We Must Learn to Re-Think

• "Mental horsepower doesn't guarantee mental dexterity. No matter how much brainpower you have, if you lack the motivation to change your mind, you'll miss many occasions to think again. Research reveals that the higher you score on an IQ test, the more likely you are to fall for stereotypes, because you're faster at recognizing patterns. And recent experiments suggest that the smarter you are, the more you might struggle to update your beliefs...Being good at thinking can make you worse at rethinking."
• "Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything." -George Bernard Shaw
• "The problem is that we live in a rapidly changing world, where we need to spend as much time rethinking as we do thinking. Rethinking is a skill set, but it's also a mindset."
• "Accept the fact that you're going to be wrong. Try to disprove yourself. When you're wrong, it's not something to be depressed about. Say, 'Hey, I discovered something!'" -Jean-Pierre Beugoms

How to Convince Others to Re-Think

• "A good debate is not a war. It's not even a tug-of-war, where you can drag your opponent to your side if you pull hard enough on the rope. It's more like a dance that hasn't been choreographed, negotiated with a partner who has a different set of steps in mind. If you try too hard to lead, your partner will resist. If you can adapt your moves to hers, and get her to do the same, you're more likely to end up in rhythm."
• "We won't have much luck changing other people's minds if we refuse to change ours. We can demonstrate openness by acknowledging where we agree with our critics and even what we've learned from them. Then, when we ask what views they might be willing to revise, we're not hypocrites."
• "Convincing other people to think again isn't just about making a good argument--it's about establishing that we have the right motives in doing so. When we concede that someone else has made a good point, we signal that we're not preachers, prosecutors, or politicians trying to advance an agenda. We're scientists trying to get to the truth."
• "The more reasons we put on the table, the easier it is for people to discard the shakiest one. Once they reject one of our justifications, they can easily dismiss our entire case."
• "The skilled negotiators rarely wen on offense or defense. Instead, they expressed curiosity with questions like 'So you don't see any merit in this proposal at all?'"
• "[W]e can rarely motivate someone else to change. We're better off helping them find their own motivation to change."

How to Handle Charged Conversations

• We often fall prey to binary bias, which presumes that there are only two sides to any given issue. "But when the only available options are black and white, it's natural to slip into a mentality of us versus them and to focus on the sides over the science. For those on the fence, when forced to choose a side, the emotional, political, and economic pressures tilt in favor of disengaging or dismissing the problem. To overcome binary bias, a good starting point is to become aware of the range of perspectives across a given spectrum."
• "As consumers of information, we have a role to play in embracing a more nuanced point of view. When we're reading, listening, or watching, we can learn to recognize complexity as a signal of credibility."
• "It's true that complexity doesn't always make for good sound bites, but it does seed great conversations."
• "The greater the distance between us and an adversary, the more likely we are to oversimplify their actual motives and invent explanations that stray far from their reality. What works is not perspective-taking but perspective-seeking: actually talking to people to gain insight into the nuances of their views."