This is a concept I’m experimenting with, where people pose
me questions like, “what would it take to convince you…” or “what it would take
to change your mind about…” and I attempt to lay out as clearly as possible
what data or evidence would be required (or what else I would need to be
convinced of) for my belief to change. I want to believe true things, but I
recognize that the human mind has a tendency to stubbornly hold on to its
current beliefs, so I’m trying out this format as a way to sort of make myself
accountable to the claim that my beliefs can be changed, if a sufficient
standard of evidence is met.
Of course, this isn’t just unilateral; the idea is that
after I answer one such challenge question, I then turn around and ask the
person who gave me that question a challenge of my own. The long-term potential
is for people to be endlessly tossing these challenge questions back and forth,
as long as both parties are willing to put the time in. In doing so, they
should each gradually get a much clearer sense of the premises that inform the
other person’s beliefs, and what standards of evidence it would take to
convince them.
Eventually, after some “playtesting” of this concept, I’ll
probably want to draw up a full-scale rulebook, but for now, I’m just gonna
state a couple crucial ground rules. The main one is that answers can’t be
vague or abstract. “I dunno, I’ll know it when I see it” is exactly the
opposite of what this challenge is all about. The answers should be as precise
and objective as possible. I’m not saying that will be easy; I have trouble
with it too, and I’m the one who came up with this. It takes practice, but I
think it’s a goal worth aiming for. You should feel free to probe the
challenger for greater specificity or clarity to their challenge before providing
your answer, so that it can be as clear as possible.
Answers should also move the discussion forward. The purpose
of this is to foster a different sort of environment for people to have
discussions about subjects they disagree on, so an answer that doesn’t provide
any way to move ahead with the discussion wouldn’t serve that purpose. For
instance, let’s say your challenge was, “what would it take to convince you
that leprechauns exist,” and your answer was “If I was sitting at my computer,
minding my own business, and a leprechaun appeared out of thin air and handed
me a pot of gold.” That answer follows the first rule, because it is very
specific and objective, but it shuts down the discussion, because all you can
do at that point is just go on with your life and wait to see if that ever
happens. That’s not the intention for this challenge.
Now, one thing that is acceptable is saying that nothing
will convince you or make you change your mind, provided that you can clearly articulate why. If you do, this still
follows the spirit of that second rule, because it allows the discussion to
move forward. If you say “nothing will convince me that leprechauns exist
because I don’t believe that any mythical creatures exist at all,” then that
opens the door for you to be asked, “what would it take to change your mind
that mythical creatures could possibly exist?” The discussion can progress
forward from there.
There may come a point when you’re not able to give an
explanation for why nothing will change your mind. If you do get to that point,
that seems like a really good opportunity to consider whether you have
underlying foundations for your beliefs that are just based on assumptions or
unfounded presuppositions. If you value believing things that are true, that
would be a good opportunity to get rid of those unsupported foundations and
reanalyze your worldview from there. On the other hand, if you’re perfectly
happy to believe things based on assumptions, and refuse to change your beliefs
no matter what evidence is presented, then this challenge is probably not for
you.
I’m also gonna test out doing these challenges in a more
spontaneous fashion through voice discussion, but in terms of answering through
the written word, my current feeling is that responses should be between 500
and 1000 words. That makes it long enough that you can’t just give a lazy
answer devoid of detail, but short enough that you’re not just drowning your
discussion partner in a whole overlong dissertation that they’d never have time
to respond to.
