Can Irrational people Be Persuaded with Rationality?

[Koolay]

Is it worth talking rationality to those who are irrational and clearly do not want to think rationally?

TLDR: No, you can not speak a language to someone that they don't already know.

Personally I have had no luck talking rationality to irrational people. I have found it to be the same as believing that your words of English will be understood of someone who knows only Mandarin- it will just be frustrating for both parties, since the language of reason is so far beyond non reason.

If someone clearly is not responding to reason and evidence, they are simply talking in emotional defence, so I think the best course of action is to ask them questions about what they are feeling when their belief in God or Government or whatever it is is being questioned. How was there childhood? Were they punished for rational thinking and questioning 'authority' figures? If so, it's probably no secret why they would be so defensive now, since rational thinking was always associated with parental hostility or beatings or being attacked by peers. That fight or flight mechanism comes when you ask them about the morality of their religion or government or whatever irrational belief they hold.

If someone's experience of curiosity and rational thinking was met by someone 10 times larger than them spanking them with a huge hand - it's no mystery why they feel fight or flight when their irrational beliefs are questioned.

And if they aren't willing to open up to you and talking about what they are feeling and why they might have those feelings and instead just lash out at you - I think the best course of action is to simply leave the conversation. Being a container for their poison is harmful to both parties, you do not want to enable bad behaviour under any circumstance. But if they are interested in talking to you about why they believe what they believe, and why they are uncomfortable with reason and evidence, I think you can actually have a productive conversation.

[Tartarus Sauce]

Good question, we will use you as a test subject in search of the answer.

[Angrboda]

Well, first I'd have to know what you mean by rational and irrational. I personally am of the opinion that both concepts are incoherent and don't correspond to any actual thing. But that caveat aside, people's rationality has multiple dimensions. First, a person may be more or less rational towards a broad spectrum of questions due to the transitory or semi-permanent duration of things like strong emotion, episodes of mental illness, the influence of hormonal states and so on. Also, a person may be more or less capable of thinking rationally about all subjects regardless of content if they are unintelligent, uneducated, have intellectual stengths which they preferentially apply to reason and so on. (I'm an example of the latter. I'm relatively poor at formal reasoning, so I lean on feeling and intuition as my primary guide.) Furthermore, people can be rational about one thing, yet irrational about another; reason is somewhat domain dependent. For example, I have a chronic mental illness which results in, according to others, delusional beliefs; if you were to challenge the substance of those delusions, you'd find I can be quite irrational in their defense despite being rational about other, unrelated propositions.

To bring this to bear on your original question, it may be ineffective to challenge a person regarding beliefs or claims that they are incapable of thinking rationally about, however since in most people such regions are localized in their thinking, even if they are irrational in that region, you may challenge them rationally about which they are capable of reasoning rationally, and, for which, the rational region provides important support for continued maintenance of the irrational region or belief. (See the Duhem-Quine thesis, aka Underdetermination of Theory, aka epistemological holism.) Note that this is how deconversion from religious belief typically occurs, by persuading someone on an issue at the periphery of their irrational belief, and successfully replacing the irrational account with a rational one; repeating this process over time eventually leads to there no longer being any periphery, and not enough center to keep the irrational belief in place.

[Something completely different]

Good question, we will use you as a test subject in search of the answer.

I think he has been the testsubject for the past few weeks and that the results are very claer.

[Foxaèr]

Cognitive dissonance does not allow for reasoning to be accepted by those who tenaciously hold onto particular beliefs because they are veritably afraid to lose the comfort those beliefs provide.

[Angrboda]

Personally I have had no luck talking rationality to irrational people. I have found it to be the same as believing that your words of English will be understood of someone who knows only Mandarin- it will just be frustrating for both parties, since the language of reason is so far beyond non reason.

“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.”
― Confucius, The Analects

If someone clearly is not responding to reason and evidence, they are simply talking in emotional defence, so I think the best course of action is to ask them questions about what they are feeling when their belief in God or Government or whatever it is is being questioned. How was there childhood? Were they punished for rational thinking and questioning 'authority' figures? If so, it's probably no secret why they would be so defensive now, since rational thinking was always associated with parental hostility or beatings or being attacked by peers. That fight or flight mechanism comes when you ask them about the morality of their religion or government or whatever irrational belief they hold.

I find that playing armchair psychologist in addition to usually being a means to satisfy your irrational needs rather than to understand theirs, usually results in increased emotion, intransigence and unwillingness to consider what you have to say. (I had a male friend in college who had the hots for one of my mates. She tended to get anxious in response to his advances, as he was rather forward, and she was rather uninterested. One night he confided in me that he suspected that the reason for, what to him, was an odd reaction, was that she had probably been raped sometime in her past. Now, at the time, I did in fact know that she had been raped, but of course I could say nothing. However, even though his theory had some limited foundation in reality, it was fundamentally self-serving, and its purpose was to give him a sense of control over the situation which he at that time lacked. His speculations, even though true, were not necessarily the reason for the nature of the interaction between the two of them. A few years later she wed another friend of mine, which, in some sense, puts to rest the viability of his theory that a prior traumatic sexual violation explained his difficulty in forming a strong emotional and physically intimate relationship with her.)

The fact is, most people lack both the competence and knowledge to meaningfully make inferences about what one should expect of another's behavior from limited personal history.

[pineapplebunnybounce]

it's very condescending to presume about someone's childhood and experience in life just because they're disagreeing with you. If you think you had a perfect childhood and so have a superior view of the world and have the duty to impart this invaluable knowledge to us who are too emotional to see it for ourselves. And if anyone disagrees with you, they're irrational and had a bad childhood with authoritative figures. That's just your easy way out of confronting your own irrationality.

[Full Circle]

You plant the seeds. I used to believe and during those years I would have defended my views to the death. But all along the way small inroads were being made leading to my eventual deconversion. A science class here, an observation of the natural world there, watching and listening to clergy and parents say one thing and do another. The foundations of the indoctrination started to crumble piece by piece, a la apophenia's quote of confucius.

A conversation with a person who at that moment in their lives is irrational to you may not yield immediate results and I think therein lies many of our frustrations with these types of interactions. I have never had a discussion with a believer where they suddenly said to me, "You know, I think you're absolutely right, what was I thinking?"

I had a conversation the other day with a salesman who told me he used to be a monk in the Eastern Orthodox church. He had left the church but throughout our talk he continued to refer to his spiritual father. I explored his beliefs in a cordial manner, challanged him by asking non-judgemental questions and before I left I wrote down a quote from Epicurus for him to read after work and to consider the questions being posed. I have no idea if he did or didn't, but hopefully it made him think. In the end that's all you can do, plant a seed that makes them think.

[bennyboy]

Is it rational to use a rational argument with an irrational person? I don't think so. In fact, if you try it more than twice, you probably aren't much more rational than the other guy.

[Angrboda]

Is it rational to use a rational argument with an irrational person? I don't think so. In fact, if you try it more than twice, you probably aren't much more rational than the other guy.

I was going to argue the point with you, but decided against that course of action.