The Conspiracy of Counterintelligence

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In every kind of society that ever existed, there are group decisions. The question is how do you make them? For most of history, in much of the world, it was felt that the best way for those kinds of decisions to be made was to have one guy make them into the village. In the last few hundred years, this new system came about called democracy. But we forget how utterly insane a project democracy is.

This is the third episode in a three-part series about how to have difficult conversations with people who see the world differently, how to have better debates about contentious issues, and how to ethically and scientifically persuade one another about things that matter – in short, this is a three-part series about How Minds Change (which is also the title of my new book).

There seems to be a movement afoot, a new wave of nonfiction about how to reduce all this argumentative madness and epistemic chaos. I want to boost everyone’s signal on this issue, so I thought it would be nice to collaborate instead of compete, since that’s part of what we are all proselytizing with these books.

So this episode’s guest is Anand Giridharadas, the author of The Persuaders – a book about activists, politicians, educators, and everyday citizens who are on the ground working to change minds, bridge divisions, and fight for democracy.

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