The flip is elusive
For a generation after people realized that smoking would kill them, many smart, informed people still smoked. Then, many of them stopped.
After discovering that an expensive luxury good is made out of the same materials as a cheaper alternative, many people stick with the expensive one. And then they gradually stop going out of their way to pay more.
After a technology breakthrough makes it clear that a new approach is faster, cheaper and more reliable, many people stick with the old way. Until they don't.
And inevitably, it doesn't matter how much people discover about their favorite candidate, they seem impervious to revelations, facts and the opinions of others. For a while, sometimes a very long while. But then, they assert that all along they knew something was amiss and find a new person to align with.
Computers don't work this way. Cats don't have a relationship like this with hot stoves. Imaginary logical detectives always get the message the first time.
For the rest of us, though, the flip isn't something that happens at the first glance or encounter with new evidence.
This doesn't mean the evidence doesn't matter.
It means that we're bad at admitting we were wrong.
Bad at giving up one view of the world to embrace the other.
Mostly, we're bad at abandoning our peers, our habits and our view of ourselves.
If you want to change people's minds, you need more than evidence. You need persistence. And empathy. And mostly, you need the resources to keep showing up, peeling off one person after another, surrounding a cultural problem with a cultural solution.
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