## Metaveri Başlık: **Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds** Yazar: *James Clear* Kategori: #articles Etiketler: #psychology ## Altı Çizilenler - The economist J.K. Galbraith once wrote, “Faced with a choice between changing one’s mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy with the proof.” **Not**: ilk cümleden yine iktisadın harcanması... (haklı olarak) - However, truth and accuracy are not the only things that matter to the human mind. Humans also seem to have a deep desire to belong. - In many circumstances, social connection is actually more helpful to your daily life than understanding the truth of a particular fact or idea. - We don’t always believe things because they are correct. Sometimes we believe things because they make us look good to the people we care about. - False beliefs can be useful in a social sense even if they are not useful in a factual sense. For lack of a better phrase, we might call this approach “factually false, but socially accurate.” - The way to change people’s minds is to become friends with them, to integrate them into your tribe, to bring them into your circle. Now, they can change their beliefs without the risk of being abandoned socially. - Perhaps it is not *difference*, but *distance* that breeds tribalism and hostility. As proximity increases, so does understanding. I am reminded of Abraham Lincoln’s quote, “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.” **Not**: Sagan diyor ki; "Kozmik bakış açısına göre her birimiz değerliyiz. Eğer bir insan sizinle aynı fikirde değilse, bırakın yaşasın. Yüz milyar galaksi içinde başka bir tane bulamazsınız." - The people who are most likely to change our minds are the ones we agree with on 98 percent of topics. - If someone you know, like, and trust believes a radical idea, you are more likely to give it merit, weight, or consideration. You already agree with them in most areas of life. Maybe you should change your mind on this one too. But if someone wildly different than you proposes the same radical idea, well, it’s easy to dismiss them as a crackpot. - The most heated arguments often occur between people on opposite ends of the spectrum, but the most frequent learning occurs from people who are nearby. The closer you are to someone, the more likely it becomes that the one or two beliefs you don’t share will bleed over into your own mind and shape your thinking. The further away an idea is from your current position, the more likely you are to reject it outright. - Arguments are like a full frontal attack on a person’s identity. Reading a book is like slipping the seed of an idea into a person’s brain and letting it grow on their own terms. There’s enough wrestling going on in someone’s head when they are overcoming a pre-existing belief. They don’t need to wrestle with you too. - An idea that is never spoken or written down dies with the person who conceived it. Ideas can only be remembered when they are repeated. They can only be *believed* when they are repeated. - Each time you attack a bad idea, you are feeding the very monster you are trying to destroy. As one Twitter employee wrote, “Every time you retweet or quote tweet someone you’re angry with, it *helps* them. It disseminates their BS. Hell for the ideas you deplore is silence. Have the discipline to give it to them.” - If your model of reality is wildly different from the actual world, then you struggle to take effective actions each day. - The best thing that can happen to a bad idea is that it is forgotten. The best thing that can happen to a good idea is that it is shared. It makes me think of Tyler Cowen’s quote, “Spend as little time as possible talking about how other people are wrong.” - Feed the good ideas and let bad ideas die of starvation. **Not**: Yine Sagan, "Yanlış bir düşüncenin çaresi daha iyi bir düşüncedir, fikirlerin bastırılması değil." - I’m not saying it’s *never* useful to point out an error or criticize a bad idea. But you have to ask yourself, “What is the goal?” - Most people argue to win, not to learn. As Julia Galef so aptly puts it: people often act like soldiers rather than scouts. Soldiers are on the intellectual attack, looking to defeat the people who differ from them. Victory is the operative emotion. Scouts, meanwhile, are like intellectual explorers, slowly trying to map the terrain with others. Curiosity is the driving force. - The brilliant Japanese writer Haruki Murakami once wrote, “Always remember that to argue, and win, is to break down the reality of the person you are arguing against. It is painful to lose your reality, so be kind, even if you are right.” - We are so caught up in winning that we forget about connecting. It’s easy to spend your energy labeling people rather than working with them. - Be kind first, be right later. **Not**: Önce nazik, sonra haklı ol.