Yeah, well...

Humans are rationalizing creatures, much more than rational ones. Our first gut reaction is trying to make sense of why we think what we think and why we behave how we behave, rather than trying to figure out if it does actually make sense. If this natural tendency could be changed, the world would be far less of a shithole.
- This is why, rather than slapping people in the face with a mountain of research, I try to ask them questions that lead them to the conclusion I want them to reach. Oh we discuss along the way, but you get a lot less of the black and white thinking bold statements that someone entrenched in their beliefs tends to make
  
  The research backs up your statement. Especially if you yourself are genuinely interested in the conversation, and also willing to update your own thinking, along with helping get everyone in the conversation to start understanding the real answers.
  In case you haven't listened to it, the You Are Not So Smart podcast covers the topic of how to get people to change on a pretty regular basis. It's a great podcast that talks a lot about conspiracies, misinformation, and how to combat them.
  https://youarenotsosmart.com/podcast/
  My favorite part of this podcast is that if you listen to it from the start (nearly 300 episodes at this point), you can hear him slowly become very jaded and pessimistic, but then as the podcast goes on, he starts turning around his opinion and gets exited and optimistic about all the progress that is made. It's a really great podcast and makes me excited for the future.
  
  This is just the Socratic method. It's like...the oldest formal rhetorical strategy.
  
  Ahh, after all this time, the Socratic Method still reigns
- We're also to some extent innately combative creatures. People will say "Oh, I showed people the facts and they still didn't change their mind. They're just idiots stuck in their ways." Okay, cool. When you tried to present these facts, did you do it in such a way as to treat them courteously or as an equal, or did you do it in such a way that you got to feel like you were dunking on them rhetorically? Because it's not as simple as presenting someone with facts. It's doing so in a way that doesn't make it feel like you're trying to establish some kind of superiority over them. Because then they're not presenting facts to you, they're just attacking you and your position. And these are very different things, conceptually and emotionally.
  
  No , we’re not.
- That is - IMO - what critical thinking is meant to be .... thinking about alternative explanations and evaluating their viability or probability.
  Unfortunately a lot of people use the term "critical thinking" as just another way to rationalize why they are against something, without actually weighing the options.
- I do that and i'm the weird one.
- 100 percent this. Another way of putting it is to say that in general, we arrive at opinions and then use our intellectual faculties to reason ourselves into justifying them.
  It's exactly the opposite of how we intuitively think about how we arrive at our positions.
  Everyone does it. I do it, you do it, we all do it. What's important is that some of us are more aware of it than others.
  It's also true that the scientific method is a self-correcting system that accounts for this.

I try real hard to not only change my mind but vocally (typographically) acknowledge when I was wrong because it's so goddamnit rare and infuriating.
- Same here. I work in tech and you’d be amazed how many people are so much less on guard around me because of this.
- same here, even when someone hasn't changed my mind 100% I'll often acknowledge if any of their arguments made me want to delve deeper into a topic and think more about my opinion on it

This is like a 21st century Monty Python skit.

These comments are quite devoid of meme energy
- Where's your pieces of flair? I mean, meme energy?
- Lemmy is too political
  
  there's no escape, bitch
  politics is reality and you just want fantasy... but if you keep reading fantasy, you'll eventually notice something horrible about it. Spoiler alert: its politics

If there's one I've learned after being on the internet for 17 years, it's this; you can throw an entire mountain of evidence at a conspiracy theorist and they STILL won't believe you.
- On the internet your identity is a collection of the opinions that you wrote under that name. So if you changing your opinion on anything you're changing your identity.
  All the more difficult if you use your own name as your identity and you have acquired followers because of the opinions you've expressed.
- Meanwhile back in reality...
  Fluoride in drinking water isn't safe
  Iraq doesn't have WMDs and we destroyed their country killing millions for some other reason
  The government is spying on everything you do
  JFK assassination must be shady since they keep refusing to release the final documents on it
  New world order (globalism) is real and now they openly hold meetings and promote the idea
  The vaccines were not "safe and effective" and many people were maimed and injured for a non-sterilizing vaccine that could never have stopped COVID
  UFOs apparently do exist and Congress is admitting it
  The government is brain washing people (MKUltra)
  The internet is all bots and shills (Dead internet)
  Many powerful people are pedophiles
  Just a handful of "crazy conspiracy theories" that are all seemingly accepted as true now.
  
  My god the amount of delusion in this comment is insane.
  Yes it is. It is undeniably true that fluoride improves tooth health, and improves your health overall as a result.
  I don’t believe it was ever a conspiracy theory that there weren’t WMDs. At least nothing beyond some random ass people in some corner of the internet. If we are including them though, literally everything is a conspiracy theory.
  This isn’t true. The fact that they need to pay companies for information they can’t legally get elsewhere is proof of this. If they were spying on everything, they’d already know everything and there would be no crime. Unless you’re denying that assasination attempts happen on top government officials?
  This isn’t even something that’s been proven beyond “well they haven’t said nothing happened so that means something happened!”
  New world order is just bullshit. There’s never any actual proof of this theory beyond “omg government officials talk to each other! Conspiracy confirmed!”
  Take your anti vaccine bullshit elsewhere. There is a mountain of evidence to support the “safe and effective” claims, and the people who try to debunk it literally don’t even understand what they are talking about. If you cross reference their data or what they claim something means, the holes are obvious. It’s the dunning center effect mixed with “I did my own research.”
  UFOs existing was never “admitted to” by Congress. No more than “Jewish space lasers” starting forest fires. Three people said something in front of Congress, presented no evidence, and some of it wasn’t even first hand knowledge. How is that a confirmation exactly?
  MKUltra was not what people claimed was happening when it comes to brain washing. The claim is almost always about sleeper agents who don’t know they are brainwashed carrying out activities only when they are “activated.” While I don’t doubt this has been attempted, it’s literally impossible with our understanding of the human brain at present.
  Are you admitting you’re a bot? Or a shill?
  This is just a given. Many powerful people are also: Sadistic, masochistic, like being pissed on, like pissing on people, are gay, are trans, are intersex, are murderers, sleep more than 10 hours a day. This is just how things work. If you get a large enough group of people, you’ll be able to find a subset that match any criteria you set.
  
  um... no? no these aren't all accepted as true now. a couple of those things are, and a couple more are kinda halfway to reality but the rest... dude you need to examine your media diet, someone's feeding you bullshit
  
  Jeez, you need a glass of Kool-Aid to wash all that bullshit down with? You seem like the type to drink Kool-Aid

Pretty sure this meme originates from an actual, specific Twitter exchange. Which became so legendary that people just repeated it secondhand, and now the secondhand repetition of it is getting screenshotted and posted.
- To me or sounds like Monty Python: 'You don't have to follow me, your all individuals, you have mine of your own!'
  (Crowd): YES, WE'RE ALL INDIVDUALS, WE HAVE MINDS OF OUR OWN!
  (One person in the crowd): No, wait, I'm not!

Where are the links to the studies?
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237638761_Belief_Perseverance_and_Self-Defeating_Behavior
  
  Yeah well I still think it works
- Back in the shower where OP thought of this neat little argument.

Well I don't think that's true

I think there is a difference between being exposed to evidence of the contrary and sitting on it for a while. I don't think you can change someone's mind in a conversation. Rarely so. But if the person is "forced" to think about the topic and the evidence, eventually they will change their mind.
- I think that studies show that while facts can help, most significant changes of mind happen when a person is emotionally invested in the change.

It is morally as bad not to care whether a thing is true or not, so long as it makes you feel good, as it is not to care how you got your money as long as you have got it. - Edmund Way Teale

Sounds like you were dealing with a troll
- Are you a member of that movement that's trying to segregate the realities of the left and right by convincing people that everyone who disagrees with them or has a bad opinion is faking?
  
  Did you read the post in the screenshot?

Damn, everyone could have been right if the OG just relented. He changed his mind to agree people don't change their minds? Chess grandmaster move right there... What a missed opportunity.

Hahah. If the commentor just went "you're right, I just changed my mind". That itself would make the OP some pause 😂

This is like a meta level recursion.

I mean, you can change people's minds on the internet, they just have to be willing to change; and that part can't be controlled by you.
- I have a pet theory that in fact, apart from the few instances wherein people are deliberately open to having their minds changed, no one has ever, in the entire history of the Internet, changed their minds due to being presented with facts or arguments. Ever.

An oft-repeated phrase between my friends an I in high school was when a dumb redneck kid told a friend of mine in class, "my opinions is facts."

- Yes it does! And I won't let you tell me otherwise!!!

The internet is an ouroboros.

this is what taking a philosophy class as a Marxist feels like lol
- Right?

Where are the links to the studies?

Where are the links to the studies?
- You can look them up yourself. I've seen the studies, but it's not my responsibility to get them for you; we're not your teacher

Where are the links to the studies?

“I liNKeD tWo sTUdies”. Is the funniest things that happens on the internet.
- "I backed up my stance with studies instead of general feels"
  "lmao what a dumbass"
  -people like this
  
  It takes 20 seconds to find a paper. On anything.
  In 1 minute, you can find 5 papers to back up a claim .. 30 minutes with GPT and you can write your own fucking paper. …
  Of course, there are often a further 5 papers out there arguing opposite, because that’s how research works. But nobody seems interested in that. Someone just names “two papers !” And you are sold. Just. like. that. The argument is over for you.
  I have to ask, Are you 12 ? Or brand new to the internet or something ?
- Caee to expand on this brave opinion of yours?
- wuht.
- TWO STUDIES