Themis wrote:I like your way of trying to address the issues. I have wondered what the best way to approach issues with those who seem to be very closed minded on those issues. I have the same problem of being objective to an issue I hold strong beliefs/feelings about. I have noticed that issues people don't have any strong beliefs or feelings they can easy change their minds with just a little evidence.
I don't harbor any illusion that this discussion is going to change Tobin's mind. Here are some good reasons.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... ris-mooney If I want to persuade Tobin, I have to step into his values system and persuade him using those value. At this point, I don't have good idea of what those values are. If we keep talking long enough, maybe I'll get a sense of those values and can actually try to persuade him. That's one benefit of talking -- getting to understand not only what the other person thinks, but the reasons they think what they think.
Just as an example, many folks reject climate science based on an attachment to the individualism represented by free markets as a strong value. The appeal of free markets is that each of us can act selfishly and the market will automatically transform all of those selfish behaviors into "the best of all possible worlds." Climate change presents the prospect that, when it comes to fossil fuels, the free market will ruin everything. That runs straight into the face of many people's fundamental values. Persuading them has to be done from the inside of free market ideology. It's not easy, but the tools are there to do it. Frankly, somebody like EA would be at it than I would. He knows the arguments and speaks the language better.
Right now, the only value that seems to be in play is the well being of the poor. I don't know whether Tobin's raised that because it's a values issue that drives his opinions or whether he's raised it because he thinks it is an important value to me and so is trying to come onto my values turf to persuade me. More talking may tell us more.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
