Making friends and influencing people

coberst · Post by **coberst** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 4:34 am

Making friends and influencing people

A common refrain I often hear from readers is that “there seems to be no way I can convince anyone to change their mind about anything. I am very sympathetic with that difficulty.

I would like to suggest that the positive thing we can do is to learn Critical Thinking and after we do so to challenge the other person to do the same thing. The more a person knows how to think the better that person will be in making good judgments.

Critical Thinking is now being taught in our schools and colleges. Our educational system has decided that teaching students what to think is useful training to get good jobs but is insufficient for later life. Since most adults have never been taught CT they must learn it on their own.

Those who are already Critical Thinkers can go immediately to step two and start the effort to convince others to become Critical Thinkers.

If you are not familiar with CT a good place to start is with Bertrand Russell @

http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Educ/EducHare.htm

coberst · Post by **coberst** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 6:10 am

Hamster

I have the book coauthored by Paul and Elder "Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life" that is, I think, a text book for high schoolers and it concentrates totally on the intellectual character and moral attitudes required for succesful critical thinking.

telephoto lens · Post by **telephoto lens** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 11:47 am

Another route of study to understand the influencing of people is through the scholarship of propoganda. In the 19th century the word propoganda meant an 'exchange of ideas' and did not have the sinister connotations it has today. Also, the commonly thought of useage of propoganda to mean lies or untruths is a partial definition. The whole point of 'propoganda' is to emotionally pursuade people to your viewpoint. The best example of contemporary propoganda is displayed by Fox News and sure they exagerate, opinionate, defactualize and lie about contemporary events, but they emotionally pursuade their audience that Fox's rhetorical position is 'true' - regardless of the facts. Consequently it is almost impossible to change someone's mind, say your average Fox watcher, regardless of how many facts you present and the large amount of cognitive dissonance they may experience. Think of talking about to a religious person about how evolution challenges their notion that the world is only 6 thousand years old? And as an asside, if humans did not evolve then the skeletons would be exactly the same throughout history but the are not (plus carbon dating). And guess what? You make no headway because once a belief is internalized emotionally, it is almost impossible to dislodge.

telephoto lens · Post by **telephoto lens** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 1:57 pm

Hamster;440526 wrote: Yep and the sad thing is that people let the TV, radio, internet and other media decide their beliefs for them!!!

For many people it is easier being told what to think on the TV and radio rather than actively pursuing knowledge by reading books and this reflects a world where people are encouraged to be passive consumers. Of all the media you listed at least you can dig and find interesting information on the internet. It is relatively uncensored (depending on what country you live in), and you can get a multitude of viewpoints - unlike american radio and television.

Good luck with the research!!!

coberst · Post by **coberst** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 2:34 pm

. Everybody thinks that they are critical thinkers. That is why we need to differentiate among different levels of critical thinking.

Most people fall in the category I call Reagan thinkers—trust but verify. Then there are those who have taken the basic college course taught by the philosophy dept that I call Logic 101. This is a credit course that teaches the basic fundamentals of logic. Of course, a person need not take the college course and can learn the matter on their own effort, but I suspect few do that.

The third level I call CT (Critical Thinking). CT includes the knowledge of Logic 101 and also the knowledge that focuses upon the intellectual character and attitude of critical thinking. It includes knowledge regarding the ego and social centric forces that impede rational thinking.

guppy · Post by **guppy** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 2:40 pm

you forgot the very first level. trust without questioning. :-5

and yes, there are a few of us left around. :-2