I agree .I often say to my liberal cousin "don't let the facts get in the way of your opinion "

The trouble with having reasonable people in charge is that reason is not enough to persuade others. Sooner or later the rulers have to resort to force. And that's the end of civilization.

When people say their mind is made up, that is the time to use Socratic method and trap them in their own contradictions. People want to be right. They'll change their minds when they feel they should. That's why all efforts to win people over tend to use emotional manipulation. And emotions are only reliable as value judgments if rational values were internalized to guide them. And rational values are not automatically engrained except by the luck of nurture, having rational parents or teachers or authors as early influences. Rare is the mind that is its own inspiration.

You've heard people say, "Be reasonable. Do it my way." Everyone believes themselves to be right and therefore those who don't agree must be wrong. That is why humans need objectively verifiable values. No matter how much lip service we pay to Reason, and how we dismiss others' judgments as "only opinions", every opinion is rooted in the opiner's value system and believed to be reasonable. And those beliefs are held firmly in place by the emotional reinforcements of the individual's life experiences. Those emotions may even block reason, as happens with people of faith and fanaticism who nevertheless believe in their own rightness, undergirded by an assumed omnipotent power.

I don’t tend to think of persuasion as conquering, though the word fits well with Ayn Rand’s vigor. Conquest to me smacks too much of hostility and force. Persuasion is working within people’s inborn need to be right and their trust in their own rightness. We humans would not have developed the scientific method of self-correction if the seed of it were not also contained in our own minds, in our powers of introspection.

Survival depends on self-correction when causes and effects are discovered. The very process of learning by the young of any species, and particularly one as complex as humans, depends on the faculty of taking in and sorting out and changing rules as needed. All these are based on the facts of reality as we encounter them. It is their accurate interpretation that needs Reason in a creature capable of abstract (conceptual) thought. And that requires the Randian moment of volition. The mishmash of impressions and reactions that constitute the human psyche in all its jumbled complexity will otherwise leave a mind floundering in emotional conflicts and interpersonal adversities.

That life nevertheless goes on speaks to the flexibility and safety margins of natural selection that lets the species muddle through despite constant wars and natural disasters. How much better would life be for every individual if we substituted cooperation and productivity for mutual destruction? Or am I being unreasonable?

there is a way to arrange that -- inverse extortion;;;
the strike. . problem is, it's hard to do and they forget
after a generation. . how might a permanent fix be
arranged? . That Is The Question. -- j
.

That is because a belief is like a living organism, a construct of "memes" that colonize the mind and fight for their survival with all the tenacity of (my favorite example) a cornered rat. The only way around is quarantine or revision through the intercession of a more powerful (hopefully rational) meme that can bypass the emotional gatekeepers.

Memes are the human software just as genes are our hardware. No supernatural entity involved or necessary. And just as body tissue can develop tumors, so can the mental content. Belief systems like religions reinforce their staying power by even forbidding questioning, demanding submission and obedience. Gack.

I am fond of Rand's wishing you a good psycho-epistemology!

Cognitive Dissonance Theory is now on full display in our society, and can be seen in virtually every community and social subset. It explains almost everything, IMHO. Yet few realize how disempowered we are by those who are best described as victims of that Theory.