i’m not even saying people should not evaluate evidence for and against a proposition in general! it’s just that this is expensive, and so it is perfectly reasonable to have heuristics to decide which things to evaluate, and so you should first prove with costly signals that you are not pwning them, and then they can weigh the evidence. and until you can provide enough evidence that you’re not pwning them for it to be worth their time to evaluate your claims in detail, that it should not be surprising that many people won’t listen to the evidence; and that even if they do listen, if there is still lingering suspicion that they are being pwned, you need to provide the type of evidence that could persuade someone that they aren’t getting pwned (for which being credibly very honest and truth seeking is necessary but not sufficient), which is sometimes different from mere compellingness of argument
I think the framing that sits better to me is ‘You should meet people where they’re at.’ If they seem like they need confidence that you’re arguing from a place of reason, that’s probably indeed the place to start.
i’m not even saying people should not evaluate evidence for and against a proposition in general! it’s just that this is expensive, and so it is perfectly reasonable to have heuristics to decide which things to evaluate, and so you should first prove with costly signals that you are not pwning them, and then they can weigh the evidence. and until you can provide enough evidence that you’re not pwning them for it to be worth their time to evaluate your claims in detail, that it should not be surprising that many people won’t listen to the evidence; and that even if they do listen, if there is still lingering suspicion that they are being pwned, you need to provide the type of evidence that could persuade someone that they aren’t getting pwned (for which being credibly very honest and truth seeking is necessary but not sufficient), which is sometimes different from mere compellingness of argument
I think the framing that sits better to me is ‘You should meet people where they’re at.’ If they seem like they need confidence that you’re arguing from a place of reason, that’s probably indeed the place to start.