TheOtherDave comments on Fun and Games with Cognitive Biases - Less Wrong

62 Post author: Cosmos 18 February 2011 08:38PM

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Comment author: David_Gerard 03 March 2011 02:35:54PM -1 points [-]

The way to actually use confirmation bias to convince people of things is to present beliefs you want to transmit to them as evidence for things they already believe. Then confirmation bias will lead them to believe this new evidence without question, because they wish to believe it to confirm their existing beliefs.

Yep. This works pretty well, too. Useful phrases: "As you already know ..." "... and you know all this already" "I haven't told you anything you didn't know already".

Comment author: TheOtherDave 03 March 2011 02:46:03PM *  2 points [-]

Leading questions are good for this too, though they take a bit more care.

That is, if you pick the right questions phrased the right way, then when people answer you can follow up with "Enthusiastic agreement! In other words, $thing-I-wanted-to-convince-you-of. Exactly! Praise, praise, praise! Now I'm going to talk distractingly for a little while so you don't have a chance to examine the identity I'm asserting. Oh look: a monkey!"

Comment author: David_Gerard 04 March 2011 11:56:47AM 2 points [-]

This definitely has to go into the children's picture book My First Machiavelli.

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