, you may not be totally wrong, but I think there is a lot of grey area between each end of that spectrum. There have been times in human history where 90+% of people were self employed. There have been societies of free people where many had to be killed & the rest had to be systematically demoralized in order to successfully subjugate them. I think it is possible to cultivate a culture of personal responsibility.

What you say is so true, it's like a constant fight against their own insecurities and lack of life meaning, pushing them to the all-knowing authority or credentialized bureaucrats. When drifting outside of banal conversations with normies, I usually stick to passing nuggets of personal responsibility and critical thinking examples. What seems to wake them up is: - I personally don't care if I change their point of view - It's coming from someone who has "his shit together," in a loving relationship, with well-behaved smart kids and a meaningful job

I've had some minor success with people such as this pointing out cases were we all know the experts either got it wrong or where outright lying / malicious. A couple of my go-to examples of this are either WMDs in Iraq or bank bailouts. Nobody likes to defend these. Just point out that they people they're outsourcing their thinking to may not know themselves, or have the best intentions. But yeah, it's very difficult with people that think like this. 😕