Phil Fernbach

We often speak about that something can be true or false.

Most complex issues, what goes into a fact or a statistic or whatever it is, there's a lot of background and context that determines what that fact or statistic means.

And so part of the discussion is,

really has to get pretty deep, I think, in terms of understanding exactly what that fact is and what it's predicated based on.

I think that most people are generally reasonable, but some people are unreasonable.

And if someone is unreasonable and they're unwilling to actually engage in that deeper discussion about what the fact means, and they just want to assert that as true, regardless of anything else, then maybe that's not a great person to have political discussions with.

Maybe you should talk about something else.

Yeah, the flat earthers are a great example and really fun to talk about because the core overarching belief is preposterous.

But what I found when I was at this conference was that it's based on a whole set of

knowledge and facts within this community that they believe they have established.

And what you find when you get into this is that individual facts are hard to refute because there's so much that goes into it.

And I myself am not an expert, right?

I can't tell you what an eclipse should look like from a certain vantage point on the face of the earth or whatever it

the relevant fact is.

That's really difficult for me to do.

And so I didn't go in there with a goal of trying to convince those people that they are wrong.

I don't think that that's the correct goal in a dialogue most of the time.

The goal should be to try to develop a deeper understanding of where the belief comes from.

And so I found that to be more productive.

Asking these people about, oh,