A Street of Pitmology

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A street of pitmology is a, it came out of the world of the angry atheists and thea, you know, militant agnostics who were having their own reaction to meeting each other. They've gone through several phases of growth, an evolution themselves, where they have schismed off. And now they've expanded it to this can be applied to anything. You don't have to be in their sub community, have their theistic views to use it. It's a step wise method for having the conversation that we we all should be having on any issue.

To the Founding Fathers it was free libraries. To the 19th century rationalist philosophers it was a system of public schools. Today it's access to the internet. Since its beginnings, Americans have believed that if facts and information were available to all, a democratic utopia would prevail. But missing from these well-intentioned efforts, says author and journalist David McRaney, is the awareness that people's opinions are unrelated to their knowledge and intelligence. In fact, he explains, the better educated we become, the better we are at rationalizing what we already believe. Listen as the author of How Minds Change speaks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about why it's so hard to change someone's mind, the best way to make it happen (if you absolutely must), and why teens are hard-wired not to take good advice from older people even if they are actually wiser.