Every so often, I hear the complaint from some readers, usually in the context of complaining about my posting style on issues I care a lot about, such as countering the anti-vaccine movement or pseudoscientific alt-med modalities, that I’m just “preaching to the converted” and not changing any minds. While there may be some element of that, it’s not true that I don’t change minds. In the context of the subject of yesterday’s post, however, I realize that changing people’s minds is very hard, because we humans have numerous defense mechanisms to deflect such efforts.
When I hear such charges now, I think I’ll just refer the one doing the complaining to this video:
Actually, I like to think I do a lot more than just “preach to the converted.”