Comment by sanderjd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sanderjd | Hacker News Reader

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I largely share your incredulity, but allow me to make a more optimistic counterpoint.

I frequently change my mind, which is proof that one or more people out there are changing at least one person's mind. And here's the thing: in nearly all cases, the person or, more often, the people who change my mind never know it. I am often stubborn in the moment and unwilling to admit I've been swayed. More often, I don't realize that I have been swayed until I revisit the conversation over the next months, while adding in new information from other conversations or things I'm reading with a developing perspective. Sometimes my mind changes so slowly that I don't even notice it did until someone quotes back to me the now (obviously! objectively!) wrong thing I used to think.

My point is this: you may be changing minds without knowing it. And another point: even if you aren't, you are likely benefitting personally from having meaningful conversations with people.

I'm glad you made this point, because it's a maxim I live by: You can't change people, you can only encourage them to change themselves.

To effect change, people must be open and willing to change themselves. And I don't think most people are, especially the older we get.

If you want to change people's minds on a big scale, it's by educating the young, and creating incentives towards your way of thinking. It requires institutional power, and it takes generations.

I like the first two paragraphs but I'm not sure I can swallow that third one.

As a direct counter-example: I think a lot of older people have given up their previous views on privacy in exchange for using Facebook and doing other commonly-intrusive internet activities.

I think I'd replace the paragraph with "If you want to change someone's mind, try demonstrating an alternative with better trade-offs".

I'm hoping the GDPR will be a demonstration to Canadians & Americans that demanding a right to privacy is a viable alternative to the status quo.

Social networks, advertising, and privacy are able co-exist, just perhaps not with the existing trade-offs allowing free-as-in-beer and know-me-better-than-myself-"features".

edit: reordering paragraphs edit2: reorganization

One thing that happens is that I'll have a debate with someone, try to refute all their points and kind of end up in a stalemate because I don't want to give in. But when I have another conversation on the same topic with someone else, the points made by the person in the previous discussion become my points.

> I frequently change my mind,

Don't take this as a personal comment, but the ability to change ones mind based on changing facts is one of the characteristics of liberals. Conservatives, on the other hand, by definition are known for not changing their minds.

Perhaps we have multiple definitions of "conservative" in circulation. The definition with which I'm most familiar does not include a propensity for dogmatism

I dunno, if you just go by the dictionary definition[1]:

disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change.

[1] http://www.dictionary.com/browse/conservative

I actually agree with the definition you posted. The distinction I'm drawing is this:

The definition you posted above cover's the characteristics of a person's actions, strategies, etc.

In contrast, I understood your earlier post to be about conservative's epistemic habits.

Those two things are certainly connected, but aren't identical.

This is an interesting point, but the accumulation of anecdotal experience in my life suggests it is untrue, at least for the political definitions of "conservative" and "liberal" in the US. I see mind-changers and non-mind-changers on both sides of the political spectrum, and it seems to me that changeability is far more determined by other factors than by predominant political leaning.

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