you do understand that the left wing and the right wing, may very well appear from certain points of perspective to be opposite one another, they are belonging to a single bird, they are actually serving the identical purpose, one without the other makes their value and utility quite clearly evident. stealing minds from people. thats what an ideology is, thought control. "left", "right", its the same thing, and your beliefs dont mean anything, they dont matter a single bit, its the end at which the point of the political delusion ceases to exist(in the real world) that its purpose is seen. the masses cannot be controlled by military domination. but we can be controlled when you give the subject choice to make any decision one can, tell him he's free and youll enslave him for life and the majourity of his offspring. if you actually understand this quote as a personal reflection of your self, then you need to realize that she is saying you are the person who isnt worth acknowledging, because you only care about yourself. youre gollum at heart, and your personality is projected all around you like a cancer, and thats your precious

The left has succeeded in taking many minds, including their own...it's like we live among the monkeys and apes.
If you listen to the lamestream, it's apparent but talk to people and it's the opposite....so the only conclusion one can make is the fix is in and cheating is the means to their end.

It bothers me to even think that is the case.

You're right, blackswan! I have never understood why the unreasonable person is so determined to change my mind?! Any ideas?

You are correct. Not drugs or brainwashing. Who Knows? It will take some sort of break through to change this, what appears to be an almost (I say almost because with a focus it is possible to gain an exception) hardwired heuristic. I doubt it will be in my lifetime (I’m old). It seems people believe what they want to believe because they want to believe it.

And, as you say, one barrier is people do not want to admit they have been fooled---which is why so many con men go scot-free. It will take a long time and a lot of education to get the majority of people to recognize beliefs should be checked against reality.

We cannot check all the beliefs taught to us as children, and fortunately most things were true, so we need only check those beliefs which are brought to our attention as potentially incorrect AND which make an impact on our lives. Such is the ideal, that every belief is subject to change upon the presentation of new credible evidence. An ideal to seek.

Not with drugs and brainwashing. The simple formula: check your premises. Humans' ability to rationalize is astounding. Do you ever wonder how people can be made to believe that a man named Jesus had to be crucified in order to save all of humanity from the wrath of his father, who required the blood sacrifice to "redeem" the sinful creatures he himself had created? People buy into this by the billion. What team of psychologists can cure this level of self-deception? One barrier is that people don't want to have to admit that they have been fooled. Yet we get over Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and forgive our parents for those lies. If we can just go that one step further...

Indeed, true, except the overpowering does not seem to work because it drives the belief deeper. Alas, some team of psychologists will figure out how to break this barrier to the mind.

you got it, Emma! -- j
.

People who cannot be reasoned with when presented with facts contrary to their opinions are said to be "concretized." A very apt expression for people who refuse to use their main means of survival, their brains.

That is because a belief is like a living organism, a construct of "memes" that colonize the mind and fight for their survival with all the tenacity of (my favorite example) a cornered rat. The only way around is quarantine or revision through the intercession of a more powerful (hopefully rational) meme that can bypass the emotional gatekeepers.

Memes are the human software just as genes are our hardware. No supernatural entity involved or necessary. And just as body tissue can develop tumors, so can the mental content. Belief systems like religions reinforce their staying power by even forbidding questioning, demanding submission and obedience. Gack.

I am fond of Rand's wishing you a good psycho-epistemology!

The trouble with having reasonable people in charge is that reason is not enough to persuade others. Sooner or later the rulers have to resort to force. And that's the end of civilization.

When people say their mind is made up, that is the time to use Socratic method and trap them in their own contradictions. People want to be right. They'll change their minds when they feel they should. That's why all efforts to win people over tend to use emotional manipulation. And emotions are only reliable as value judgments if rational values were internalized to guide them. And rational values are not automatically engrained except by the luck of nurture, having rational parents or teachers or authors as early influences. Rare is the mind that is its own inspiration.

You've heard people say, "Be reasonable. Do it my way." Everyone believes themselves to be right and therefore those who don't agree must be wrong. That is why humans need objectively verifiable values. No matter how much lip service we pay to Reason, and how we dismiss others' judgments as "only opinions", every opinion is rooted in the opiner's value system and believed to be reasonable. And those beliefs are held firmly in place by the emotional reinforcements of the individual's life experiences. Those emotions may even block reason, as happens with people of faith and fanaticism who nevertheless believe in their own rightness, undergirded by an assumed omnipotent power.

I don’t tend to think of persuasion as conquering, though the word fits well with Ayn Rand’s vigor. Conquest to me smacks too much of hostility and force. Persuasion is working within people’s inborn need to be right and their trust in their own rightness. We humans would not have developed the scientific method of self-correction if the seed of it were not also contained in our own minds, in our powers of introspection.

Survival depends on self-correction when causes and effects are discovered. The very process of learning by the young of any species, and particularly one as complex as humans, depends on the faculty of taking in and sorting out and changing rules as needed. All these are based on the facts of reality as we encounter them. It is their accurate interpretation that needs Reason in a creature capable of abstract (conceptual) thought. And that requires the Randian moment of volition. The mishmash of impressions and reactions that constitute the human psyche in all its jumbled complexity will otherwise leave a mind floundering in emotional conflicts and interpersonal adversities.

That life nevertheless goes on speaks to the flexibility and safety margins of natural selection that lets the species muddle through despite constant wars and natural disasters. How much better would life be for every individual if we substituted cooperation and productivity for mutual destruction? Or am I being unreasonable?

Things would quiet down if, once you see that reason isn't there, you drop the subject. The problem is that, every time the non-reasoner sees you, he keeps bringing up the subject. Do you think that he thinks you've changed your mind? As if.

An what really ticks me off is when I find myself (rarely, of course) following the wrong path.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory is now on full display in our society, and can be seen in virtually every community and social subset. It explains almost everything, IMHO. Yet few realize how disempowered we are by those who are best described as victims of that Theory.

Ahhhh.....inverse extortion. Exactly who needs who?

The problem is more deep seated and worse. Dr. Leon Festinger developed Cognitive Dissonance Theory in 1956. He asked this question: Suppose an individual believes something with his whole heart and soul. Suppose he has taken irrevocable actions because of it. Finally, suppose he is then presented with evidence, unequivocal and undeniable evidence, evidence that he himself fully accepts as true, that his first belief is wrong. What happens?

To their great surprise, among their findings were the majority of people become more certain in their original belief than they were before seeing the evidence. The team of psychologists investigating this phenomenon was surprised by what they found, and since 1956 thousands of experiments have supported their findings.

In 2006, Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler investigated this commonly recognized phenomena. They experimented with many long-held and emotional issues like stem cell research and tax reform. They found evidence the subjects accepted as true which contradicted the long-held belief, increased the strength of the participants’ misconceptions if the evidence contradicted their ideologies.

Restated, once a person believes something, the person protects the belief from harm. The protection is instinctive and unconscious whenever confronted with inconsistent evidence. Just as confirmation bias shields one when the individual actively seeks information, the backfire effect defends the belief when the evidence blindsides a person and the natural response is to stick to the beliefs instead of questioning them.

Over time, the backfire effect helps make a person less skeptical of those beliefs which allows one to continue accepting the beliefs and attitudes as true and proper.

The conclusion of all this is simple: you are not likely to convince another person to change a deeply held belief using evidence., but even worse, they may grab onto the bad belief even stroner than they did before you started talking to them.

there is a way to arrange that -- inverse extortion;;;
the strike. . problem is, it's hard to do and they forget
after a generation. . how might a permanent fix be
arranged? . That Is The Question. -- j
.

do not count on them; do an end run around them! -- j
.

A kind of counter-point to Alynsky's Rules for Radicals. Maybe a more comple list of Rand's "rules" would be instructive.

"You cannot reasonably argue a man out of any opinion that he was not reasonably argued into in the first place." -- Lazarus Long.

This quote is currently my wallpaper on my iPod. It used to be my computer wallpaper too, except I changed it to one of Winston Churchill's quotes.

I hate going to family events and hearing a nephews wife say she will not let her children watch tv unless Obama is on. Gag!!

I agree .I often say to my liberal cousin "don't let the facts get in the way of your opinion "

I've always said that unreasonable people say "don't tell me any facts. I've already made up my mind."
I don't think it's possible to change their minds. I think reasonable people have always been and will always be a small percentage of the population. I just wish the reasonable people could be in charge.

Unfortunately they make up the majority of voters. Either we change them or we build the Gulch.