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Comment by toomuchequate | Hacker News Reader

>You have to have an argument that will pursuade the uneducated, poorly informed neighbor first.

An emotional/moral argument will be a coinflip with these people.

Will they side with the sad story of X, or the anti-intellectual sad story of Y?

I do not know the solution, I've seen others propose everything from hiding difficult to understand topics to calling them 'stupid' infront of their peers, etc...

Engaging them with logic and argument makes the problem worse.

Would be willing to hear ideas if people have them.

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On a similar topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16974098

Convincing people is hard and starting from the position "I know better than them" only makes it harder. I understand that sometimes people are just wrong or are using fact incorrectly, but often this get inflated to an extreme degree by the "smarter" side.

For me an important distinction is whether people are using unsound arguments to support a position or are holding an unreasonable position. For climate change the problem (from our "let's save the planet" side) is that we want them to change opinion, not that they are misusing unsound arguments.

To solve this the only way is to start a two way conversation where you can communicate how and why you believe is important and they can do the same. It is hard to convince people that do not want to be convinced, it is even harder to lecture people that do not want to be lectured.

A good starting point is to show that you yourself are willing to reconsider their point of view as stuff like "calling them stupid" is the same as brewing social resentment.

There are no shortcuts. You have to meet where they are, find common ground and build trust, both ways. It’s incredibly expensive and hard.

Surely the mechanism for change is the political process. And at a smaller scale society is full of people trying to influence, change opinion and mainpulate. Surely you should just adopt those same methods?

It would be interesting to try and model people more directly. Like what political campaigns do, but with a more noble intent. Use the data to discover how to serve people's needs.

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