opinion

People have to change their own minds

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“People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others” – Balise Pascal, French scientist and philosopher. Brain Pickings uses this as the centre of a piece about how you can’t change some bastard’s mind but you can get them to look at things differently without wanting to throttle you.

Nearly half a millennium before modern psychologists identified the three elements of persuasion — attunement, buoyancy, and clarity — French physicist, philosopher, inventor, and mathematician Blaise Pascal (June 19, 1623–August 19, 1662) intuited this mechanism as he arrived at a great truth about the secret of persuasion: Pascal came to see that the surest way of defeating the erroneous views of others is not by bombarding the bastion of their self-righteousness but by slipping in through the backdoor of their beliefs.

How to Change Minds: Blaise Pascal on the Art of Persuasion – Maria Popova, Brain Pickings (20 May 2015)

Read the full piece.

So what do you think of this?

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I promise I do this for real, I don’t do it from some contrived Machiavellian planning: if I don’t know something, I’ll ask. But you can use this simple thing in a contrived Machiavellian planning way.

Even if you believe in the whole “There’s no such thing as a stupid question” mantra, sometimes you’d just rather hold your tongue than look stupid. New research suggests, however, that you’ll appear more competent to others if you ask for advice rather than keeping quiet.

Asking for Advice Makes You Look More Competent, Not Stupider – Melanie Pinola, Lifehacker (28 August 2014)

I’m not sure stupider is a real word, but.

But I think the principle is true because I’ve seen it: if you ask someone their advice or their opinion, they do like it. I don’t think that’s surprising but what might be is that because you have made them feel smart by asking them, they really do conclude that you are smart for the same reason. You’ve spotted how clever they are, therefore you are clever. QED.

Aren’t we human beings peculiar?

No, unless we set out to use contrived Machiavellian planning.