The way to actually use confirmation bias to convince people of things is to present beliefs you want to transmit to them as evidence for things they already believe. Then confirmation bias will lead them to believe this new evidence without question, because they wish to believe it to confirm their existing beliefs.
Yep. This works pretty well, too. Useful phrases: “As you already know …” ”… and you know all this already” “I haven’t told you anything you didn’t know already”.
Leading questions are good for this too, though they take a bit more care.
That is, if you pick the right questions phrased the right way, then when people answer you can follow up with “Enthusiastic agreement! In other words, $thing-I-wanted-to-convince-you-of. Exactly! Praise, praise, praise! Now I’m going to talk distractingly for a little while so you don’t have a chance to examine the identity I’m asserting. Oh look: a monkey!”
It works well… except with those strange folks who find it obnoxious and are tempted to slap you with “No, damn you! It is evidence against what I believed to be true. I prefer to be contradicted than subverted. Don’t try that again!”
Yep. This works pretty well, too. Useful phrases: “As you already know …” ”… and you know all this already” “I haven’t told you anything you didn’t know already”.
Leading questions are good for this too, though they take a bit more care.
That is, if you pick the right questions phrased the right way, then when people answer you can follow up with “Enthusiastic agreement! In other words, $thing-I-wanted-to-convince-you-of. Exactly! Praise, praise, praise! Now I’m going to talk distractingly for a little while so you don’t have a chance to examine the identity I’m asserting. Oh look: a monkey!”
This definitely has to go into the children’s picture book My First Machiavelli.
It works well… except with those strange folks who find it obnoxious and are tempted to slap you with “No, damn you! It is evidence against what I believed to be true. I prefer to be contradicted than subverted. Don’t try that again!”