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How to create a plan for change
Why False Ideas Persist
There is another reason bad ideas continue to live on, which is that people continue to talk about them.
Silence is death for any idea. An idea that is never spoken or written down dies with the person who conceived it. Ideas can only be remembered when they are repeated. They can only be believed when they are repeated.
I have already pointed out that people repeat ideas to signal they are part of the same social group. But here's a crucial point most people miss:
People also repeat bad ideas when they complain about them. Before you can criticize an idea, you have to reference that idea.
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MORE IDEAS ON THIS
Be Kind First, Be Right Later
The brilliant Japanese writer Haruki Murakami once wrote, “Always remember that to argue, and win, is to break down the reality of the person you are arguing against. It is painful to lose your reality, so be kind, even if you are right.”
When we are in the moment, we can easily forget that...
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The Logic of False Beliefs
Humans need an accurate view of the world to survive. If your model of reality is different from the actual world, then you struggle to take effective actions each day.
However, truth is not the only thing that matters to the human mind. Humans also seem to have a deep desire to belong.
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The Spectrum of Beliefs
Years ago, Ben Casnocha mentioned an idea to me that I haven't been able to shake: The people who are most likely to change our minds are the ones we agree with on 98 percent of topics.
If someone you know, like, and trust believes a radical idea, you are more likely to give it merit, weigh...
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The Intellectual Soldier
Why do you want to criticize bad ideas in the first place? Presumably, you want to criticize bad ideas because you think the world would be better off if fewer people believed them. In other words, you think the world would improve if people changed their minds on a few important topics.
If...
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Facts Don't Change Our Minds. Friendship Does.
Convincing someone to change their mind is the process of convincing them to change their tribe. If they abandon their beliefs, they run the risk of losing social ties. You can’t expect someone to change their mind if you take away their community too. You have to give them somewhere to go. Nobod...
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CURATED FROM
IDEAS CURATED BY
What's going on here? Why don't facts change our minds? And why would someone continue to believe a false or inaccurate idea anyway? How do such behaviors serve us?
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Related collections
Other curated ideas on this topic:
Handling People
- Don’t criticize, condemn or complain. People learn faster and retain knowledge more effectively when rewarded for good behavior than punished for bad behavior.
- Give honest and sincere appreciation. The only way to get a person to do anything is by giving them what they...
Identifying Brilliant Ideas
Instead of rejecting ideas right away, it helps to delay the decision regarding which idea to work on, and which ones to put in the wastebasket. Have people rate your ideas and get a signal about what is worth working on.
An abstract idea, if given thought and further brainstorming, can ga...
Turning ideas into reality
When an idea becomes your obsession and purpose, and it is highly personal to you, then you can take that idea and quickly turn it into a reality.
Ideas can only truly catch hold if they are embedded within a deeply emotional experience that reshapes how you view your iden...
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