Getting Fact-ed?

Some folks want to fact you to death. What they don't realize is the strategy doesn't work.

Grasshopper Notes are the writings from America's Best Known Hypnotherapist John Morgan. His podcasts contain his most responded to essays and blog posts from the past two decades. 

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Transcript

Follow along using the transcript.

Transcript

Getting Fact-ed?

Here's a little known fact: Facts won’t sway anyone who has an opposing agenda, no matter how accurate your facts are.

Have you ever noticed when you produce incontrovertible facts to some folks they move the goal post and say something like, “what about blah, blah, blah?” that has nothing to do with the topic being discussed.

Pivoting off the topic is an Olympic sport for many. The biggest offenders I’ve witnessed are politicians. During my radio days I interviewed everyone from local councilmen to candidates for president and, frankly, wanted to wash afterwards. I traveled a crooked road trying to get a straight answer.

Just getting someone to acknowledge a fact that doesn’t match up with their narrative is a losing proposition.

Is there a solution? I’m not sure. But I know this for sure: you can’t fact people into submission. It doesn’t work. It seems the most successful convincers rely more on emotion than they do on facts.

The less successful persuaders believe if they come up with just one more fact, that will be the convincer. Sorry, emotions don’t pay attention to facts.

I guess this is my way of cautioning you not to engage a true believer in a fact based argument.

I’m actually amazed that some truly smart people continue with a strategy that’s clearly not working. Reminds me of a story . . .

Back during the Vietnam War, people, especially politicians, would constantly argue the pros and cons of the conflict. No one was convincing the other even though the facts were the facts. What it took for the argument to stop and the war to end was TV networks beginning to show actual battle scenes on film. This action bypassed the facts and brought what was far away closer to home. It was one of the best emotional, convincing strategies that TV ever came up with.

You can continue to argue the facts but notice it rarely, if ever, works.

Joe Friday may have used “just the facts” to solve homicide cases, but you’ll murder your mission if you rely solely on the facts.

An old lawyer axiom comes to mind: “If you have the law on your side, hammer the law. If you have the facts, hammer the facts. If you have neither the law or the facts, hammer the table.”

All the best,

John