Most people (sadly, even our parents or other people we respect) are not conditioned to update on a belief merely because it is true. Look at your mother’s objections: she compared it to totalitarianism. If we take that objection at face value, then we know that she believes that such “narrow thinking” puts her at risk for totalitarianism, which is a risk she is not willilng to take for what is merely true.
Generally, if you want someone to believe something, you need to either trick them into believing that they already value what you are about to make them believe, or you need to trick them into modifying their values. This will be harder with your mother than with a stanger, as the idea has already been presented to her and she has parental authority to maintain. But there are ways to manipulate someone even in those circumstances, if that’s what you wish to do.
I agree that generally raising someone’s sanity waterline and getting them to think more rationally in everyday situations is a better approach to bringing them around to the naturalistic point of view than trying to force it on them.
Note that in everyday situations (often involving social interaction), she beats me, and her advice in that domain is often significant bayesian evidence to me.
Closing the gap is harder, because she explicitly says that “logical” reasoning does not apply to everything. (I’d agree that we can’t apply it to everything, but in principle, if we had the computing power, we could.)
Most people (sadly, even our parents or other people we respect) are not conditioned to update on a belief merely because it is true. Look at your mother’s objections: she compared it to totalitarianism. If we take that objection at face value, then we know that she believes that such “narrow thinking” puts her at risk for totalitarianism, which is a risk she is not willilng to take for what is merely true.
Generally, if you want someone to believe something, you need to either trick them into believing that they already value what you are about to make them believe, or you need to trick them into modifying their values. This will be harder with your mother than with a stanger, as the idea has already been presented to her and she has parental authority to maintain. But there are ways to manipulate someone even in those circumstances, if that’s what you wish to do.
I agree that generally raising someone’s sanity waterline and getting them to think more rationally in everyday situations is a better approach to bringing them around to the naturalistic point of view than trying to force it on them.
Note that in everyday situations (often involving social interaction), she beats me, and her advice in that domain is often significant bayesian evidence to me.
Closing the gap is harder, because she explicitly says that “logical” reasoning does not apply to everything. (I’d agree that we can’t apply it to everything, but in principle, if we had the computing power, we could.)
It might be worth talking with her about how she thinks about the things she’s good at.