I’ve been making infographics in an attempt to do what you are doing as well, my most recent one is about “personal truth” and it aligns a lot with this. My focus is more around generating conversations with an infographic to help stay on topic vs videos explaining things. My hope is that it will lead the talking points to be less nebulous and create a path of engagement between people.
@@TheMarketExit hey there! this is the brand im making the infographics under. the main format is meant for instagram, but im streaming myself making them right now. Sorry this took a few weeks to get back to you on, but setting all of this us took a while. The idea had been in the works for a few months, but actually developing the brand and making the infographics + implementing the rollout has been a whole other project. There is a lot going on, but i really believe in this project and am working to make it into the idea I had in my head.
Now this is the kind of anthropological information I'm into. I would love to get to a point where more people than not understand that belief IS a choice & that those beliefs don't have to be written in stone. Anytime i say anything with conviction, i add the caveat that i retain the right to change my mind. What's right today may not be tomorrow & it can be inconvenient, but that doesn't make it bad. Only inconvenient.
Three points for success 1. You’re wrong (somewhere in you position there is a fallacy) 2. You’re not as smart as you think you are (there’s always someone smarter, and it’s far more frequent that you think) 2. You don’t listen (your biases are much stronger than you think) Now go forth and debate
There's a factor that hasn't been discussed here: a cultural one. I grew up in the Bible Belt where it was considered highly suspect with regards to your character to change your mind about anything. We were taught that God never changed His mind and therefore, neither should we. It was a culture that values dogmatism over reason. Which is why I ended up leaving the Bible Belt and the Evangelical Church, because I was confronted with overwhelming evidence that everything I knew was wrong and I got tired of being bullied and gaslit into willful ignorance. CULTURE is a huge impediment to reason.
Don't forget that the religious impulse (I would define as "belief that defies questioning") is not unique to Christianity or religions - it is a human impulse.
This is first class production you've created here. The pacing, the structure, the avoidance of jargon, the soundtrack with the pitchy notes when you say "cognitive dissonance" or "I might be wrong"... The planning and nuance on display here is exemplary!
I'm having so much fun working on details like that when I make my video essays, but I'm always curious whether anyone notices. So I'm super glad you noticed and thanks for letting me know! :D Cheers
I've binged a handful of your videos while I've been packing and they're great. I especially liked the one on migration, since I live in Australia and one of our two political parties is currently running on the idea of banning immigration. Also appreciate the reading recommendations.
This also makes it as clear as anything that one thing that needs to happen in order to get people to change their minds is to make sure that people just have more social connections and groups keep on meeting each other and listening to each other. This means we need mixed neighborhoods (poor and rich living next to each other) and places that everyone really meets. We have been moving away from that for a long time, but we can turn that tide.
I’m gonna go with Terror Management Theory and evolutionary psychology on this one. Our brains evolved not to see truth but to survive. Constantly seeking short cuts, it doesn’t matter if it’s true it matters that it was correct enough times so you could survive and reproduce. Tmt is about psycho/social survival. It matters if your world view helps you not collapse in terror from your imminent death and meaningless, but guards you with a shared meaning and cooperation within your group. You know culture. To me this is why it’s hard to change a person’s mind. It can be resolved by distinguishing between perception and shared reality. If you said you felt it was hot in a room and i said it was nice both are true. But if we measured the temperature and humidity we would have to agree on the measurement. It’s independent of our perception. It’s the bridge between our two minds. What we do with that knowledge would have to be negotiated. This is why science and math literacy are important for the flourishing of humanity. It’s the bridge we can use to overcome the alienation of our own perceptions. But we have to choose to know and to care.
Sometimes things look like they change but the are essentially the same but in different forms. Like Napoleon said "Kings will always exist even if do not call the kings". The same can be said for slavery. It can also be argued that we are wage slaves today. A kinder kind of slavery compared to the past. It is also said that technology, geography, cities, change but people never do.
Great video. What's disheartening to me is there are people actively spreading misinformation and trying to change minds in bad ways for their own personal gain. Also, while you can say this is their confirmation bias or nature or nurture, but I think some people just are cruel and think other people deserve to suffer and some people just are dumb and can't understand things like investing in schools and teachers now pays off way more than instead investing in police and jails.
Don't concern your self with those unwilling to accept your everdance. 1 my background input ate constantly changing so we come looking for your content. Life will changevtere mind.2 you also should have an open mind and are right about your topic but parts of it may be wrong. They could have a point sometimes
8:10 "He believes... that effort and merit determines our position in life" I mean, he's *objectively incorrect though* . I feel like a lot of us think that "we just need to show them the facts!" in large part because, in matters like these, there is *empirical, irrefutable evidence* that clearly shows that some people's "priors" are just completely wrong. That you can't change someone's mind on matters of opinion -- that's not the end of the world. But when those "opinions" are based on demonstrably incorrect premises, and are then used in making prescriptive judgements on how our society *should* be allocating its resources -- at that point, I feel we are all done a disservice by treating their 'opinions' as equally valid. I don't get to say "I think humans *don't* need water to survive, actually", and then vote to restrict access to water to only people above 70cm tall; that my 'priors' led me to my positions should carry no weight whatsoever. I live in the American south; I am *surrounded* by contemptible fools who base their worldview (and subsequent policy prescriptions) on demonstrably, objectively incorrect premises. It's sickening. I hate it here. :(
I also recommend to read the book Hitmakers by Derek Thompson on this topic or watch his excellent talk at google talks here on youtube. He demonstrates that viral content and information does not spread through small groups peer to peer like your illustration suggests. Instead it is a decentralized broadcast system with large broadcasters like famous influencers and traditional media being the deciding factor for virality. I have only found this channel through the recommendation of how money works for example and probably wouldn't have otherwise (at least my RU-vid algorithm did not show me this). I can definitely see you grow big enough to be your own strong broadcaster soon, though. All the best!
The issue on the thumbnail is only the first challenge and that is in my opinion not the hardest. More difficult is having gotten past that and now having to change your emotional biases which is a constant effort.
Oh man this video and your channel deserved millions of views!!! This is a masterpiece! I know it's so hard to grow a small channel, but please, don't stop, keep it going, I believe with this top quality, you'll get bigger!! 😆
A key mechanism of social and cultural change is cohort replacement: the old group members being replaced by the young ones through death. This connects to the social death > physical death formulation mentioned in the video. People usually don’t challenge their group’s beliefs and norms. But as the old “hold outs” die out and new members join the group, the whole group becomes more open to adopting new beliefs and behaviors.
Reminds me of the Nordic fight from a form of feudal society to a form of socialism; the 'change' happened when the conservative right in the 1930s veered toward fascism; only then did the agrarian conservatives join the socialist left, and the rest is history. Sometimes, the change can come from an idea from one group becoming so entrenched that people near the centre of the bell curve finally change; the issue with this is that they are voting for the lesser evil of two ideas. So often, they are not totally convinced, back to Heraclitus and his 'eternal flux.' Which is healthy in a democracy of ideas; determinism is the seed of authoritarianism, flux is the calming water that maintains peaceful democracies. Great video. I learnt some new stuff!
The best way to change people minds is to show a dialogue instead of facts alone. The Greeks did well on this. Also Galileo wrote his book with 2 guys having a conversation about whether the earth or the sun is the center of the earth. Thomas Khun also is a good Philosopher/writer on this.
Thank you for your quality video. Changing our society will take time, but each of us having the great power to helping other to open there mind to different life alternative. Good luck and continu to explain your perception of the world and continu to giving your point of view
I feel this is not realistic. I can't explain thoroughly, but I will do my best. This is superficial. It does not account for vast psyops, the power behind the prevailing views that use money and propaganda, and force to change people's beliefs. It also assumes most people are rational and does not account for how external factors such as living conditions, environment, and activities change beliefs and the way we perceive them as well. The views that will get pushed are the ones the people in control want to push. Think, for example, about the world outside the Western world. And also think about how the intelligence agencies can sometimes push narratives to divide people , weaken them, and cause revolutions. This assumes there isn't inherently evil powerful entities who's paycheck doesn't depend on that being the case.
This is important. The video just assumes the group consensus must be right and secondarily that views are held simply for social value. It ignores the fact that group consensus is often altered by individuals with strong agendas. A government can use resources to push propaganda, or more locally, a tall handsome man can take advantage of the "beauty equals fitness" bias, getting people to agree with them because people assume he's right. (It's a real thing.) Belief isn't just about social conformity, it's all about being able to predict. Humans are prediction engines. Beliefs are how we make predictions.
From experience I can say yes it can. The only thing one needs to able to do is get out of a situation (partnership, job, people that surround you) and start doing things you did not or not as much. This can be a walk, reading or playing chess as examples. Finding a different balance is key, at least for me it is.
Great Video! I'd love to see a more in depth-view on the economic mechanics using these principles, eg. corporations are trying to trigger the "assimilation"-response of humans to stall change that would negatively impact their business models (exxon mobile is a prime example)
Thus, a thought that was developed when watching your video. Socrates developed a method of debate. We all know it as the Socratic method, which involves a series of questions to explore beliefs and ideas. I use it all the time to defuse and get people to answer their own questions, with the result that sometimes I have to accommodate and then study my own belief bias before making a final judgment that will remain anecdotal until I find other empirical proof. So, imagine my relief when promoting my new word, 'fluxism', by finding Heraclitus, albeit 2500 years later (I know I should've already known about him like most end up with Plato and Socrates in my limited knowledge of Greek philosophers).
i just cant explain how imp this video is to me! Thank you for bringing up this topic! And thanks for the book recommendations! I will read them both ♥
Please consider the innate and temperamental differences between the small segment of the population who volunteers to participate in studies versus the larger segment of the population who choose not to volunteer to be studied.
It was during covid that I realized that what we do actually does matter, that we are all interconnected and that just as the disease of one can become the disease of everyone on the planet, also the relentless virtue and pursuit of truth of one can also affect the entire world. It may be costly to defend the truth, but once it's on someone else's horizon of attention it cannot be denied.
Many organisms have two hemispheres and can be conscious. On the other hand, self-consciousness, like a mirror, is the recognition of ourselves, by the reflection, from the mind in our brain's other hemisphere.
One interesting thing here that I feel like could be explored, is that even with adoption thresholds your examples only consider the effect of a single uncontested adoptive behaviour (for example maybe adopting a new technology). In the sense of multiple conflicting behaviours spreading throughout society (much more like belief systems) I can only imagine that this wouldn't hold in the same way, and would be a dynamic system which never meets an equilibrium of full adoption. So the question then becomes about the environment that hosts people's belief systems (propanda?), the dominant predispositions of the people and the clarity and power of the argument for change.
3:30 These examples show a change of opinion, not a matter of right or wrong. Problems still persist in all of these fields so the assumption that things were fixed or otherwise righted is really just a matter of perspective and time.
The cultural shifts showcased early in the video are not changes in minds but a change in the perception of public opinion, which is easily curated (both the opinions and the perceptions). The vocal minority tends to capture the opinions of the previously unopinionated more than the ancients. And thanks to the bandwagon and illusory truth effects, anyone still fighting for social relevancy will adopt any opinions as long as there is a perceived social payoff.
Does this mean billionaires as the minority can curate public opinion easily? And the unopinionated will adopt this. Then the bandwagon effect will kick in after that?
@@craigbettencourt7 Yes, but not for the fact that they are a minority. All mass trends come from the top. Manufacturing Consent describes what I'm getting at better than I can.
I saw both colors. Vividly and with as much certainty as the other colors. I can't tell you what made the difference; ambient light, screen brightness, viewing angle... but I jumped back and forth between them.
I'm interested in how we can know if something is objectively true. Or rather how we can know that we are not assimilating against conservatism right now.
The conclusion made me think about this catch phrase you offen find in Social Media: I could tell you a lot about this issue,but you're not ready for this conversation. I know that it's usually used for trolling but actually it may be true sometimes.
What makes the conformity threshold even more important...is because people are way less connected..thus, social media and the various overseers have extended control...more so than ever.
Great observation! The group example is stylized and simplified. But your comment now did make med think about the utility of the example, thanks for bringing it up!
It certainly make sensefor you to keep making these videos that make people ask themselves questions of why they believe what they believe. Curiosity might have killed that cat but it definitely evolves the human.
Excellent essay. I would like to add that the ultimate “argument” is not a set of facts you present to others, but you yourself, your everyday behavior and existence in the world. The existence of gay people going about their lives normally is the ultimate argument for gay marriage, not people debating the facts about it - that happens, but it’s secondary and downstream from the argument from existence. The reason that historical social change is guaranteed - the only constant is change - is because you cannot be otherwise than how you are. The world either ignores, assimilates or accommodates you - sometimes with tragic consequences for those who don’t fit the mold. Both Tragedy and victory over impossible odds are part of the human condition.
That's a great point, I do agree with you. Elegantly put. Do you have any examples of values/behaviors/opinions you're hoping to spread in the world through your own actions or behaviors?
@@TheMarketExit I think the ideal of enlightenment rationality is something I believe in - but it’s also telling me it’s not possible for everyone to be enlightened all the time. Maybe a more worthwhile value is just openness, willingness to see things a different way. And especially when you’re convinced you’re on the side of good - maybe have an inkling that you’re actually not. So basically, what you’re talking about in this video - I think that’s the most important value that we need to spread.
I really like your channel and your useful content! I found you a while back and followed you because of your private equity video.. Ill do my part to help your channel grow on RU-vid
what if the white/gold blue/black dress phenomenon becomes a historical event in human history, where we realize that each of us has our own perceived universe impenetrable by others would be hilarious
So I am completely beyond help, am I? - I am a nightowl (I feel best being awake at night and sleeping in the morning - especially since nothing truly happens in the morning IMHO) and I see a BLUE AND BROWN (!) Dress or Blue and Gold if I stare at it more than just giving it a fast glance!
I think of human behavior like magnetic domains in materials science. If you look at a magnetic material it is made of little magnetic domains. They all have magnetic fields pointed in different directions, but if you heat the material up to a characteristic temperature and expose the material to an external field, all of the domains’ magnetic fields will align, and stay aligned if the external field is maintained while the object is cooled. Essentially, they are “locked in” unless the temperature is raised, where they can change their alignment. I think our beliefs work similarly, where they are largely locked in and can only be changed when something “raises the temperature”, whatever that looks like.
The video explores the challenges of changing people’s minds despite presenting compelling arguments, highlighting factors like priors and social dynamics. Key Insights (thanks to notegpt) 🧠 Cognitive Bias: People interpret new information through their existing beliefs, often leading to confirmation bias rather than change. This shows the complexity of human reasoning. 🌍 Historical Context: Significant societal changes, like the legalization of same-sex marriage, demonstrate that perspectives can evolve, albeit slowly and through various influences. 🔬 Information Overload: Despite access to more information than ever, disagreement persists, indicating that facts alone aren’t enough for consensus. 🤝 Social Dynamics: The concept of conformity thresholds highlights how individuals are influenced by their social circles, which can either inhibit or encourage belief change. 🔗 Network Influence: The connections between different groups can act as catalysts for change, suggesting that ideas can gain traction when new relationships form. 📖 Learning from Failure: Understanding why some movements succeed while others fail can provide valuable lessons for future advocacy and activism. ⏳ Patience in Persuasion: Continuous efforts to present arguments are still valuable because societal readiness for change can develop over time.
You cannot change your mind on generalities... And you probably shouldn't. Generalities, however appealing, indicate agendas, and agendas indicate unknown quantities beyond your control. Your every nerve and fiber will reject that out of hand. It is a survival instinct. Thou shalt not introduce unknown quantities voluntarily or casually. I changed my mind about abortion. In 1998, I was very firmly for abortion on demand. But then my 16-year-old stepdaughter got pregnant and refused to have an abortion. I presented all the reasons she should. I mean the pressure was on and her mother and I were the source of that pressure. She was obstinate. No abortion, and no adoption. I reasoned and railed. I threatened and bribed. The father had died in an accident, and she might as well write off her lifelong dream of being a nurse. Except it didn't work out that way at all. She graduated from high school early with honors and went off to college with baby in tow. That child I vehemently supported wiping from the face of the earth became the apple of my eye. Now these many years later she is also a nurse, happily married with a baby of her own. The apple of my other eye. Because of that personal and very specific set of circumstances, I changed my mind on abortion. It was no longer a default solution in my mind and experience. I am a pro-life guy! So, if my relating this very specific case changes your mind, so be it. But I won't hold my breath. Unless you have a very specific and personal dog in the fight, you will not change your mind. About this or anything else. Any expectation to that effect is a fool's errand. That is a good thing. Otherwise, we would all be lemmings rushing to throw ourselves into any old sea we saw. Even lemmings don't really do that.
I really enjoyed this video super professional and I learnt a lot.i do have a question about the final piece around how communities change their minds. Does the fact we are served information on RU-vid and Social media in general that conforms with our priors that create bubbles of like minded people mean that the folk that need to hear a new message never actually actually get sight of the message?
It feels like this video is saying "Don't be lazy accommodate!" It skipped over the very important fact that accommodating can be harmful. For example, someone with a low conformity threshold says "Einstein was wrong! The force of gravity at the scale of billions of light years does not conform to relativity. Abandon relativity." Did they say anything wrong? The only real problem with that imagined quote is the call to accommodate. It would be disasterous to abandon relativity. Social pressure shouldn't play a part. The information mentioned on priors is vitally important. We avoid accomodation because our priors show that our current model outperforms not using it. It's only when a model outperforms our existing models that we accommodate. If you hold your model simply for its social value, then you will accommodate because of the group. If you hold a model for functional or evidentiary reasons, you might mask to please the crowd, but it would be better to fight against accommodating.
I don't disagree with you. Things are of course much more complicated than I had time to talk about in the video. One aspect that I wanted to talk more about (but ultimately decided to cut) is that we humans are ultra social, meaning that maybe all of our beliefs and opinions have a social signalling component. For example: If we believe in something because this is "based on science", then, ultimately, that's probably because we want to be accepted by a group of people who believes in things that are "based on science". Which makes it hilarious when people accuse each other of "signalling" -- because accusing someone of "signalling" is ultimately to "signal" something.
@@TheMarketExit I'd like to make an addendum to the idea that humans are ultra social. Most humans are ultra social. Some of us don't play the social games that most do. About one in 35 people have a different neurology that doesn't work the same and even though that means those people are usually lower on the social ladder, I think they serve an important part of society by not following the group.
Conformity has a viral character. The cycle of normalization and denormalization says nothing of the goodness of said norms. The idea that normalization is inherently bad has currency with postmodernism and the Left. We are in a period of high denormalization where diversity has been sacralized. This can easily create incoherent syncretic belief systems full of contradictions. While you may think you are doing something important, you may just be adding more noise.
I mean, you can keep trying to change people's beliefs. However, do you believe that your beliefs are "the Truth", as in, objectively correct? If you don't believe in the concept of an "objective truth", isn't it presumptuous to try to change people's beliefs when you yourself aren't even that sure or convinced that your beliefs are true?
I love your comment, such a great question. I agree with David McRaney's view (I'm paraphrasing here) that any attempt to try to change someone's mind should be preceeded by asking oneself, why do I want to do this, what are my goals and what are the thoughts, feelings and values I'm exerting when doing it. And to then make sure that all exchanges are characterised by transparency, curiosity and compassion. What's your view?
@@TheMarketExit My view is that changing people's minds shouldn't be the or an objective at all. If a person believes that what they are upon is more correct or better than what others are upon, they should deliver the message to people and provide their evidences for their conviction. And it is up to the people if they want to change their minds or not. That shouldn't even be any of the person's concern. AND if a person acknowledges that their views are not "objectively true", I also believe it is good if they make this explicitly clear. That way, they come off as more genuine. Otherwise it seems as if they might have a god-complex or something. Which is very arrogant, egotistical and condescending.
@@Kolesha “If a person believes that what they are upon is more correct or better than what others are upon, they should deliver the message to people and provide evidences for their conviction.” Why should I do that? So what if I know something others don’t? Why should I deliver the message? What’s the point?
It’s hard to change minds: Sooner or later people are going to have to face the fact that the continents broke apart in the days of Peleg, 100 years after the global flood. * It’s the reason for the glacial striations stamped on top of bedrock like a gigantic broken seal in South America, Africa, India and Australia from glaciers that were moving from south to north from the time when they were all still connected to Antarctica at the South Pole. Of course this was after the sediment layers from the global flood were deposited. * It’s the reason fossils and sediment layers line up between South America, Africa, Madagascar, India and Australia. (The fossils and sediment layers were deposited first and then the continents broke apart, 100 years after the global flood.) * It’s also the reason there are many frozen animals and forest ecosystems buried by tsunamis from the rise of sea levels in North America and Siberia as the continents were being shoved into the Arctic from the centrifugal force after the earth broke apart, possibly due to hardening of the sediments and other factors. * It’s the reason animals made it to South America from Africa and humans did not since they were still trying to build the Tower of Babel before the breakup of the continents. Jaguars were separated from leopards, greater grisons were separated from African honey badgers, tapirs were separated from …tapirs and all of the other animals arrived at various places around the world before the breakup of the continents. * It’s the reason why the lifespan of humans was cut in half a second time since the global flood from a less than 500 year lifespan to a less than 250 year lifespan. * It’s the reason why the meaning of the word Peleg in Hebrew that meant “divided” turned into “as (where) the waters flow” in the later Aramaic form of Hebrew. That’s quite an impressive change in meaning. * It’s the reason people isolated into family groups and began speaking their own language. (Everything that happens is of course by the power of God.) …And now you know the rest of the story, the whole story.
I think possibly there is another way of perceiving the social aspect of this. Human thought, in local groups and now possibly globally, is in its own way a collective organism which has its own subconscious collective opinions. I think because it has no sole mouth and face to address we tend not to think our collective thoughts as being conscious. This collective person/s is competing with its own traits and collective biology for survival. Not necessarily for rightness or reasonability. Yet there might be something to approaching it with the intention of making this collective mind/person more self aware. We first implant the basics of scientific theory and reason to budding Scientists, not as a means of indoctrinating them but rather as a means of effectively creating VIABLE and USEFUL ideas for the purposes of their SURVIVAL as scientists. Perhaps there is something to be said for trying to replace the blind survivability of traits in collective thought with one that is more self aware of its own embodiment? There are other minds besides the individual ape mind which might stand to be addressed as needing to be convinced too?? Maybe?
@@anothenymously7054 it isn't self aware , but also it is, i think. we're all connected to the universal oneness, but we as people can't really feel that consicously. we are separated in that regard. whatever consciousness exists on higher levels of being are inacessible to us.
@the__void__spaghetti__girl it by it's nature is inaccessible to us as the personality that is you is inaccessible to any individual neuron within you. There are unintended between the you and the individual neurons. On the scale of people the thoughts of god are those synchronicities and coincidences we write off as chance. I differentiate this by meaning we have a demiurge shared between us that is separate from the universal oneness which is all encompassing and indistinguishable
@@TheMarketExit I guess you could say I’m synthesizing several concepts. Memes from “The Selfish Gene “ concerning in part the concept that ideas are essentially self reproducing traits that compete like genes but at a level of culture. Possibly, the Buddhist concept/schools of thought dealing with Pratītyasamutpāda “dependent relation” which starts to help ease the concept of the sensation of ape self as separate from other minds or even what we might call a mind. That what we sense as self is actually composed of many selves and form perhaps other larger fully thinking selves. The psychological papers published on the results of corpus callosotomy. Literature on the invention of the self starting computer systems, the programming and hardware. The invention of process monitoring software, and anti virus software. How computer monitoring systems are perhaps a model for perceiving the self monitoring of collective minds. To note the functions of culture and mind that act as self monitoring collective memes. I’ve seen it dismissed that the collective mind of the super organism of humanity is too fluid to address but I believe that there are definitive points of cultural collective thought change which act as self monitoring systems, in some part, there after. I tend to also “invent” amalgamated concepts which already have fields of study. So maybe you know of the sociological studies/fields already directly addressing collective thought, err as a distinct person?
I just think the yellowness of the background makes it obvious that the dress is going to look yellower than it is, making it blue and black, but sometimes i see the white and gold, i just have to ignore the yellow background of the image.
I'd like to find out if the intensive and widespread use of social media has worn away the power of the Weak Ties. The massive input of new or affirming ideas and actions from others through the agorithmically driven platforms may have done this. What impact could this have on the research processes?
