I just feel like you have an extremely low opinion of the people you're talking about trying to convince, which is something you should generally try to avoid; if you act like you have contempt for someone, you will never convince them of anything.
I'm far from contempt when it comes to people who are cultural relativists not being convinced by reason.
There nothing contemptful about recognizing that another person wants to be happy and helping them to be happy.
I don't let my emotions interfere with my reasoning on that level. I don't let myself get blinded by compassion. I don't act based on the belief that people should be rational. I have read enough cognitive psychology to know that they aren't.
I think this is a classic example where arguments alone don't do much. You don't like cultural relativists on some level. You think you would need to feel contempt if you would recognize the finding of cognitive psychology about how people come to hold the beliefs that they do.
If I don't provide you with a way to not feel contempt while accepting cognitive psychology ideas about how humans come to hold the beliefs that they do, I won't convince you because you have something to lose on a emotional level.
if you act like you have contempt for someone, you will never convince them of anything.
At the moment I'm not trying to convince them. I'm want to convince you.
It's less than two weeks ago that a woman with a New Age background asked me whether I teach meditation somewhere. I don't have any problem with interacting in that environment.
I'm afraid I haven't properly designed the Muggles Studies course I introduced at my local Harry Potter fan club. Last Sunday we finally had our second class (after wasted months of insistence and delays), and I introduced some very basic descriptions of common biases, while of course emphasizing the need to detect them in ourselves before trying to detect them in other people. At some point, which I didn't completely notice, the discussion changed from an explanation of the attribution bias into a series of multicultural examples in favor of moral relativity. I honestly don't know how that happened, but as more and more attendants voiced their comments, I started to fear someone would irreversibly damage the lessons I was trying to teach. They basically stopped short of calling the scientific method a cultural construct, at which point I'm sure I would have snapped. I don't know what to make of this. Some part of me tries to encourage me and make me put more effort into showing these people the need for more reductionism in their worldview, but another part of me just wants to give them up as hopeless postmodernists. What should I do?