pjeby, sorry I wasn't clear, I should have given some context. I am referencing system 1 and 2 as simplified categories of thinking as used by cognitive science, particularly in behavioral economics. Here's Daniel Kahneman discussing them. I'm not sure what you're referring to with decoys and shields, which I'll just leave at that.
To add to my quoted statement, workarounds are incredibly hard, and focusing on reasoning (system 2) about an issue or belief leaves few cycles for receiving and sending social cues and signals. While reasoning, we can pick up those cues and signals, but they'll break our concentration, so we tend to ignore them while reasoning carefully. The automatic, intuitive processing of the face interferes with the reasoning task; e.g. we usually look somewhere else when reasoning during a conversation. To execute a workaround strategy, however, we need to be attuned to the other person.
When I refer to belief, I'm not referring to fear of the dark or serial killers, or phobias. Those tend to be conditioned responses--the person knows the belief is irrational--and they can be treated easily enough with systematic desensitization and a little CBT thrown in for good measure. Calling them beliefs isn't wrong, but since the person usually knows they're irrational, they're outside my intended scope of discussion: beliefs that are perceived by the believer to be rational.
People are automatically resistant to being asked to question their beliefs. Usually it's perceived as unfair, if not an actual attack on them as a person: those beliefs are associated with their identity, which they won't abandon outright. We shouldn't expect them to. It's unrealistic.
What should we do, then? Play at the periphery of belief. To reformulate the interaction as a parable: We'll always lose if we act like the wind, trying to blow the cloak off the traveller. If we act like the sun, the traveller might remove his cloak on his own. I'll think about putting a post together on this.
I'm not sure what you're referring to with decoys and shields, which I'll just leave at that.
My hypothesis is that reasoning as we know it evolved as a mechanism to both persuade others, and to defend against being persuaded by others.
Consider priming, which works as long as you're not aware of it and therefore defending against it. But it makes no sense to evolve a mechanism to avoid being primed, unless the priming mechanism were being exploited by our tribe-mates. (After all, they're the only ones besides us with the language skill to trigger it.)
I...
A currently existing social norm basically says that everyone has the right to an opinion on anything, no matter how little they happen to know about the subject.
But what if we had a social norm saying that by default, people do not have the right to an opinion on anything? To earn such a right, they ought to have familiarized themselves on the topic. The familiarization wouldn't necessarily have to be anything very deep, but on the topic of e.g. controversial political issues, they'd have to have read at least a few books' worth of material discussing the question (preferrably material from both sides of the political fence). In scientific questions where one needed more advanced knowledge, you ought to at least have studied the field somewhat. Extensive personal experience on a subject would also be a way to become qualified, even if you hadn't studied the issue academically.
The purpose of this would be to enforce epistemic hygiene. Conversations on things such as public policy are frequently overwhelmed by loud declarations of opinion from people who, quite honestly, don't know anything on the subject they have a strong opinion on. If we had in place a social norm demanding an adequate amount of background knowledge on the topic before anyone voiced an opinion they expected to be taken seriously, the signal/noise ratio might be somewhat improved. This kind of a social norm does seem to already be somewhat in place in many scientific communities, but it'd do good to spread it to the general public.
At the same time, there are several caveats. As I am myself a strong advocate on freedom of speech, I find it important to note that this must remain a *social* norm, not a government-advocated one or anything that is in any way codified into law. Also, the standards must not be set *too* high - even amateurs should be able to engage in the conversation, provided that they know at least the basics. Likewise, one must be careful that the principle isn't abused, with "you don't have a right to have an opinion on this" being a generic argument used to dismiss any opposing claims.