Yvain's blog: Epistemic learned helplessness.
A friend in business recently complained about his hiring pool, saying that he couldn't find people with the basic skill of believing arguments. That is, if you have a valid argument for something, then you should accept the conclusion. Even if the conclusion is unpopular, or inconvenient, or you don't like it. He told me a good portion of the point of CfAR was to either find or create people who would believe something after it had been proven to them.
And I nodded my head, because it sounded reasonable enough, and it wasn't until a few hours later that I thought about it again and went "Wait, no, that would be the worst idea ever."
I don't think I'm overselling myself too much to expect that I could argue circles around the average high school dropout. Like I mean that on almost any topic, given almost any position, I could totally demolish her and make her look like an idiot. Reduce her to some form of "Look, everything you say fits together and I can't explain why you're wrong, I just know you are!" Or, more plausibly, "Shut up I don't want to talk about this!"
That's a strawman argument. You're implying your idea is the only on she'd ever hear. If that same highschool dropout (not sure why she has to be a girl you feminist) were to hear more ideas on the subject, with her opinion conforming with the winning argument, eventually she'd land on the correct one. I'm sure there are a few accepted incorrect scientific theories running around at the moment, but we have to accept them while they're the best we have in order to come to the next logical conclusion.