Eli5: Why is it easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled?
In: 634
When you become convinced of something, you get emotionally attached to it, especially if you have invested something (money or self-esteem) in it. The more emotionally attached someone is to something, the more they will try to defend it.
I remember listening to a podcast about how our brains have difficulty “tossing out” information. For instance, if there’s a national tragedy/event and the events are misreported originally, a significant number of people will remember only the original reporting and forget the true story.
I think it has something to do with evolution not wanting to throw out any information, but it’s definitely a phenomen
I read somewhere that people will do almost anything to protect their sense of identity. Being fooled is believing in something. Being told that you were fooled is to tell someone that something they believe isn’t so. People will believe almost anything else in order to not have to challenge that paradigm. Sound like any failed coup presidential fans that you may know?
In order to fool someone you only need at least one of a few simple things to be true.
* That the person trusts you
* That the person is not very smart
* That the person is uninformed
* That the person doesn’t care about the subject too much
* That the person has a bias and being fooled supports that bias
* The person likes to feel superior to others and you can tie that feeling in to believing what you are telling them
However, to convince some one that they were fooled you need more difficult things to be true and rather importantly you are dealing with a person who ‘was fooled’ so you know the first list applies to them.
To accept that they were fooled they must.
* Be willing to admit they can be described by some or all of the first list
* Be willing to critically look at evidence that makes them uncomfortable or makes them lose any sense of superiority they enjoyed by being fooled
* Be intelligent and willing to turn that intelligence towards analysing themselves and finding fault within
* Be humble
As you can see the second list is tougher to achieve. Especially if we already qualify for the first list.
In addition to what others have said, when you’re trying to convince someone they have been fooled, especially if you’re operating in good faith, you have to back that up with facts and the truth. And there’s only one truth and no wiggle room. You have to actually do research and cite sources, and you really can’t fill in the blanks.
Fooling someone, on the other hand, is easy because you can say anything and generate it out of thin air. You aren’t coming from a place of facts. You’re appealing to someone’s emotion. The lie can even be obvious, but if you say it with enough conviction and confidence, you can get people to doubt themselves.
Have you ever had a debate with someone who says something bafflingly, blatantly wrong but you struggle to counter them and they come away smugly thinking they “won”? Well it could be because you’re coming from a place of facts and you’re actually trying to draw from a pool of truthful information–but we aren’t all walking encyclopedias so it’s easy to forget stuff, and you’re operating in good faith so you want to make sure you refute someone’s statement with the correct information. Meanwhile the other person has absolute freedom because they can literally say anything. This is why arguing with people who are operating in bad faith is a waste of time. It’s unwinnable; they are basically cheating at the rules of debate.
Bc in 2022 many adults act like schoolyard children and cannot admit being wrong or apologize.
When you try to convince someone they’ve been fooled they resist it because they don’t want to feel stupid, especially if they’ve been conned into something that becomes a part of their identity. It’s kind of like the sunk cost fallacy – you’re already invested, if you bail now that investment is wasted.
Because, being fooled for the foolie feels normal. They are ignorant to the situation. They’ve been fooled. On the other hand, telling someone they’ve been had a fool, questions their entire existence. All of their intuition, beliefs, life experience led astray. It’s a tough pill to swallow.
There’s been studies that lead to a theory in communication that people tend to believe things as truth, and then later have to disprove them.
I’m looking back in my notes and I’ll update with a source soon.
Edit: found it. It’s called the Truth Bias Theory. Here’s a [Wikipedia page](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth-default_theory) that has a section on it for a nice little introduction , but if you want to learn more I’d suggest searching it on google scholar for better sources of information.
Sometimes this is because the person trying to fool you is looking for things you want to believe are true and telling those to you, so they can get you to do things they want.
For example, if you love dogs, they might say “brushing a dog with this kind of brush makes them healthy and live longer” you want your dog to be healthy and live longer, you like the idea of brushing your dog so they will be healthy and live longer. You buy the brush, because you have been promised something you want to be true. And then when someone says “Its not true that brushing the dog makes them healthy and live longer” you want to disagree, because you dont want that thing to be true.
Eli5: Why is it easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled?
In: 634
When you become convinced of something, you get emotionally attached to it, especially if you have invested something (money or self-esteem) in it. The more emotionally attached someone is to something, the more they will try to defend it.
I remember listening to a podcast about how our brains have difficulty “tossing out” information. For instance, if there’s a national tragedy/event and the events are misreported originally, a significant number of people will remember only the original reporting and forget the true story.
I think it has something to do with evolution not wanting to throw out any information, but it’s definitely a phenomen
I read somewhere that people will do almost anything to protect their sense of identity. Being fooled is believing in something. Being told that you were fooled is to tell someone that something they believe isn’t so. People will believe almost anything else in order to not have to challenge that paradigm. Sound like any failed coup presidential fans that you may know?
In order to fool someone you only need at least one of a few simple things to be true.
* That the person trusts you
* That the person is not very smart
* That the person is uninformed
* That the person doesn’t care about the subject too much
* That the person has a bias and being fooled supports that bias
* The person likes to feel superior to others and you can tie that feeling in to believing what you are telling them
However, to convince some one that they were fooled you need more difficult things to be true and rather importantly you are dealing with a person who ‘was fooled’ so you know the first list applies to them.
To accept that they were fooled they must.
* Be willing to admit they can be described by some or all of the first list
* Be willing to critically look at evidence that makes them uncomfortable or makes them lose any sense of superiority they enjoyed by being fooled
* Be intelligent and willing to turn that intelligence towards analysing themselves and finding fault within
* Be humble
As you can see the second list is tougher to achieve. Especially if we already qualify for the first list.
In addition to what others have said, when you’re trying to convince someone they have been fooled, especially if you’re operating in good faith, you have to back that up with facts and the truth. And there’s only one truth and no wiggle room. You have to actually do research and cite sources, and you really can’t fill in the blanks.
Fooling someone, on the other hand, is easy because you can say anything and generate it out of thin air. You aren’t coming from a place of facts. You’re appealing to someone’s emotion. The lie can even be obvious, but if you say it with enough conviction and confidence, you can get people to doubt themselves.
Have you ever had a debate with someone who says something bafflingly, blatantly wrong but you struggle to counter them and they come away smugly thinking they “won”? Well it could be because you’re coming from a place of facts and you’re actually trying to draw from a pool of truthful information–but we aren’t all walking encyclopedias so it’s easy to forget stuff, and you’re operating in good faith so you want to make sure you refute someone’s statement with the correct information. Meanwhile the other person has absolute freedom because they can literally say anything. This is why arguing with people who are operating in bad faith is a waste of time. It’s unwinnable; they are basically cheating at the rules of debate.
Bc in 2022 many adults act like schoolyard children and cannot admit being wrong or apologize.
When you try to convince someone they’ve been fooled they resist it because they don’t want to feel stupid, especially if they’ve been conned into something that becomes a part of their identity. It’s kind of like the sunk cost fallacy – you’re already invested, if you bail now that investment is wasted.
Because, being fooled for the foolie feels normal. They are ignorant to the situation. They’ve been fooled. On the other hand, telling someone they’ve been had a fool, questions their entire existence. All of their intuition, beliefs, life experience led astray. It’s a tough pill to swallow.
There’s been studies that lead to a theory in communication that people tend to believe things as truth, and then later have to disprove them.
I’m looking back in my notes and I’ll update with a source soon.
Edit: found it. It’s called the Truth Bias Theory. Here’s a [Wikipedia page](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth-default_theory) that has a section on it for a nice little introduction , but if you want to learn more I’d suggest searching it on google scholar for better sources of information.
Sometimes this is because the person trying to fool you is looking for things you want to believe are true and telling those to you, so they can get you to do things they want.
For example, if you love dogs, they might say “brushing a dog with this kind of brush makes them healthy and live longer” you want your dog to be healthy and live longer, you like the idea of brushing your dog so they will be healthy and live longer. You buy the brush, because you have been promised something you want to be true. And then when someone says “Its not true that brushing the dog makes them healthy and live longer” you want to disagree, because you dont want that thing to be true.
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