If faced with critical thinking, people tend to disregard what you’re trying to say and push back to their outlook.
No they don’t. 🧌
Really though, look up brain plasticity.
Many reasons.
- the message seems fishy
- the messenger is not charismatic/trustworthy enough
- there’s lack of clarity in the message
- it contradicts personal model of reality, and these form the cornerstones of our identity, thus can’t be changed just like that
- etc, etc, etc
Not sure if this is helpful, but my take is:
Because in most cases, what is assumed to be “truth”is subjective. If you’re talking political. More often things are blurred with regards to truth as most things tend not to be empirically true, but instead, emotionally true.
For example;
“All conservatives are Nazis!”
This is inherently untrue. Yet I see every day- people who believe this to be the absolute truth. Same thing with-
“All liberals want to do is make our children gay!”
Also untrue. But when you try and correct them, they will almost always entrench themselves within their own version of the truth and disregard any form of critical thinking.
This is why asking questions is important. All conservatives are Nazis may actually be true if the person merely equates conservatives with Nazis, the proposition a mere tautology. Same for liberals trying to make kids gay, where people who make kids gay are liberals.
And by asking questions, trying to understand someone else, both parties can engage in critical thinking.
I think it’s wrong to think that critical thinking should spontaneously arise because someone’s beliefs are challenged. That’s never how it works. Rather, one person has to be vulnerable and ask, “What do you mean? Help me understand where you’re coming from.”
That’s sort of exactly the point. People believe it to be true, and it’s sort of impossible to prove them wrong. Nature vs Nurture still isn’t proven either way, regardless of how strongly you feel one way or the other.
The simple fact that someone believes it’s possible to “make people gay”, almost necessarily leads to them believing there are people out there actively doing it.
I have a friend who had surgery to become gay. He was a straight guy before the surgery, and now she is a lesbian.
People don’t like being wrong.
I can only read the beginning of his tweet/story as someone who is not signed up to Twitter. He also says there is a link somewhere, but I don’t see one.
