Transformative Change
In this podcast, you will listen to the award-winning iconic leader Errol Norlum explore various cross-cutting topics crucial for driving transformational change in various fields. The discussion will cover diverse subjects such as sustainability, innovation, leadership, social justice, technology, etc. We aim to provide our listeners with valuable insights and practical tools to empower them to create a long-lasting global impact.
Whether you are a student, a professional, an activist, or a curious mind, this podcast is for you. Join us on this journey of discovery, growth, and impact as we explore the frontiers of knowledge and innovation and strive to improve the world.
Transformative Change
The Journey from Cognitive Bias to Mindset Change
What if the willingness to change your mind was actually a sign of strength and intelligence? Ever wondered how much 'wrong' you need to estimate yourself to be in order to change your opinion? Join us as we embark on a thought-provoking exploration into the concept of changing one's mind and the importance of an open and flexible mindset versus strong opinion. We'll tackle the challenge of decision-making in uncertainty, the fear of being wrong, and ponder on the right time to act without having all the answers.
We'll take you through the maze of critical thinking tools, and the role of argumentation in effective communication. We also expose the underlying factors that make changing perspectives a daunting task - confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance, emotional attachments, and the notorious backfire effect. Changing one's mind isn't just a personal transformation. By the end of this episode, you'll realize its larger impact on our collective insights and decisions. So come along as we journey into the fascinating terrain of the mind and its capacity for change.
Welcome back to transformative change. Today's episode is going to be about changing your mind, and I'm going to try to do a bit more analysis and open thinking in this episode. How to change your mind. Some people believe that you need to have very strong opinions in order to get somewhere in life. Some people, on the other hand, are meaning that you need to have an open and flexible mindset in order to take in new information, in order to take the best and most informed decisions in life. These are sometimes contradicting viewpoints. We can talk about topics such as religion. Some people are extremely religious and they're very convinced that their religion is the right I'm not making any judgment whatsoever and some people are not religious at all. There are some people that believe that there is a God, or there are a God, and there are some people that believe that there isn't. And the question is how do you foster culture where information and knowledge are the basis for all decisions and all the insights? But let's get back to decision and changing your mind before we go down into this rabbit hole.
Speaker 1:I remember being in school. I think it was around year 11. So here in Sweden there was a gymnasium you go nine mandatory, or now it's 10 mandatory year up to grade nine three more years and I think I was my second year in the gymnasium where I was watching this debate on the TV and there were two people discussing and they were arguing or debating over a topic. You remember what it was, but I think it was. We were watching this for a class. It goes back and forward arguments, counter arguments, and then all of a sudden one of the person says you are right, I give up. And I was amazed at seeing that, because when that person said you were right, I give up, the basically discussion ended. They were having fundamentally different viewpoints in the beginning, but at some point this person said I'm changed my mind, this is no longer my position. I've changed my position. Is that good or is it bad? Is that a weak person that doesn't argue hard enough with their viewpoints or finding better arguments? Or are they extremely smart so they realize when they are wrong and quickly absorb that new information to have better viewpoints or better standings? That's what we're going to discuss today and we're going to go a little bit into some of the toolings as well to drive these type of discussions a little bit on the there as well, but hopefully just exploring further about the topic.
Speaker 1:But first reminder of what this podcast is all about. This podcast transformative change is really about major shifts in environments that significantly changes the characteristics or the outcomes. This type of change brings about deep and lasting transformation that fundamentally changed the way things are done, the way people think or view certain situations, or the direction in which a society or organization is headed. The goal of transformative change is to improve the overall well-being of individuals, communities or to address systematic problems or inequalities. In this podcast we will digest cross-cutting topics that are needed to drive the transformational change in the world. No areas are off-limit and the purpose is to help you in your journey towards creating long-lasting impact.
Speaker 1:So, having done that introduction now, I once read a quote that said it's good to stand for something or you'll fall for everything. Now let's go one step back and analyze what that means. So basically, that quote goes into saying it's better to have a strong opinion, otherwise you're going to adopt everybody else's opinion. And I think, from a motivational perspective, sure it sounds good. You have to stand for something, stand your ground, be strong. But when we talk about knowledge in general, can you be 100% sure that you are right about something, or can you be 99.999% sure, and there's always going to be a small chance of you being wrong? How much wrong, percentage wise, do you have to estimate yourself to be in order to change your opinion, and what is a certain opinion or viewpoint and what's an uncertain one? Is it really good to stand for something or is it good to have an open and flexible mindset? But listening to my words, you probably already understand where I am in this.
Speaker 1:I, of course, take the stand now, here, initially, that it is better to be flexible, it is better to have an open mindset and to believe that there is a possibility that I'm wrong. And the more I learn, the more I understand. And if I have a very strong opinion, then the fall might be very hard as well. But when you don't have a strong opinion about right or wrong, or do or don't, we ever get to action. We ever get to result. We know that the world is changed by individuals that have a very strong opinion, a very strong belief, a conviction, and persistent towards those goals. So how do you handle this? That can be perceived potentially as unwillingness or uncertainness, or a viewpoint that nothing is certain, so I'm not going to do anything.
Speaker 1:I think finding this point in life where you take decision in uncertainty and you are okay with uncertainty, it's okay to say I'm going to try without knowing. You don't have to wait until you know before you try. Let's try that one more. It's okay to try before knowing, and sometimes you have to try before knowing as well. This is a hard standpoint, because at what point do you just do it and what point do you have enough information to just know it? You don't have to know something to get started, but in order to know something, you have to get started. Okay, that was about that quote. And then, when it comes to argumentation and back a little bit to so, how do you argue for your viewpoint?
Speaker 1:In school and university I took a rhetorics class. Penguin made the most impact on me and actually has been one of the greatest tool for me has been around communication, argumentation techniques, how to build proper arguments and counter arguments, which are essential components of critical thinking and effective communication. It has made a tremendous impact on me in life, not just how I talk, but also how I assess information and how I take these pieces of information, analyze them, weigh them and then take a point of view, but also being willing to constantly do that, which is challenging yourself, because the default is falling back to what you've been taught and not question, probably sometimes since you were a kid. Once somebody told me that do you know how many things they learned out in school, when you were there, that are wrong? And they started going through different facts, everything from the origin of life, the geographies, political viewpoints, history. They were wrong because science had gone in a different direction, but I hadn't updated my point of view because somebody told me that in school. I took it as a fact because that's what they said, and then I put it back in my memory bank and I didn't challenge it and I took that as my viewpoint. So challenging yourself constantly with these arguments, counter arguments and critical thinking in general is key to being good at assessing information and having a flexible mindset.
Speaker 1:I think that our arguments and counter arguments play a significant role in various fields. You see it coming back in philosophy, debates, science and, of course, the everyday life, when you have discussions at home or in the workplace, etc. And how you drive that. But how do they really work when you talk about argumentation? So an argument is a structured presentation of reasons or evidence aimed at persuading someone to accept a particular conclusion or viewpoint, so that, of course, goes back to. You have to have a viewpoint, you have to have a thesis that you're driving.
Speaker 1:Arguments are composed of two main parts. So you have the premises on the one side. These are the statements or propositions that provide a basis for the conclusion. They are intended to provide evidence, support or reasons for accepting these conclusions. And then, of course, you have the conclusion in itself. This is the statement that the argument is attempting to establish. It's the main point of viewpoint that you, as an arguer, want the audience, or, in some cases, your opponent in a debate, to accept.
Speaker 1:A well-constructed argument is one in which the premises logically lead to the conclusions, so you can follow them. You have the premises and you lead them up to the conclusions. This means that if the premises are true, the conclusion must also be true. However, the effectiveness of an argument depends on the quality of its premises, so the logical structure of the reasoning and the relevance of the evidence presented. And then, on the other hand, you have the counter arguments, and the counter arguments are the responses that challenges or opposes the claims made in an argument. They are intended to highlight weaknesses, flaws, alternative perspective that the original argument may not have considered.
Speaker 1:And if you're listening now and you're thinking oh, this is very technical, but I think we do it, and why I bring this up with arguments and counter arguments and debate technique, is because it is the basis of critical thinking and changing your point of mind or your viewpoints. Because if somebody comes with an argument saying that this person should be the president that's their viewpoint that I want to oppose and then they come with a bunch of different premises that he should become the president because he is a white male. He should become the president because he is a successful business owner. He should become the president because he has had a successful TV show as well. These might be premises on why a certain person should become president in one person's mind. Then it's important to understand how do you argue such a viewpoint? You might come up with counter arguments towards those things.
Speaker 1:Oh, argument towards, or a counter argument towards he's a successful businessman. You might come up with a critical examination saying well, wait a minute, this person is actually not a successful businessman Because you can see that he inherited the majority of the money that he has invested and those investments actually hasn't yielded any good return on investments. So you take that argument as well and you do that by all of these different arguments and then, when you've taken those premises out, all you're left with is a viewpoints that's unfounded. And if the person on the other side is a person that can accept and not have a hard core that they protect with arguments or premises and doesn't provide any value, they will change their viewpoint, at least if they understand how argumentation works. So if they understand at one point that oh, there has been counterarguments, every single one of my arguments or premises for those arguments, I should change my point of view.
Speaker 1:So if we teach how proper argumentation is down in school, which is most commonly is not, in most of the world debates argumentations, viewpoint, critical thinking will become more important than the statement people make, because everything is a constant discussion and changing your point of view shouldn't be a big thing If you're overproven, because you can change it back if the evidence points in that direction. And when you scale all of these things down, you do critical examination of arguments, you strengthening argumentation. So you're engaging with counterarguments, can strengthen the argument by addressing potential objections, providing responses to them, broadening different perspectives, refinement. So when you do all of these things, you have a living discussion. We're getting to the truth or getting to the most real argument or viewpoint is more important than the viewpoint itself. That's what I'm after, because what I want to get to is the truth, or as much as we can claim to be the truth, because there will be new evidence and research and science will bring new arguments and experience and history will teach us new things constantly. Some things are more proven than other, but everything should be questions in these debates from time to time and we should have an open mindset for that. So in all of this, it is important but we can do all we want with these things In the intellectual context a change of these arguments and counterarguments.
Speaker 1:It fosters a deeper exploration of ideas, promotes these critical thinking skills and contributes to the advancements of knowledge and understanding. And that's my point of view, because if we stand for something, we refuse to accept the counterarguments towards those things, well, what are we except really, really stubborn? So can you change people's mind if they have these type of points? That's hard to change. Of course you can change someone's mind, but it's challenging. People's beliefs and viewpoints are often deep rooted in their personal experiences, the values, the upbringing, the cultural background and social circus they move in. I think you should go and look on different perspectives if you want to explore that a little bit more. But I think the perspectives comes into changing your point of view as well.
Speaker 1:Additionally, on top of this, you can have a lot of cognitive biases. Emotional attachments and natural resistance to change can make it difficult to persuade someone to adopt a different perspective. So if we look on that, let's go through a few things. That makes this hard. On a higher level. So you have something called confirmation bias, where people tend to seek out information that confirms their existing beliefs, while ignoring or dismissing information that contradicts them, and this bias can make it challenging to introduce new evidence to challenge their viewpoints. You can have cognitive dissonance when confronted with information that contradicts your beliefs your current beliefs, that is. Individuals may experience cognitive dissonance, a state of mental discomfort caused by holding contradictory ideas. To reduce this discomfort, people might reject new information or seek ways to rationalize their existing beliefs.
Speaker 1:Mental attachments and beliefs can be tied to emotions and personal identity, so challenging someone's deeply held beliefs might trigger emotional responses making them resistant to change their mind. Social influence of people often align their beliefs with those of their social groups to fit in and maintain a sense of belonging. I'm not sure if you had the social circles in your school I know I had where people dressed the same punk rockers, hip hoppers, skaters. You see American movies where people have a tendency of looking at those who do sports, or the nerds as they call them, and all of those are different social circles that might foster different beliefs that might be hard to change, because that means that you change your entire identity. You have something called a backfire effect as well. In some cases, presenting evidence that contradict someone's beliefs can lead to a backfire effect when they become even more entrenched in their original viewpoints as a defensive mechanism. So all of these things together requires effort and putting in mental energy. If people don't have that mental energy, it's easier for them to stick with familiar beliefs rather than to invest time and effort into reevaluating and adopting these new perspectives.
Speaker 1:You can get close if it's important to change someone's point of view. As I said earlier, critical thinking and teaching that in a very early age. I think that is key to ensure. But if you are out for this and you want to change somebody's mind and this might be a completely different episode where we go into more techniques like that build trust, have an active listening, present proper evidence, work with emotions, framing the message, trusted sources, give them time, plant seeds. As you can see, it's a process of changing somebody's mind. We're ending the end of this episode. If you're interested in changing point of views, how do you foster this type of culture? There's a lot more to be done. There's a lot of science on this topic as well.
Speaker 1:I'm going to have another episode talking a little bit on the contribution from a philosophy perspective. A little bit further down the line, I'm going to talk about Karl Popper if you've heard about him, one researcher that really changed my mind in school and universities. I'm going to go a little bit deeper into that. Remember that changing somebody's mind or having a good dialogue will not happen overnight, and sometimes you might be fighting a course that's not really going to happen, and it's important to approach the process with empathy and respect. Ultimately, individuals have their own beliefs and the decision to change someone's mind is the individuals themselves.
Speaker 1:So, end of the day, let's have good discussions. Let's have open mind and let's have debates. Let's have argumentations. Let's not be confrontational. Let's have discussions. Let's make sure the best arguments and the best viewpoints in terms of having the best premises and the logical conclusions are the one that has the best ground, not just the one that attracts and appeals as logical conclusions. Thank you so much for listening in on this episode. If you have any questions, feel free to email me at infoaraldse. Love to get feedback. I live for feedback. If you have any topics that you think that I should bring up, please email me and I'm more than happy to evaluate them. It's been my pleasure to record this episode. Until next time, take care.
