When did someone last change your mind?

[igenlode]

"When did someone last change your mind?": an interesting question on this week's Radio 4 "Any Questions", that initially stumped all the panellists (according to the presenter's observations!), and which of course they all then proceeded to dodge/spin into political dogma -- with the exception of the Conservative peer, who thereby gained some respect in my eyes. Because yes, it *is* hard to think of any occasion in which someone else's opinion/arguments have honestly changed yours -- most of us are exceedingly stuck in our opinions, once we have actively formed them, which means that change, where it happens, tends to be experienced on an emotional level as the result of a violent apostasy or sense of betrayal. People are 'converted' from their opinions rather than simply changing their minds as a result of someone else's argument... (Which is one reason the jury system tries to go to some lengths to pick jurors who haven't heard all about the case in advance, and why press coverage is limited as soon as there is a case to be brought, in a nowadays fairly vain attempt to avoid bringing in a jury whose minds have been influenced by advance knowledge, potentially presented by those with biased opinions...)

Like the "Question Time" panellists, I too drew an immediate panicked blank in the face of that particular challenge; I'm not sure I can honestly think of *any* case in which an opinion of mine in one direction has been changed as the result of someone else's representations. Like most people, I cling to my prejudices even if battered by a tsunami of vociferous opposing arguments, which may shut me down but don't actually change my belief...

I think the best example that comes to mind, though it is not the result of anything that anyone else actually said to me, is my reluctant relaxation of my kneejerk distaste for Real Person Fiction. I could never understand why there would be any attraction in it at all; having now been lured by morbid curiosity into reading some (mainly because there was next to no *non*-RPF for that particular fandom, with only a handful of fics in existence overall) in a situation where I had a sufficiently detailed background knowledge to be able to appreciate the sources that were being drawn on and the very recognisable character dynamics... yes, I can say that I appreciated it and now realise that it *can* be done without being grossly offensive. Though I still wouldn't want the people involved to read it (as to be fair I understand that most of the writers wouldn't) and still find the attempted erotica neither convincing nor appealing; I did find the non-erotic interactions charming and funny, though, and can see that they were written from a position of affectionate --even if, in the most entertaining example, very silly!-- fandom.

So someone, or someones, did change my mind, albeit not by arguing out their case (which to be frank I don't think would have had any effect, just as pro-slash arguments don't make me like slash any the better) but by practical demonstration, which is probably the only way to do it.

Comments

[capri0mni]

Like you, I don't think I can pinpoint any specific moment my mind was changed by a specific person,* but over the course of the last few years, I've come to accept that, maybe, we do need nuclear power as part of our zero-carbon, zero-methane, energy mix to survive climate change -- that the threat of global warming is greater than the threat of nuclear war, especially given how high our current energy needs are.

*That could be why the panel was stumped, and proceeded to get defensive. It's like a map of the visible light spectrum: At what single point does Yellow become Orange, or, for that matter, Green?

[igenlode]

Given the extremely energy-intensive process of *constructing* nuclear power plants, their short lifespan, and the extremely energy-intensive process of safely disposing of them afterwards (something which as far as I know has never actually been achieved in all the time since the 1950s, just as nobody has ever yet managed to find a way of safely disposing of the radioactive waste created during their running time and the large volume of contaminated material generated by their subsequent demolition -- the approach seems to be to store/entomb it for as long as possible in the hopes that a future solution will be found), I still feel that the climate-change argument is just a desperate straw being clutched onto by those who are emotionally invested in nuclear power for other reasons.
In the UK, for example, we get the argument "we need to build nuclear power stations in order to achieve energy self-sufficiency", apparently completely overlooking the fact that there is no source of nuclear fuel within thousands of miles or within our geopolitical control (and the process of mining it is *also* highly energy-intensive and/or generates vast amounts of contamination).

The zero-carbon energy solution is also extremely urgent, and nuclear power stations are extraordinarily slow to build; the average project in Europe overruns by at least ten years on its optimistic planning, I think. We don't have that sort of time, and it's a dangerous distraction from the by far most simple and practical (but far less politically appetising) solution of radically reducing the amount of energy being used in the first place. All that high-tech investment is better put into ways of storing energy that can be deployed at a local level and don't create contamination that will remain dangerous long beyond the likely demise of our current civilization -- no empire in the history of mankind has yet endured more than a couple of thousand years before breaking down... We've already got nuclear facilities that are now located in active war zones; how long is the ex-Soviet nuclear power station in the Ukraine going to remain safe from being accidentally breached by either side? Or Israel's nuclear reactors? Britain's current reactor construction project has been outsourced to the Chinese, which is ironic given the government's currently belligerent noises towards China.

Not to mention the cooling water issue, which means that nuclear reactors need to be situated in precisely the places most vulnerable to climate change, i.e. coasts and estuaries -- the French nuclear power system is already disabled by hot summers which raise the temperature of the continental river water on which their reactors rely, and that particular problem is only going to get worse.

But as I said, people (including me) are very reluctant to change their entrenched beliefs ;-)
I mean, people will say --unwisely in my view-- 'oh, we can change all the awkward planning/safety regulations that delay nuclear power station construction, we can pour investment into training a new generation of native-born engineers, we can reprocess the existing backlog of radioactive waste for fuel, we can scale up the nuclear fusion process to produce a viable output, we can build sea defences around our reactors and site new ones further inland' and that none of these issues are insoluble given sufficient political will and national emergency. But my gut feeling remains that nuclear power is inherently a bad idea, with the emphasis I suspect being on the 'bad', i.e. a moral rather than intellectual judgement.

The scary thought is that it is probably actually already *too late*; we had about a ten-year window in which governments accepted that something drastic would have to be done extremely quickly to avoid reaching a tipping point, and since then we've had Covid and various wars that have been regarded as higher priorities, and very little action has been taken. We don't really have enough time left, and the climate is now visibly starting to tip at an acute rate, faster than the best-case scenarios. Whatever is done from now on will only be mitigation of the pretty much inevitable. We have broken the world, and will have to live with the result -- if we can.

(The Earth will survive, in one form or another, even if it involves mass extinction and re-evolution from scratch, but humanity may not, and the current world order is highly unlikely to do so.)

[capri0mni]

I came of age in the midst of the Cold War; my mother was an environmentalist. You do not have to persuade me back (that's why I emphasized "maybe"). My mind changed to that stance from: "Anyone who even breathes a positive word about nuclear energy is probably hoping to profit off the nuclear arms race."

I didn't go further because I wanted to move on to the question whether other people change our minds, or we change our own minds, as we learn new things over time. In short, I'm not convinced (heh) that that radio interview question was asked in good faith. It struck me as a kind of "gotcha" to point out how rigidly ideological each of us are, and tut-tut about it. But while there are some of our opinions which never change, there are also many that do.

If I had gone further with my thoughts on the need (or lack thereof) for nuclear energy, I would have said:

1. We had documented evidence of human caused climate change just about 45 years ago.
   
2. We had the technology to meet our energy needs through solar, wind, geothermal, etc. 40 years ago
   
3. Since this was before the widespread, civilian, Internet, cellphones, data centers, etc. it would also have been easier to transition to a carbon-free economy than it is now.
   
4. Granted, if we as a culture, had been more energy conservative 45 years ago, we might (might) not have the Internet of today, through which I am typing this to you.
   
5. On the other hand, if we never ended up developing it to the level it is today, I doubt we'd miss it.
   
6. But now that it exists, we can't put it back in the bottle (even though I wish we could, with 80% of it)

[igenlode]

The question was in good faith, I think; the programme is a panel format (nowadays a panel consisting almost exclusively of politicians, which leads to predictably less interesting answers as everybody simply parrots their party line -- I'm pretty sure it never *used* to be a political platform show) in which the participants are expected to address topical questions submitted before the broadcast by the local audience (and read out on air by the chosen audience member). They broadcast from a different town every episode and usually try to get a panel of people with some kind of connection to the area, typically including a local MP and a representative of up to three other parties. This week it was two left-wing (Labour/Green) and two right-wing (Conservative/Reform) speakers.

But after the serious questions of the day they always close the programme with a 'light' question to fill the last couple of minutes, and people submit deliberately quirky suggestions in the hopes of getting their contribution featured in this spot. I don't think any political answer was expected; it was the politicians who couldn't resist the opportunity to try to promote their own ideology ("I have changed my mind on hearing how passionate our young members are about the environment and how important it is to them") rather than giving an honestly considered reply... with the exception, as I said, of the Conservative peer, who did gain my respect for that. (She did at least come across throughout the rest of the programme as an *intelligent* woman tethered to a lame-duck leader and a set of nakedly vote-grabbing principles, or lack thereof, as opposed to the Reform candidate, who came over as not only bigoted but patently stupid.)

But I have to say I had difficulty thinking of *any* of my opinions that have significantly changed, and from the description of the stumped expressions on the faces of the panel I gather I was far from alone in that!

I think a considerable factor as to why people are more apt to change their own minds rather than be convinced by the advocacy of others is simply down to questions of 'face'; with a position once taken up, to change your mind is then a matter of being seen, by yourself or others, as 'losing the argument', or at least as the other side gaining a victory. (For the same reason, if you actually want to *achieve* something rather than simply gain the satisfaction of humiliating the opposition it is very much more practical to allow them to save face by making it appear that they are graciously doing you a favour, and/or that the outcome was down to their suggestion in the first place. Grinding your opponents into the dust never causes anything but trouble down the line; it doesn't convince them that they are wrong, but only that they are unjustly oppressed. Unfortunately every war seems to forget this...)

But if you can tell yourself that you changed your own mind as a result of your own experience rather than having to agree with someone who told you that you were wrong, then the change becomes automatically more psychologically palatable. It is also, of course, much easier to change your mind if you had never taken up a 'position' in the first place; if you have no definite opinion one way or another, it is easy to listen to someone putting forth an argument and then either to agree or disagree with it simply according to its apparent merits. If it's an argument about something on which you already hold views, then the human instinct is to automatically discount the perceived 'threat'; that's just the way we *function*, socially and intellectually.


My mother and grandmother were both environmental campaigners, so I'm probably better informed on the practical nuts and bolts of nuclear power (and other energy issues) than the general public at large, and certainly than that Reform idiot who kept coming out with manifest rubbish. There was in fact a 'serious' question on energy supply posed earlier in the programme, on North Sea oil ("Should the Prime Minister grant any further licenses to drill in the North Sea oil fields?", from memory) -- which is why a lot of this stuff happened to be in the top of my head as points that *should* have been made, and weren't.

Several people, including the presenter, pointed out to him that North Sea oil is contractually all sold overseas and that more drilling, whatever your environmental views, would therefore have no effect on domestic shortages whatsoever, but he just kept braying out the same line and ignoring them -- only the Green Party speaker so much as mentioned, and at a very late point, that we can't *afford* to "drill out every last drop because it's ours", because burning all the world's remaining oil reserves will completely destroy the climate. It isn't a matter of coping with an oil shortage, it's an inherent problem. Whereupon 'nuclear power is the solution (as part of the mix)' started coming up, and nobody seriously questioned that at all, despite the reasons why nuclear power and climate change are a very bad combination...

But I can't help but also be aware that my views on the subject, however well-informed (and every crank believes his conspiracy theories to be bolstered by irrefutable evidence) are inevitably by the same token biased, to a degree that would make it extremely difficult for me to change them -- and I constantly tie myself into knots trying to be rational and intellectually honest on questions that most of the rest of the world is quite happy to decide on emotional instinct (on the quick, efficient judgements of the hindbrain, if you like).


I agree that we probably wouldn't miss the Internet if we didn't have it (and since I've avoided developing a smartphone dependency and am quite capable of functioning without one, I'm probably more resilient than most).
I remember someone doing global energy calculations back in the 1980s, I think it was, and coming to the conclusion that the world was capable of supporting its then population if everyone globally lived at a 1940s level of technology/consumption -- to which my reaction was 'well, that's not so bad at all'. But of course the population has ballooned since then: even the "terrible loss of lives due to COVID-19" (about 16 million over several years I believe, the majority of them already beyond reproductive age) is a drop in the ocean compared to the billions of humans on the planet. And our expectations have increased, even mine.

The majority of my social life now takes place on the Internet (or at least over email), and has done for years. I have developed a YouTube addiction: none of this Russian stuff I have been viewing would have been accessible without it, or at least only a tiny minority via international film festivals, where I had in fact encountered it previously (the BFI did a season on 1930s Soviet musicals, and I saw one or two out of curiosity!) I now leave my computer switched on constantly, because the latest version of the operating system takes so long to start up, whereas I used to automatically switch it off every time I'd finished using it, and I have an always-on broadband connection that encourages the use of data rather than paying by the minute for metered Internet access.

In the 1980s, I could quite happily have lived at a 1940s level of technology; hand-washing of clothes is a nuisance, but I still have quite a lot of clothes (not least those made by myself!) which *have* to be hand-washed, and do most of the household cleaning and food preparation by hand. And I still wear long-johns in the winter rather than running the central heating.

In the 2020s it would be a lot more of a wrench, even though I still have vast numbers of 'analogue' hobbies and entertainments -- and most people don't even have those.

[capri0mni]

I think (like to imagine) that if we had started to divest from fossil fuels, back in the 1980s,* we would still have some form of Internet in 2026. It might just look more like the Internet of the 1990s.

For one thing, we would continue to innovate our energy harvesting technology, as time went on (even today, photovoltaic cells and batteries are a lot more efficient than the technology was 50 years ago, and that's even "green" tech has been developing in a culture still hostile to it, instead of a culture dependent on it), so that, by now, we could be powering a lot more with solar, wind, and geothermal than we could in 1980 (the going back to the 1940s technological level would have mostly been a transitional phase). And for another thing, the Internet we have now is so power hungry because it's been invented around the energy generation available to it. If we had switched to a fossil-and-nuclear free 40 years ago, we'd have developed an Internet that doesn't demand as much energy as the one you and I are using now.

*(or really, the 1970s --thanks to the oil embargo back then, and gasoline rationing here in the States, we were already headed that way during the Jimmy Carter administration, that was immediately undone under Reagan)

[watervole]

I can't remember a person ever changing my mind, but data will do it.

I gave up flying once I learned what the carbon footprint was.

Gave up meat a decade later for the same reason.

But I've been in the 'climate change is a serious problem' group pretty much forever.

in a sense, I'm not changing my mind, just acting on new data that is relevant to what I already believe.