I’ve been working through the podcast You are Not So Smart by David McRaney.
He’s a journalist who researched ways to get people to reconsider their opinions. In this episode his friend Chris Clearfield interviews him. Here’s a lovely summary of how change happens from Chris Clearfield himself.
Essentially it’s in line with the idea of rapport from NLP, in that people only change when they feel safe to explore their ideas. Contradicting them or telling them why they shouldn’t think that way only serves to entrench them (every activist take note). Talking through what lead them to find the answer they have can make them change, inch by inch.
Addendum: November 2024: it turns out if people consent to work with a bot who is tireless and armed with all of the facts for any spurious arguments individuals bvring up, they do in fact change their minds! So it’s actually possible to change minds if you are tireless and able to counter all of the arguments with facts (with humans, people tend to bring up counter-examples and anecdotal evidence which is hard to dispute, but an AI-bot can find the research to counter, defray or reorganise this thought. Now how to get people to consent to talking to a bot???
