"Bomb in the Brain" discussion.. (Wasn't sure where to post..)

[Jagsfan82]

So I watched part 1 and part 4 of the "Bomb in the Brain" series.  Hopefully watch the middle two soonish.  There is one issue I would like to bring up and discuss involving the idea that logic and reason and evidence won't get you anywhere when debating people about ideologies and politics.I absolutely accept and agreed with this even before watching the video that when you debate with someone on these issues they tend to go into defense mode and ignore any logic and reason.  My theory on the issue up to this point has been that what happens is after they cool off the evidence you gave them stays in their brain.  Even if they try to consciously cast it off, it is still back there floating around.  When they go to sleep at night those facts are constantly ramming themselves into the defense barriers they have built up protecting their beliefs..  If you throw up enough of those facts, and those facts are strong enough, and they hit the weak spots in their defense system... eventually that wall will at least crack and you will at least get somewhere.  

 

I don't think you will ever get someone who is passionate about something to make a drastic concession in their ideology in that moment, or at least that applies to 99.5 percent of people out there.  I do however when they cool off and their reason centers open back up, if they truly do care about the issues and they truly do care about the people they claim to care about, they will process those ideas more rationally and they have a much higher chance of at least knowing they might be wrong even if they don't admit it.

 

What are the thoughts on this theory.  The only case studies I currently have are my family members and myself.  I originally, although not passionately, was for taxation.  I wasn't for the size of the government, and I wasn't for making people pay for things they didn't want however.  I was for allowing people to choose where their taxes went to.  For example someone who disapproved the war could only uncheck all the boxes that had to do with the armed forces.  Granted, I was 17 and had no clue how this could ever logistically be done. I also acknowledged that there was a huge amount of government waste and social security was a ponzi scheme, but I was not willing to give up the government was necessary for things like national defense, roads, research, etc... I would disagree with my Libertarian uncle constantly on how taxation was not theft and how the rich only needed about 300k a year and after that I didn't have a huge problem with massive taxation.  I might have been for essentially the top 10% paying all the taxes under a less wasteful government.  Either way I was still a big statist.  Eventually though my Uncles Points started to resonate, and I believe this was caused by what he was saying making sense with what I was seeing in the real world and having a deeper understanding of how everything is interconnected.  Maybe it was establishing a deeper cause and effect relationship.  But it was also resonating much more deeply from an ethical standpoint as well.  A similar situation happened with my brother.  I also seem to slowly notice some of the people that I have been constantly bombarding with facts after facts on some taxation issues slowly start accepting the message.  Not making big progress, they are still huge statists, but there is progress.TLDR: People can't reason in the heat of the moment, but if we try to present the ideas to them in a way that doesn't make them anxious and doesn't trigger those fight or flight mechanisms, eventually, maybe after the discussion and after they think about those ideas when their reasoning centers are functional again, are people more prone to changing their views?  There is no arguing the empirical evidence against initial responses to being presented with dangerous information... but do they just cast off the information and never consider again, or does that logical evidence resonate for a while and slowly make a difference?

[Pepin]

A large issue with intellectual arguments is that they don't deal with the underlying problem.The state tends to be a projection of the family, which makes the process of making arguments against the state irrelevant. Religion tends to be more about maintaining family and friendships, which mostly makes arguments against religion pointless, because they are only religious because they fear ostracism from their social group.

 

I agree that progress through argumentation can be made, but I think it is more vital to isolate the source. Instead of providing arguments against God, why not ask "hypothetically, what would happen if you told your family you didn't believe?".

 

The state and religion are giant red herrings.