How to Convince Someone When Facts Fail

Why worldview threats undermine evidence

Credit: Izhar Cohen

Have you ever noticed that when you present people with facts that are contrary to their deepest held beliefs they always change their minds? Me neither. In fact, people seem to double down on their beliefs in the teeth of overwhelming evidence against them. The reason is related to the worldview perceived to be under threat by the conflicting data.

Marie Kondo: How to Choose Happiness

This is an article from Turning Points, a magazine that explores what critical moments from this year might mean for the year ahead.

Turning Point: An executive at Ikea declared that the West has reached “peak stuff,” with people owning too many things.

Monika Aichele

The Japanese word “tokimeku” means “to spark joy.” Someone who is adopting my method of tidying must take a possession of hers and ask: “Does this spark joy for me?” This question is the sole basis for choosing what things to keep in one’s home and what to discard.

But can we apply this notion of sparking joy on a larger scale? We live in a disorganized and chaotic world, much of it outside our control. I read recently that more than 80 billion articles of clothing are produced each year, but only a negligible few are recycled. As people’s buying habits shift and technology moves most everything to the cloud, people have been valuing experiences over material things. Some have even pointed out that we may have reached a critical point in terms of mass consumption — we’ve reached peak stuff. Though it sometimes may seem like our things are threatening to take over our world, we can focus our energy and determination on choosing what makes us happy, and ultimately change our lives. Asking ourselves whether something sparks joy seems like such a simple process — so simple that many people wonder whether it can really be effective. The strength of the “spark joy” standard, however, lies in its ambiguity.

Let’s consider, for argument’s sake, more precise standards for what to keep or discard, even for something as basic as clothing. Should the number of jackets you own be fewer than 10? Should you discard clothes that you haven’t worn in more than three years?Rules that adopt concise numerical values may appear to be more practical, which is why society often imposes specific standards on us, such as the amount of money we should earn, the ideal body weight we should maintain or the recommended quantity of food we should consume each day. But what makes one person happy, comfortable and healthy varies for the next, so your individual gold standard can be determined only through your own perspective. This is where the magic question — Does it spark joy? — comes into play.

What Retirement Without Savings Looks Like

By Paul Sisolak, Contributor

In a perfect world, the perfect retirement is where life begins. But for people like Debra Leigh Scott, there’s the very bleak possibility that retirement is where life might end.

“Suicide is my retirement plan,” Scott, a 60-year-old adjunct professor, said in an interview with Vitae. “Unless you have a spouse or partner, you’re looking at dire poverty in old age. In addition to poverty, you’re looking at getting no additional work because of your age, or you’re looking at dropping dead in the classroom.”

How Airbnb designs for trust

Joe Gebbia, the co-founder of Airbnb, bet his whole company on the belief that people can trust each other enough to stay in one another's homes. How did he overcome the stranger-danger bias? Through good design. Now, 123 million hosted nights (and counting) later, Gebbia sets out his dream for a culture of sharing in which design helps foster community and connection instead of isolation and separation.

7 Things You Need To Lose To Make 2016 Your Best Year

by Luke Miller Truth Theory

We live in a world of gains and goal, new year’s resolutions and the pursuit of more. While I am not saying we shouldn’t be striving for more in some areas of our lives, you will usually see more bang for your buck in what you lose, than what you gain.

Think of it like this, we are born into the world and as long as there are no issues with the birth, we pretty much have a clean slate. As time goes by we pick up habits, some good, and some bad. By the time we leave school we have so many habits stacked on top of one another that we generally do not know our true self, from our conditioned self.

By the time we are deep into adulthood, we have been pushed, pulled and guided in a  million directions, which can often lead to a huge sense of overwhelm. Then every New Year we try and add another 5 habits to the million we already have.

In this article I am trying another approach, the opposite to resolution, what I would like to call a reso¬lose-ions were we focus on losing habits that are unhealthy and sabotaging our growth, instead of gaining new ones!