While doing my usual doomscrolling through my go to app of pain and suffering (Twitter- now formally known as X) I saw a compelling post that I resonated with me on many levels that articulated many of my thoughts with a clarity I'd struggled to find:
As I wrote about last year, people *do* change their minds when presented with good arguments
— #Dan Williams (#@danwilliamsphil)
10:27 AM • Sep 29, 2025
The article he posted under the tweet is certainly a must-read and substantive, but I want to add my thoughts on why this cynical perspective that people do not change their minds when presented with rational argument occurs and persists, why it is fundamentally mistaken, and why it is important we know it’s wrong
A Case in Point
Think of the most conservative person you can imagine, let us say that given most political issues and ideological stances that this person is going to lean right (that is, they will side with what the general stance of those who are right wing are). Assuming you are going to argue with this person on a specific issue, say, the death penalty for instance. Do you think that you would be able to convince them of a stance pertaining to the death penalty that would be contrary to general position of the death penalty held by the right (for example abolishing the death penalty instead of keeping it)?
Think about the answer you just gave to that question would you give the same answer if instead of just a one-time meeting to convince them that you would argue with this person again and again numerous times, do you think that you could convince them?
Okay now what about if you had to argue with a theist, let’s say they were raised in theism since they were young, and they hold to classical theism (All-good, all-powerful God, monotheistic, etc). Do you think that all other things considered you could be able to convince them of a position contrary to classical theism, say, atheism, pantheism, or something of the like?
A large majority probably thought that you could not do so, that this person would be so entrenched into their beliefs that any arguments you made would fall on deaf ears. In fact, we could flip it, have the conservative become a leftist and the theist become an anti-theist and a many of you would probably keep your answers the same. How come? Well, there are a few reasons we could sketch for this
What Makes People Think This Way?
Now aside from anecdotes of arguments we’ve had (which are plentiful) it is actually quite understandable why people think this way because it is due to a phenomenon that we all experience more or less, namely the concept of cognitive bias.
As humans we recognize the effects of cognitive bias on an individual level in our everyday experiences, at some point or another we experience things like cognitive dissonance (a discomfort when presented evidence contradictory to our beliefs) or have tended to generalize with no real justification behind it. All of these can be explained by some sort of cognitive bias
See, our capacity for belief is just as potent if not more so than our capacity for rationality so much so that our minds are geared towards belief-preservation. In fact, Kevin Currie-Knight lays it out for us quite well in his entry on philosophy now Humans, the believing animal:
(a) People tend to defend beliefs they hold much more often and enthusiastically than they honestly entertain arguments against their beliefs;
(b) The more a person is challenged on beliefs important to them, the more anger is likely to seep into the discussion; and
(c) People are rarely happy to be presented with insinuations that they are wrong or to admit flaws in their belief. (Note the asymmetry between what happens in arguments, and the elation that often happens in echo-chamber spaces where people collectively confirm a belief they share.)
In general, we can conclude that from cognitive biases that people are inherently difficult to persuade because they are biologically predisposed to be so but from this can we infer that it is the case that people are not persuaded by rational or logical argumentation in most given moments? I don’t think so, and there is a great amount of explanation for why.
People ARE persuaded by rational arguments
Now our friend Dan Williams said it brilliantly once more:
On the issue of whether people change their minds in response to new information or “logical arguments”: You have to understand that people don’t approach an issue or conversation as blank slates. They have a vast, interconnected web of beliefs, assumptions, expectations, values, and concepts, much of which they would find difficult to articulate explicitly and has emerged over many years, shaping how they interpret and respond to new information and integrate it into their worldview. It would be highly irrational to throw away that worldview at the first encounter with contrary evidence or arguments. But this is often precisely what those who complain about human irrationality expect people to do. And when this expectation is violated, they conclude that humans are too irrational to be persuaded by new information. In reality, what looks like a failure to respond to new information is often simply a failure of observers to understand what it’s like to have a radically different perspective on reality. That doesn’t mean that rational argument or persuasion is futile. It just normally takes time, happens gradually, and can be emotionally and socially uncomfortable, which is why good-faith, persuasive arguments are under-supplied.
Moreover, changing one’s mind is not just a matter of processing facts as we have established before with cognitive bias, it will involve renegotiating one’s identity. Beliefs rarely are isolated propositions but parts of emotional and logical ecosystems. To accept a new idea may feel, at some level, like betraying one’s community, former self, or sense of coherence. In any case we know that persuasion is an interpersonal act as much as it is an intellectual one
When argument is framed as combat, people naturally respond with defense rather than any sort of disinterested rational enterprise. That’s why many people when debating and arguing aim at creating conditions under which genuine reconsideration is possible.
Many times, we often overestimate the logical rigor of our own arguments as well when that unfortunately is typically not going to be the case, of course people are persuaded by rational arguments, if you presented someone an argument with the following form:
1. if P then Q
2. P
3. Therefore Q
example
1. If you hurt dogs, then you are evil
2. You hurt dogs
3. Therefore, you are evil
Most people right away would recognize that the conclusion would follow from the premises if the if all the premises were true, they at best would contest with the truth of individual premises. They would overwhelmingly (or almost certainly) entertain this as a rational argument. Now imagine you used deductive arguments with defensible premises and evidence over and over on that theist or the conservative for the death penalty, do you truly think that at the very least they would not begin to question and reconsider the truthfulness of their position? I would have to say they would
Why it is so important
This, in part, establishes the conditions for genuine dialogue. If you/others believe that your/others views are completely immovable, everyone will stop offering good-faith arguments and resort to rhetorical or disengagement or both. The minute you stop believing people can genuinely be persuaded by rational thought-out arguments, your discourse will likely devolve radically (just look at TikTok comment arguments)
This doesn’t mean that you or everyone else must be easily swayed it’s just that your convictions are earned through engagement with evidence and counterarguments.
Hey, who knows, maybe this article ended up changing your mind despite it probably being one piece of contradictory evidence, maybe it didn’t convince you in the slightest. Either way there are good reasons for both of those and when you look into and examine those reasons why you’ll quickly find why it seems like people cannot be persuaded by rational arguments rather than that actually being the case.
That’s all for now
Remi Kojo,
The Forensic Funnel