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.
25
223 reads
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?
“
The idea is part of this collection:
Learn more about problemsolving with this collection
How to set new goals
How to take action towards a new life
How to create a plan for change
Related collections
Similar ideas to Why False Ideas Persist
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...
Read & Learn
20x Faster
without
deepstash
with
deepstash
with
deepstash
Personalized microlearning
—
100+ Learning Journeys
—
Access to 200,000+ ideas
—
Access to the mobile app
—
Unlimited idea saving
—
—
Unlimited history
—
—
Unlimited listening to ideas
—
—
Downloading & offline access
—
—
Supercharge your mind with one idea per day
Enter your email and spend 1 minute every day to learn something new.
I agree to receive email updates