I think a lot of people misunderstand this about me. My goal is not to convince people who have demonstrated an unwillingness to observe obvious truths. My purpose is to put new language to obvious truths that have been made deliberately obscure by bad faith arguments. https://twitter.com/cbent2199/status/1294626819153551360

There are a lot of people out there who understand truth about things, but don’t quite have the words to express why the opposing arguments that obscure truth strike them as so wrong. I think I’m skilled at reframing those bad arguments to expose them, so that’s what I do.

If there are people making those bad arguments who are truly open to being convinced, then I think I’ll probably convince them, and that’s great. I’m open to doing that—for the very few who are making bad arguments in good faith. But it’s not what I’m trying to do.

There are a lot of people who think that in order for somebody to believe a true thing is true, you must first convince them specifically of that truth.

These people, I’ve noticed, get pretty angry when they discover I have only a glancing interest in convincing them.

I don’t remember anybody convincing me that we needed militarized police, for example, or border walls, or voter disenfranchisement. They just decided that that was something that they would support.

I wasn’t consulted. Convincing me didn’t seem to be the order of the day.

If we don’t need to be convinced of dangerous toxic lies in order for their supporters to pursue them, neither should we need to convince them of sustainable obvious truths in order to pursue those.

We should just speak the truth as well as we can. This seems obvious to me.

The truth about convincing people is this: people convince themselves of things. The best you can do is introduce a new context for those willing to hear.

Which reaches people open to new ideas. And doesn’t waste time on those who aren’t.

Trying to convince someone to believe something when that person has already convinced themselves to believe the opposite is a waste of time.

Which is why they want you to try it by the way.