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 title: "Dealing With Close-Minded People"
 date: 2021-08-28T00:00:00
 draft: false
-makerefs: false
 ---
 # Motivation
 I'm going to start this post in the same way I've started a few previous posts which is by sharing what motivated me to write it.
 
 ## Atheism
-It all started around age 12, when I began questioning religion. I wanted to find out whether there really was a god or not. So I watched debates between the religious and the non-religious, performed my own research on the arguments and, thanks largely to the New Atheists[1], I concluded that religion was not only false, but an extremely harmful mind virus that ought to be eradicated.
+It all started around age 12, when I began questioning religion. I wanted to find out whether there really was a god or not. So I watched debates between the religious and the non-religious, performed my own research on the arguments and, thanks largely to the [New Atheists](https://christopherhitchens.net/four-horsemen), I concluded that religion was not only false, but an extremely harmful mind virus that ought to be eradicated.
 
 When I outed myself as an atheist, some people I knew became concerned that I might be depressed based on nothing other than the fact that I had become an atheist. At the time, I thought that was a strange conclusion to arrive at. But as time went on, I noticed a few things that helped me understand why some people reacted this way.
 
@@ -32,7 +31,7 @@ Religion is a perfect example of people closing off their minds due to fear. Peo
 ## Mental Effort
 Another reason people are close-minded is because changing your mind takes mental effort, especially if you're changing your mind about one of your core beliefs. If you believe for instance that people have free will, as the US justice system is based on, then you'd have to rearrange your entire internal moral framework if you learned people do not have free will. That's a lot of mental effort. Wouldn't it be so much easier to go on believing that people do have free will since your entire understanding of ethics is based on that?
 
-It's not as if you can just change your mind only about free will and leave every other peripheral belief intact. You'd feel cognitive dissonance[2] that would demand to be addressed. Holding beliefs that you know to be mutually incompatible is unpleasant. Therefore you're forced to either suffer psychologically or invest mental energy into correcting your other beliefs built on the foundation of free will.
+It's not as if you can just change your mind only about free will and leave every other peripheral belief intact. You'd feel [cognitive dissonance](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance) that would demand to be addressed. Holding beliefs that you know to be mutually incompatible is unpleasant. Therefore you're forced to either suffer psychologically or invest mental energy into correcting your other beliefs built on the foundation of free will.
 
 There's also the fear that you might not know what to believe any more. What if you can't figure out how to justify holding people responsible for their actions without free will? There's the worry that any time you change one of your beliefs, you don't exactly know how that might affect the others. You don't know how it might cause you to change your behavior. And that can be scary.
 
@@ -58,7 +57,7 @@ I hope you're starting to see how all these causes each play into one another. A
 But we have to get over fear, put aside our ego and be honest with ourselves when it comes to what we believe. We have to be open to hearing new evidence and to changing our minds. That's the essence of open-mindedness and that's how we advance the public conversation.
 
 # Dealing With Close-Minded People
-So let's assume you yourself are open-minded. Provided the right evidence to the contrary, you would change your mind about almost anything. It's like Anthony Magnabosco[3] says in his street epistemology (SE)[4] videos, "If I'm wrong, I wanna know it". But how do you deal with people who aren't so open-minded?
+So let's assume you yourself are open-minded. Provided the right evidence to the contrary, you would change your mind about almost anything. It's like [Anthony Magnabosco](https://anthonymagnabosco.com/) says in his [street epistemology](https://streetepistemologyinternational.org/) (SE) videos, "If I'm wrong, I wanna know it". But how do you deal with people who aren't so open-minded?
 
 ## Determine Close-Mindedness
 If you're going to approach close-minded people differently from the open-minded, which I suggest you do to preserve your own sanity, you must first determine that the person you're dealing with is actually close-minded. To determine that, here are a couple key questions to ask them:
@@ -82,7 +81,7 @@ Also keep in mind that people seldom admit they're wrong in real time. You can s
 So with that in mind, don't expect any person, open-minded or close-minded, to change their mind in real time. Giving people time to themselves just to think about what has been said is how minds change. Long pauses give time for the other person to integrate what you've just said. There has to be some breathing room which brings me to my next point.
 
 ## Set a Stopping Point
-It's wise to set a stopping point. It's so easy to go on arguing with someone until you're blue in the face. What you end up doing is only triggering their psychological defense mechanisms, making them more close-minded, more unwilling to listen to you, and possibly even more entrenched in their existing belief structures[5].
+It's wise to set a stopping point. It's so easy to go on arguing with someone until you're blue in the face. What you end up doing is only triggering their psychological defense mechanisms, making them more close-minded, more unwilling to listen to you, and possibly even more [entrenched in their existing belief structures](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Backfire_effect).
 
 The moment you start repeating yourself or the other person repeating themselves, then it's probably time to wrap up. If nothing new is being added to the conversation, what then could be the benefit of continuing?
 
@@ -97,7 +96,7 @@ Robert Oxton Bolton once said, "A belief is not merely an idea the mind possesse
 Now for my final piece of advice on how to deal with close-mindedness, I urge you not to waste time reevaluating claims you already know to be false. I'll give an example.
 
 ### Stop the Steal Conspiracy
-A republican I know recently insisted to me the 2020 U.S. presidential election was a sham and that Mike Lindell had proof. Cue the eye roll. According to an Ipsos/Reuters poll[6], over half of republicans believe that conspiracy. Since it's common, I was aware of the election fraud conspiracy before Mike Lindell was brought up. But I'd never heard of him before. If this guy had proof that the election was a sham, I definitely wanted to see it. So I took an open-minded attitude and started researching.
+A republican I know recently insisted to me the 2020 U.S. presidential election was a sham and that Mike Lindell had proof. Cue the eye roll. According to an [Ipsos/Reuters poll](https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2021-05/Ipsos%20Reuters%20Topline%20Write%20up-%20The%20Big%20Lie%20-%2017%20May%20thru%2019%20May%202021.pdf), over half of republicans believe that conspiracy. Since it's common, I was aware of the election fraud conspiracy before Mike Lindell was brought up. But I'd never heard of him before. If this guy had proof that the election was a sham, I definitely wanted to see it. So I took an open-minded attitude and started researching.
 
 Of course, after the most basic research of Mike Lindell, it was blindingly obvious to me that the guy was full of shit. He's a religious fanatic Trump loyalist who hosted a cyber symposium where he purported to show his "proof". I watched parts of the event. In it, he used the attention to sell pillows for his My Pillow company and displayed the most obvious partisanship putting up a huge picture of Trump's face on a big screen. I won't go through all the details. Suffice it to say he's so batshit even popular conservative media won't promote him.
 
@@ -106,14 +105,4 @@ I'd investigated the claims of election fraud for the 2020 presidential election
 So when someone tells me again that the election was a sham and they have proof, I'm going to dismiss them. I'm not going to look into it for the millionth time and I'm not going to apologize for not looking into it. And that doesn't make me close-minded. Refusing to reevaluate the same claims you've already determined to be false many times in the past is not being close-minded. Don't let anybody convince you it is. Instead, preserve your time and sanity by refusing to reevaluate known false claims.
 
 # Conclusion
-So that's my best advice on dealing with close-minded people. It comes from lots of personal experience dealing with close-mindedness. I hope my readers find it helpful. If anyone has suggestions or additions to this post, just email me[7]. If you disagree with me on anything I've written here, I'd love to know what I got wrong.
-
-
-Link(s):
-[1: New Atheists](https://christopherhitchens.net/four-horsemen)
-[2: Cognitive Dissonance](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance)
-[3: Anthony Magnabosco](https://anthonymagnabosco.com/)
-[4: Street Epistemology](https://streetepistemologyinternational.org/)
-[5: Backfire Effect](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Backfire_effect)
-[6: Ipsos/Reuters Poll](https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2021-05/Ipsos%20Reuters%20Topline%20Write%20up-%20The%20Big%20Lie%20-%2017%20May%20thru%2019%20May%202021.pdf)
-[7: About Page](/about/)
+So that's my best advice on dealing with close-minded people. It comes from lots of personal experience dealing with close-mindedness. I hope my readers find it helpful. If anyone has suggestions or additions to this post, just [email me](/about/). If you disagree with me on anything I've written here, I'd love to know what I got wrong.