Want to Be Taken Seriously? Take the Long View

One useful thing you can do to be objective in arguments is what I call take the long view.  So remind yourself that when you concede a point, when you say “You know what, I think you were right; I was wrong,” what you’re doing is making an investment in your ability to be taken seriously and listened to by people in the future. 

So if people know that you’re the kind of person who changes her mind or changes his mind when he or she feels the evidence warrants it then in the future if you don’t change your mind people know that you’re not just being stubborn.  It’s that you’ve thought about the question and you’ve genuinely, to the best of your abilities, concluded that the evidence doesn’t warrant you changing your mind.

In Their Own Words is recorded in Big Think’s studio.

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