Eli5: Why is it easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled?
In: 634
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.
Eli5: Why is it easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled?
In: 634
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.
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