I cannot tell you how many times I have had to explain to a MAGA person that Lithium isn't a rare mineral and the biggest sources of Lithium for the US are Australia and Chile. Just looked at the Monroney sticker for my Model Y. 90% of Parts was sourced from US, Canada, Mexico. The supply chain for EV's is continuing to be on-shored in the US. This is just cutting off your nose to spite your face. Seems to be a common tactic of the GOP.
While I
still get sucked into feeding the trolls sometimes (because if I was missing the full scoop on the truth of the situation, I would want to know!!), my first audit question is generally this:
Is this person seeking answers, or an argument?
It all starts with the Excuse Matrix
™:
Are they seeking the truth, or fake news?
Fake news comes in 3 flavors:
1. What we
hope to be true (Hopium!)
2. What we
fear to be true (anxiety!)
3. What we have already
pre-decided to be true (stupidity! lol)
When you talk to someone who is
looking for an argument:
1. They are not seeking answers
2. They have already pre-decided what is true, or else are so locked into hope or fear that they are unable to think clearly
3. They just want to enjoy picking a fight & being "right". People "love to hate" & feel justified "hating the haters", which is really just a thin disguise for excusing being angry.
Confirmation bias is a POWERFUL drug! In addition:
1. Not everyone has the ability to differentiate between opinion & facts
2. Not everyone has the ability to see beyond their own beliefs
3. Once people publicly state something, they feel the need to
defend it, so changing publicly is hard because we feel the need to defend ourselves so that we don't
look bad
A big indicator of where people stand is what kind of perspective they have on the situation:
1. Pot of beans
2. Cans of beans
If you're making bean chili, you need a lot of different beans. Being able to look at the recipe in a nuanced way & have discussions about the individual pars is a sign of an open-minded person because they are open to learning new information & seeing new perspectives! But some people have a very rigid, black & white, all-or-nothing fixed perspective, aka "the WHOLE pot of beans, or bust". It's hard not to get sucked into these types of discussions when you have more details to share so that the other person doesn't walk around in ignorance with incorrect information! There are usually a bunch of standard signs:
1. They want to have an argument, not a discussion
2. They engage in "bad faith" arguments
3. They want to force you to have a different discussion that what you want to talk about & try to pigeon-hole you into a binary discussion instead of a nuanced one because they have a strong need for people to publicly agree with them
4. They remove all context from the discussion & take what you say negatively
5.They extrapolate judgmental stories
This behavior generally stems from a few root causes:
1. Emotional problems (ex. driven by anger)
2. Mental problems (unable to comprehend the data)
3. Troll behavior (cranks, sociopaths, narcissists, etc.)
4. Uneducated on the topic in question, but unwilling to learn more to become fully educated
It mostly all boils dow to the pyschology of how people see any given situation:
1. With a
fixed mindset ("I can't & here's why")
2. With a
growth mindset ("I can & I'm willing to learn & to keep trying")
Self-limiting talk turns into self-limiting behavior, which becomes a trap we all get sucked into sometimes because we all want people to see OUR perspective! It's tough too because ALL communication is persuasion & some people are VERY persuasive! My audit filter goes like this:
1. Just because someone says it,
2. Even if they say it with confidence,
3. Even if they
really believe it,
...doesn't mean it's true!
A relevant discussion point here is Elon Musk, who easily the most visible player in the EV space currently. I think he does a lot of cool stuff with technology! Does that mean that I feel need to
defend his non-EV behavior, as opposed to
auditing what he does that is relevant to
my interests? Does that mean I need to hate-stalk him politically 24/7 or publicly protest him? Does that mean that I need to have a para-social fanboy relationship with him? Meh. There will
always be public figures doing crazy stuff. The news cycle is literally spewing that stuff 24/7/365!
But some people are "pot of beans" people who think that everyone needs to get onboard with THEIR perspective, have the same opinions they do, share those opinions IRL or online, agree with those opinions publicly, etc., or else they'll childishly vilify you lol.
Personally, I have low expectations for most politicians & ultra-wealthy capitalists. I don't
expect them to behave well. There are plenty of perfectly reasonable causes to commit yourself to: save the whales, save the starving kids, save Ukraine, save Gaza, protest healthcare, clean up the plastic in the ocean, etc. I fully support protesting as a right & think that people should follow their heart, and even if I agree with someone's perspective, that doesn't mean that I want to dedicate
my life & donate
my free time to that particular cause! Because the reality is that the world has
always been a weird place lol. Case in point:
Anyway, good luck with your educational efforts!! Sometimes people will honestly listen & sometimes people just feel the need to pick a fight ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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