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'There's No Good Way To Kill a Bad Idea' (qz.com)
The world is filled with bad, baseless, factually inaccurate ideas that refuse to die. From an article: Philosopher Russell Blackford, a lecturer at the University of Newcastle in Australia, tweeted about this phenomenon earlier this month: "The momentum behind bad ideas can be enormous -- they can plunge on, gathering force, long after receiving devastating criticism." If you've ever found yourself unable to halt someone else's idiotic plans once they were already in motion, you're not alone. Whether you're a politician trying to make congress see sense or simply a manager trying to halt an atrocious team-building plan, there's simply no foolproof way to kill a terrible idea. Blackford blames the momentum behind bad ideas on cascade effects. Yes, individuals are prone to making poor decisions for emotional or biased reasons (known as "cognitive heuristics") and this irrationality is part of the problem. But there's also a broader sociological issue, in that others' opinions carry a huge amount of weight in influencing our views. A cultural consensus -- even without proper evidence -- can form pretty quickly. If one person convinces a second, says Blackford, then a third person will be far more likely to agree with the majority view. This effect exponentially increases with each person who agrees with the others. "We soon have a sociological effect whereby everyone knows that, say, a certain movie is very good or very bad, even though everyone might have 'known' the exact opposite if only a few early voices had been different," says Blackford.
This concept is also know as "escalation of commitment", where you feel you're welded to an idea and backing down will cause you to look bad. It's especially common in groupthink scenarios.
The Challenger disaster is one that comes to mind almost immediately. Plenty of people thought the launch was a bad idea, but groupthink set in and the launch proceeded.
I don't know about you, but to me, 174 Petawatts of untapped energy seems like it should be able to power the planet. Sure, one has to determine how one stores-up energy to use when the planet's rotation obscures the sun, but given that fossil-fuel-based power required all sorts of intermediate steps to get where we are today anyway, this does not seem like an impossible task.
There are more ways of storing potential energy than chemical batteries.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I use this example when talking to people about anti-vaxxers. You can't just say vaccines don't cause autism. You are much better off talking about how bad the diseases are that can be cured by vaccines. Alternatively, you could talk about the research on the efficacy of vaccines in preventing diseases, or even just discuss the history of vaccines and Jonas Salk. What you can't do, is tell somebody "not X." All they hear is "X." Then I tell my friend who I am explaining this to, "Did you know that JFK was not a homosexual?" And whoever I'm talking to, no matter their political bent, instantly starts thinking, "wait... was he?"
By stating the opposite of a thing, you reinforce the original thing -- even if they weren't thinking about it in the first place! Imagine how much stronger that reinforcement is, if they already had that notion.
I forget where I first learned this trick. Probably on this godforsaken forum. But it always causes people to realize they have been arguing with others the wrong way. If you know somebody is wrong, you can deflect to something you know is right. You can ask them to elaborate on exactly how they know the thing they say they know. You can try to find common ground. You can state facts that support a counterargument, and let them connect the dots. But if you just say the opposite of their argument, you will not succeed.
It's a hard lesson to remember and use in real life, because human nature is to say "nu-uh." But if you can do a little verbal jujitsu, you are much more likely to succeed in getting people to see your point of view.
(I just noticed this whole post is sort of meta, since I'm disagreeing with the premise of the article without actually saying so.)