Why we can't "change" our (or others) minds

[Whitey]

It have often wondered, why can't he/she/they see how CRAZY that idea is! No doubt others have thought the same about my thinking.

I once heard a partial theory to explain this sort of weird disconnect. It was this: our brains are such (almost said designed - whooo) that likely as a scheme to aid thinking we classify items partially as to their "truthiness". Some items or ideas get the gold standard and get the "fact" file designation, while most get descending reliability designations. Finally without proper deep and hard to come by authority, these designations, especially the "fact" ones can't be changed. What do you think?

[Mister Agenda]

I think we change our own minds, and the most anyone else can do is give us something to think about that may lead us to change our minds in the fullness of time.

[Whitey]

Makes sense, but do you sometimes wonder why others just can't seem to see and embrace an idea which seems so damn obvious to you?

[Mister Agenda]

Yes, but it's likely I have my blind spots as well. Certainly other people seem to think so.

[Simsim]

Because ideas, especially what you were indoctrinated in your childhood, are physical entities. Can you change your pancreas? No. It is a noncontrollable physical part of you. (which needs a surgery to be changed.)
Can you see the red color as blue? You can't because it is a biological matter. Even if all people say it is blue not red you will not change your mind and you will not be really convinced.

[Whitey]

Can't buy the physical entity model. Partly because we change some of our ideas all the time. But maybe that is a sort of model for ideas which are facts to us.

Moving through the world physically and mentally would likely be very confusing if we didn't have some bedrock items which everything else had to fit in with. What do you think?

[Angrboda]

This might help you get started.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjbWr3ODbAo


Unfortunately, I think a good answer to the question has its roots in a number of widely disparate fields of study, so most often the prospective solutions you will encounter will tend toward examples of the hammer/nail phenomena — if you only have a hammer, all your problems will begin to look like nails.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I think Mr Agenda pegged it. People change their own minds with comforting frequency. For instance, I no longer think that Elizabeth II would be a better monarch if she:

1. Held a firecracker between her teeth.
2. Lit the firecracker.
3. Jammed her head up her arse.

But people have a natural resistance to being compelled to do anything. If, for example, you constantly harangue a believer with arguments about why religious belief is silly and largely counter-productive, she's likely to dig in her heels. Similarly, no atheist of my accquaintence have ever converted simply because theists told him about hell-fire, damnation, and God's love (wonder why).

But people DO change their own minds and for their own reasons (hopefully, those reasons include sober reflection and serious thinking). None of us have the same belief-set (religious or otherwise) that we had as children. I'm 43 years old, and I've changed, altered or amended some long held beliefs in just the last few years. But I'd be hard-pressed to think of a single thing about which I've changed my mind the proximate cause of which was someone else's say-so.

Boru

[Minimalist]

Makes sense, but do you sometimes wonder why others just can't seem to see and embrace an idea which seems so damn obvious to you?

Most people are:

[Ryantology]

There have been instances where others have demonstrated some belief of mine to be so wrong that I've had no choice but to abandon it, or (more often) simply pointed out something I never thought about on my own. I drifted from Christianity to middle-ground agnosticism on my own, the 'we can never know if God exists or not so both sides are pointless' variety. What caused me to complete the shift to atheism was a combination of both of the points I made above. The first was a simple fact I'd never even considered: even if we can't know, it doesn't mean both possibilities are equally likely. The other was being corrected in my false belief that there were only positive/strong atheists.