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Failure to Convince


We don't have a facts problem.

We have a persuasion problem.


Facts are more plentiful than ever. We've simply done a poor job of helping people access and believe them.


All of our systems (economics, business, government, entertainment) are built on persuasion... not raw facts.


Facts have an influence, but there are a lot of them, and at first glance many appear to be contrary to others. As a result, people need to be persuaded to believe them before they can be used, which is something science and facts on their own do very poorly.


If we want a more fact-based future, we need to:

  • Change our non-fictional institutions to require non-fictional decision making

  • Change our persuasion methods for non-fiction to be more effective

 

Changing Institutions


Our institutions are far more powerful than any individuals, and often determine who influential individuals are. As a result, institutional changes are the most powerful.


The biggest changes moving forward would be regarding institutional decision making.


Decision making in almost every institution and context has no scientific-factual requirements. The power to make the decision, and the process to do so, are simply up to the person in that institutional role.


They get to "author" or "dictate" the decision, and there are no added scientific-factual checks / barriers to that decision.


The words "authoritarian" and "dictator" come from these.


Institutional change today often simply means a "change in leadership", or rarely a "new requirement" for part of the process. However, it does not mean changes to the decision making process, to require them to pass certain checks and tests of scientific fact.


Until they do, we will simply keep shifting from person to person, and one error to another.


Humans simply don't have the capacity to make good decisions at scale. When they do, it is simply accidental, or based on their inheritance and adherence to someone else's science.

 

Effective Persuasion


People are big dumb animals.


I'm a big dumb animal, produced by billions of years of terrestrial evolution.


This means, I can competently do a bunch of things, but there are an infinite number of things I can NOT competently do... I can't:

  • Build a cell phone

  • Jump higher than 10 ft

  • Run faster than 25 mph

  • Remember what I ate yesterday

  • Look at food and know it's nutritional value


Doing most things competently takes a ton of work.


Persuasion is one of those things. Most people are bad at persuasion, and don't understand how it works. Which is normal.


However, it is generally well understood and used successfully in sales and marketing. It can be taught and learned, and for those that desire to be influential in their efforts, it's a required skill.


I'm not here to teach it now, but I can tell you that if you can't explain your method of persuasion and your level of effectiveness, you aren't persuasive.

 

Moral Approaches


Our larger cultural approach to these problems is holding us back.


The human brain is limited, and isn't good at remembering things that aren't in front of us, let alone the entirety of human intellectual achievement.


Expecting someone to be perfectly knowledgeable on all subjects, and then using that failure as a way to vilify, attack, and degrade them, is the root of today's problems.


It's the equivalent of a pro-athlete making fun of people with handicaps, who can't play sports at their level.


While cruelty in entertainment shouldn't be disallowed, and in many ways is required in entertainment and storytelling, we have done a poor job of keeping our entertainment out of our morality.


If we want our morals to be taken seriously, we must make sure it doesn't copy our entertainment.


Otherwise, it becomes laughable.

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