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How to Change Someone’s Mind

3 tips on dealing with idiots who don't think like you

David B. Clear
5 min readJan 20, 2023
Image by the author :)

You can’t.

There it is. You can’t change someone’s mind. Now go read another blog post. You’re wasting your time if you’re trying to play mind sculptor.

What?

Oh, you want me to elaborate?

Alright. Look, you can’t reach into someone’s head, take hold of their squishy brain as if it was a sea cucumber, and then twist and stretch and push it as you please. People’s minds are not playdough. You can’t manipulate and sculpt it like a dung beetle sculpts a turd.

And thank effin’ God for that. I wouldn’t want others to penetrate my head with their booger-coated fingers to impose their views on me. So I have to accept that I can’t do that with others either.

In fact, you should never have as a goal to force someone to see things your way.

Disagreements should not be seen as a confrontation where the goal is to ram your point of view into the opponent’s head. They should be seen as opportunities to debug your own thinking with the ultimate goal of finding out what’s actually true. So, ideally, disagreements should be a collaboration toward finding out the truth.

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David B. Clear
David B. Clear

Written by David B. Clear

Cartoonist, science fan, PhD, eukaryote. Doesn't eat cats, dogs, nor other animals. 1,000x Bottom Writer. davidbclear.com

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