[Kequc]

My take away here is that we need to educate people in such a way they view ones' ability to change their position given new evidence as a positive. Like scientists do.

I guess I always felt people didn't value this trait but I needed to have it spelled out for me in this article. Why in the world would any person value themselves more having been right all along. Why wouldn't they care about educating themselves every day.

[slurry]

I have a couple of older relatives who were gentleman's-C athlete types at an Ivy League school. Majored in History or something. Both very successful in banking.

Some things they have in common are: they're both very slow to form an opinion, seldom have an opinion on anything they don't need to have an opinion about, very interested to hear new evidence or arguments about something they do have an interest in, and very gracious about letting you down gently if they do have to win an argument (even if they can be colossal dicks in many other respects). Uninformed people think they're dumb.

tl;dr Roger Sterling is the smartest person on Mad Men.

[wpietri]

Because arguments often end up being proxy battles for social status, and we're hardwired for those.

The book that really opened my eyes on this was de Waal's Chimpanzee Politics. And, perhaps just as importantly, a book about acting: Johnstone's Impro.

[mistercow]

The amount of education that requires is, unfortunately, tremendous. Learning to overcome instinctive thought patterns is difficult and requires dedication, and even at the end of all of that, you'll sometimes fail. Education can show people the way, but it can't force them to put in the practice.