Is there some easily communicable message here for doomsayers that stands a decent chance of kick-starting the “Oy, was I mistaken!” part of their brains into gear?
I’d be more inclined to discard the category “doomsayers” and instead categorize people, not by the behavior, but by the intent… different people doomsay for importantly different reasons, and not all people motivated by each of those reasons necessarily actually doomsay (as opposed to, for example, feeling vaguely anxious all the time, or expressing outrage about things, or framing themselves as more clever and rational than I am, or something else), and different strategies are optimal for each (and highly differentially so… what works for someone who’s just scared and ignorant is actively a mistake for someone who wants to control my behavior for their own benefit, and vice-versa)
But even with that revision, I think in most cases we care about it’s not easy (because the easy cases tend to get corrected often enough that we care about them less, because only really bad thinkers fall for them). The cognitive biases and incentive structures that encourage believing messages like “issue de jure is causing the negative stuff I experience!” aren’t sound-byte-resolvable.
That said, what I try to do, both for others and for myself when I find myself veering towards this kind of crazy, is start by framing myself as a non-enemy and approaching people with compassion. Often that seems to damp down the worst excesses of fear/hostility, and sometimes it prevents outrage from having anything to latch on to without looking silly. It doesn’t work reliably, though, and sometimes it fails disaterously, and at best all it does is create a space where a different message can be received ungarbled… which is necessary, but not sufficient.
Is there some easily communicable message here for doomsayers that stands a decent chance of kick-starting the “Oy, was I mistaken!” part of their brains into gear?
I think that’s a little bit of a wrong question.
I’d be more inclined to discard the category “doomsayers” and instead categorize people, not by the behavior, but by the intent… different people doomsay for importantly different reasons, and not all people motivated by each of those reasons necessarily actually doomsay (as opposed to, for example, feeling vaguely anxious all the time, or expressing outrage about things, or framing themselves as more clever and rational than I am, or something else), and different strategies are optimal for each (and highly differentially so… what works for someone who’s just scared and ignorant is actively a mistake for someone who wants to control my behavior for their own benefit, and vice-versa)
But even with that revision, I think in most cases we care about it’s not easy (because the easy cases tend to get corrected often enough that we care about them less, because only really bad thinkers fall for them). The cognitive biases and incentive structures that encourage believing messages like “issue de jure is causing the negative stuff I experience!” aren’t sound-byte-resolvable.
That said, what I try to do, both for others and for myself when I find myself veering towards this kind of crazy, is start by framing myself as a non-enemy and approaching people with compassion. Often that seems to damp down the worst excesses of fear/hostility, and sometimes it prevents outrage from having anything to latch on to without looking silly. It doesn’t work reliably, though, and sometimes it fails disaterously, and at best all it does is create a space where a different message can be received ungarbled… which is necessary, but not sufficient.
(And yes, it was intentional.)