Eventually I made a habit of this with religious friends. “What might happen that could even hypothetically change your beliefs in God?” “Nothing.” “Oh, ’kay then.”
I’m currently considering an approach with the most recent friend who is “researching” for the sole purpose of knocking it down. “Since you already know that what you read isn’t going to change your beliefs, why are you pretending that you care about evidence?”
I’m trying to come up with a way of saying that that’s likely to cause them to update (even if they’re updating in terms of “oh, yeah, as long as I know I’m not gonna change my mind it is pretty silly to pretend like it matters”)
IME, in these situations the answer is typically “Because I don’t want to accept the status-hit associated with being perceived as not caring about the evidence.” That is, I would rather think of myself as someone who evaluated the evidence and came to my conclusion, rather than someone who came to my conclusion without evidence.
Which makes it tricky to get people to admit to it when doing the latter, since that’s just yet another way to take the status hit.
Lowering the wall can help a little… that is, artificially reducing the perceived status hit of admitting to not caring about the evidence.
Eventually I made a habit of this with religious friends. “What might happen that could even hypothetically change your beliefs in God?” “Nothing.” “Oh, ’kay then.”
I’m currently considering an approach with the most recent friend who is “researching” for the sole purpose of knocking it down. “Since you already know that what you read isn’t going to change your beliefs, why are you pretending that you care about evidence?”
I’m trying to come up with a way of saying that that’s likely to cause them to update (even if they’re updating in terms of “oh, yeah, as long as I know I’m not gonna change my mind it is pretty silly to pretend like it matters”)
IME, in these situations the answer is typically “Because I don’t want to accept the status-hit associated with being perceived as not caring about the evidence.” That is, I would rather think of myself as someone who evaluated the evidence and came to my conclusion, rather than someone who came to my conclusion without evidence.
Which makes it tricky to get people to admit to it when doing the latter, since that’s just yet another way to take the status hit.
Lowering the wall can help a little… that is, artificially reducing the perceived status hit of admitting to not caring about the evidence.