Whoops, apologies, none of the above. I meant to use the adage “you can’t wake someone who is pretending to sleep” similarly to the old “It is difficult to make a man understand a thing when his salary depends on not understanding it.” A person with vested interests is like a person pretending to sleep. They are predisposed not to acknowledge arguments misaligned with their vested interests, even if they do in reality understand and agree with the logic of those arguments. The most classic form of bias.
I was trying to express that in order to make any impression on such a person you would have to enter the conversation on a vector at least partially aligned with their vested interests, or risk being ignored at best and creating an enemy at worst. Metaphorically, this is like entering into the false “dream” of the person pretending to sleep.
Whoops, apologies, none of the above. I meant to use the adage “you can’t wake someone who is pretending to sleep” similarly to the old “It is difficult to make a man understand a thing when his salary depends on not understanding it.” A person with vested interests is like a person pretending to sleep. They are predisposed not to acknowledge arguments misaligned with their vested interests, even if they do in reality understand and agree with the logic of those arguments. The most classic form of bias.
I was trying to express that in order to make any impression on such a person you would have to enter the conversation on a vector at least partially aligned with their vested interests, or risk being ignored at best and creating an enemy at worst. Metaphorically, this is like entering into the false “dream” of the person pretending to sleep.