How do you change a belief?
Nov. 9th, 2005 08:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tcepsaHonestly, I'm not really sure. The way that information is stored in the brain, especially when it comes to something as complicated as beliefs, is a mystery to me--and that's assuming that it's actually stored in the brain to begin with.
I guess you have to be exposed to information that--to you--seems superior to and/or compatible with the information that you already have. It's almost like natural selection, in some ways; some ideas or concepts are better designed for longevity than others. Again with the Snow Crash references, the most robust beliefs seem to be those that include some sort of mechanism to fend off other beliefs. For example, if a belief includes the concept that people who carry a certain (or any) other belief must be put to death, it seems like that belief would be more likely to survive. However, a core belief that most people have these days is the belief that it is okay to do whatever is necessary to survive, in which case the prior belief (to kill off people who have other beliefs) is less likely to be effective (and possibly even more likely to be killed by someone acting in their own defense).
This is also tightly tied into morals, because many beliefs correspond to value judgements about whether something is right or wrong, good or evil. At the most fundamental level, "good" and "right" things and beliefs and behaviors are those which should be encouraged and cultivated and propagated, and "evil" and "wrong" ones should be destroyed. I want to clarify that when trying to determine whether something is right or wrong, it should first be ascertained as to whether that something should continue to exist and then once that has been determined the label of good or evil should be applied--NOT the other way around. In other words, things are not intrinsically good or evil; there is something else about them which causes them to be grouped into one category or the other.
What that "something else" is--like relativity or quantum physics--depends on the perspective of the person making the judgement. Okay, so maybe that was a bit of a stretch. But that something else does depend on the person's beliefs. Your beliefs may cause you to deem something as undesirable, whereas my beliefs may cause me to value the same thing very highly. One man's trash is another man's treasure...
Anyway, so, most people also have a belief that it is good for them to be right, and a belief that the quality of their beliefs determines their quality as a person. This causes them to have a certain level of inherent resistance to changing their beliefs. To change a belief, a person must deem it as wrong/something that needs to be gotten rid of. Once that happens, the aforementioned belief in the importance of being right will cause them to reject the belief that they've deemed as being wrong. However, the aforementioned belief that the quality of their beliefs determines their quality as a person can prevent this from happening if they are too attached to it. In that case, it is so important to them that their beliefs all be right that they will start with that as a premise (all of my beliefs are right) and proceed to reason from there. Unfortunately, even if their logic is impeccable, logic tends to follow the rule of Garbage In, Garbage Out; if the premises are false, it's likely that the conclusion will be erroneous.
Sometimes certain beliefs also have a built in "absolute truth" aspect that can cause similar results.
Even if this is not the case, however, that resistance must be overcome, or short-circuited somehow. One way to do it is to offer the person an opportunity. People like to be offered choices (another common belief seems to be "Nobody tells me what I have to do!") so providing them an alternative and inviting them to consider it often works better than telling them that they are wrong and have to change.
... I think I just walked smack into Rhetoric, which is basically taking two or more beliefs and throwing them into a cage match--er, dialog. Two beliefs enter, one belief leaves. Or at least that's how most people who use rhetoric would like it to work; YMMV. Most people aren't willing to enter into a full-blown dialog these days, where each person has his or her turn to propose an argument and then the other party provides a counter-argument and they go back and forth in a civil discourse until they can agree that one belief or the other has superior value. This is due to a couple of commonly held beliefs, such as "it's pointless, they'll never come around" and "we've had this discussion before and it always ends the same way, why bother?" and "words are for wusses"
So in many ways it is an Orouborus problem; the way to change someone's beliefs is to change their beliefs. To do it, they have to determine, within their current belief structure, that a new belief is worthy--kind of like a ruler naming his or her successor.
I wonder if it would be possible to come up with a generic set of beliefs that could be readily identified and people who held them would react consistently to certain things... are there certain belief structures that are more viable together, or do beliefs tend to come and go by themselves (on their own merit alone)? I imagine that there are some beliefs that tend to travel in packs, structures, and together they can overpower other beliefs. Interesting concept, I'll have to explore it more in a subsequent discourse.
I guess you have to be exposed to information that--to you--seems superior to and/or compatible with the information that you already have. It's almost like natural selection, in some ways; some ideas or concepts are better designed for longevity than others. Again with the Snow Crash references, the most robust beliefs seem to be those that include some sort of mechanism to fend off other beliefs. For example, if a belief includes the concept that people who carry a certain (or any) other belief must be put to death, it seems like that belief would be more likely to survive. However, a core belief that most people have these days is the belief that it is okay to do whatever is necessary to survive, in which case the prior belief (to kill off people who have other beliefs) is less likely to be effective (and possibly even more likely to be killed by someone acting in their own defense).
This is also tightly tied into morals, because many beliefs correspond to value judgements about whether something is right or wrong, good or evil. At the most fundamental level, "good" and "right" things and beliefs and behaviors are those which should be encouraged and cultivated and propagated, and "evil" and "wrong" ones should be destroyed. I want to clarify that when trying to determine whether something is right or wrong, it should first be ascertained as to whether that something should continue to exist and then once that has been determined the label of good or evil should be applied--NOT the other way around. In other words, things are not intrinsically good or evil; there is something else about them which causes them to be grouped into one category or the other.
What that "something else" is--like relativity or quantum physics--depends on the perspective of the person making the judgement. Okay, so maybe that was a bit of a stretch. But that something else does depend on the person's beliefs. Your beliefs may cause you to deem something as undesirable, whereas my beliefs may cause me to value the same thing very highly. One man's trash is another man's treasure...
Anyway, so, most people also have a belief that it is good for them to be right, and a belief that the quality of their beliefs determines their quality as a person. This causes them to have a certain level of inherent resistance to changing their beliefs. To change a belief, a person must deem it as wrong/something that needs to be gotten rid of. Once that happens, the aforementioned belief in the importance of being right will cause them to reject the belief that they've deemed as being wrong. However, the aforementioned belief that the quality of their beliefs determines their quality as a person can prevent this from happening if they are too attached to it. In that case, it is so important to them that their beliefs all be right that they will start with that as a premise (all of my beliefs are right) and proceed to reason from there. Unfortunately, even if their logic is impeccable, logic tends to follow the rule of Garbage In, Garbage Out; if the premises are false, it's likely that the conclusion will be erroneous.
Sometimes certain beliefs also have a built in "absolute truth" aspect that can cause similar results.
Even if this is not the case, however, that resistance must be overcome, or short-circuited somehow. One way to do it is to offer the person an opportunity. People like to be offered choices (another common belief seems to be "Nobody tells me what I have to do!") so providing them an alternative and inviting them to consider it often works better than telling them that they are wrong and have to change.
... I think I just walked smack into Rhetoric, which is basically taking two or more beliefs and throwing them into a cage match--er, dialog. Two beliefs enter, one belief leaves. Or at least that's how most people who use rhetoric would like it to work; YMMV. Most people aren't willing to enter into a full-blown dialog these days, where each person has his or her turn to propose an argument and then the other party provides a counter-argument and they go back and forth in a civil discourse until they can agree that one belief or the other has superior value. This is due to a couple of commonly held beliefs, such as "it's pointless, they'll never come around" and "we've had this discussion before and it always ends the same way, why bother?" and "words are for wusses"
So in many ways it is an Orouborus problem; the way to change someone's beliefs is to change their beliefs. To do it, they have to determine, within their current belief structure, that a new belief is worthy--kind of like a ruler naming his or her successor.
I wonder if it would be possible to come up with a generic set of beliefs that could be readily identified and people who held them would react consistently to certain things... are there certain belief structures that are more viable together, or do beliefs tend to come and go by themselves (on their own merit alone)? I imagine that there are some beliefs that tend to travel in packs, structures, and together they can overpower other beliefs. Interesting concept, I'll have to explore it more in a subsequent discourse.
