In my experience, people who seem unable or unwilling to listen with curiosity  are constrained by one or more of the following traits:

My friends know that I try to look objectively at the available evidence when forming opinions or making decisions.

Are you someone who understands how useful conversations across divides can be, but is reluctant to engage because you feel unsafe or unprepared?

• Read more about Some comments about 'truth'
• Log in or register to post comments

Comment about Musk from a college classmate: "Musk’s comment in his interview by Seth Rogan: “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”  Says all you need to know about him. "

Reply by another college classmate: "But see Paul Bloom’s book Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion.

From the back cover, courtesy of Amazon.com:

Humans are obligate social creatures. We cannot survive alone as individuals. We only survive, both individually and as a species, to the extent that we create and maintain functioning collaborative social communities. For the purposes of this discussion, I will refer to these social entities collectively as societies.

A friend asked me why I had bothered to engage at length on social media with a self-identified ‘vaccine skeptic’ who had posted his vigorous opposition to any vaccine mandates, supporting his position with demonstrably incorrect information and references to poorly done (and even retracted) studies. My friend felt that my efforts were destined to fail and therefore pointless. When I asked what he meant by failure, he said “You’ll never convince someone like that they are wrong.”