Great read. I believe the abandonment of first principles is evident in the New Religion. These people look at reality for what it ought to be and chase an unachievable outcome. Some outcomes are achievable, but they don’t have any principles they follow to get there. A jumbled mess. Thanks for writing this.
Thank you! I often ponder the same issue all the time and go back and forth on how to approach such individuals. I think this also varies wildly on what our definition of success should be.
The question is if we want to persuade or if we want to be correct. Being correct is simply doing the argumentation properly, however this is almost certainly going to inflame and entrench their ideological position. As curiously and counter-intuitively, when presented with counter arguments or facts, people generally re-enforce their ideological position due to ideological capture. This method is good for engagement or controversy, but very bad in terms of conversion.
If our goal is conversion, I think the most successful method is to simply go to principles of what they believe the emotional outcome they are desiring. This will be individual specific which makes it a lot more difficult to prescribe as a methodological solution. As you have to go deep into what they are desiring first, but we can extrapolate some general principles collectively based upon the position.
So using the vegan example, it's clear their over-arching immediate goal is the minimization of suffering by animals. This could be what their true outcome is, but not always. This doesn't address the ideological structure behind it which is equality of outcome applied to inter-species dynamics. It could also be the preservation of the environment. Could also be they have been convinced of a nutritional argument.
For the true ideologically captured zealots there is likely an emotional visual trigger, they saw some video and they then projected themselves onto the animal being slaughtered or abused. So you actually need to unwind the emotional projection of themselves onto animals. This is difficult to do and even trained hypnotists struggle. It can be done though, just it's difficult I think.
Every time I try and go into the void to try and help them I always instantly regret it. Better off just making the arguments both emotional and logical and letting them unwind it themselves over time slowly.
For emotional people I find you have to create curiosity first. Hypnotists would call this a pattern interrupt.
With the vegan, for example, "I'm an ethical carnivore." The idea is so foreign they actually momentarily shift from judgement to curiosity.
Then I explain from first principles how one cow can feed one human for a year (and would die horribly in nature anyway) whereas monocrop farms literally destroy states worth of natural habitat and senselessly kill thousands of animals to protect their soy patties.
Great read. I believe the abandonment of first principles is evident in the New Religion. These people look at reality for what it ought to be and chase an unachievable outcome. Some outcomes are achievable, but they don’t have any principles they follow to get there. A jumbled mess. Thanks for writing this.
Thank you! I often ponder the same issue all the time and go back and forth on how to approach such individuals. I think this also varies wildly on what our definition of success should be.
The question is if we want to persuade or if we want to be correct. Being correct is simply doing the argumentation properly, however this is almost certainly going to inflame and entrench their ideological position. As curiously and counter-intuitively, when presented with counter arguments or facts, people generally re-enforce their ideological position due to ideological capture. This method is good for engagement or controversy, but very bad in terms of conversion.
If our goal is conversion, I think the most successful method is to simply go to principles of what they believe the emotional outcome they are desiring. This will be individual specific which makes it a lot more difficult to prescribe as a methodological solution. As you have to go deep into what they are desiring first, but we can extrapolate some general principles collectively based upon the position.
So using the vegan example, it's clear their over-arching immediate goal is the minimization of suffering by animals. This could be what their true outcome is, but not always. This doesn't address the ideological structure behind it which is equality of outcome applied to inter-species dynamics. It could also be the preservation of the environment. Could also be they have been convinced of a nutritional argument.
For the true ideologically captured zealots there is likely an emotional visual trigger, they saw some video and they then projected themselves onto the animal being slaughtered or abused. So you actually need to unwind the emotional projection of themselves onto animals. This is difficult to do and even trained hypnotists struggle. It can be done though, just it's difficult I think.
Every time I try and go into the void to try and help them I always instantly regret it. Better off just making the arguments both emotional and logical and letting them unwind it themselves over time slowly.
For emotional people I find you have to create curiosity first. Hypnotists would call this a pattern interrupt.
With the vegan, for example, "I'm an ethical carnivore." The idea is so foreign they actually momentarily shift from judgement to curiosity.
Then I explain from first principles how one cow can feed one human for a year (and would die horribly in nature anyway) whereas monocrop farms literally destroy states worth of natural habitat and senselessly kill thousands of animals to protect their soy patties.