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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Janx" data-source="post: 5147129" data-attributes="member: 8835">You can't change somebody's mind.  At best, you can make sure they see evidence that contradicts their current belief, and they come to their own conclusion.When you're facing somebody who has an odd belief that belies any evidence or commonly accepted fact, it's even harder.  Those people are not relying on anybody else for their belief, even if they cite 'wrong" sources, they're only doing so to play your game of "I can cite a source that agrees with me, too."  These kind of people do not have a rational train of thought as to what they believe. They just believe it, and nothing you can do can shake that.Now to counter that, all of us ultimately take somethings for granted, a belief that something is true, without being able to fully prove it ourselvesTake for instance the Lunar Landing Is a Hoax train of thoughtI could cite the astronauts who landed on the moon, and that a mirror was installed to bounce a laser to measure the distance.  But I don't know those astronauts personally.  I wouldn't know a true moon rock if I saw it and a fake next to it.  I can't confirm the existance of the mirror and laser, let alone try it myself.  But I accept that these things happened and exist.For me, it comes down to the nation saw Neil Armstrong step onto the moon, and I assumed it was true.  The rest is simply evidence I cite to reinforce that.For a doubter, they had some reason to doubt that, and come to the conclusion it was faked, and everything else is a big conspiracy.Another aspect to the problem are facts that matter and are front and center in our lives, and facts that are pretty much academic to everyday living.  Some people place more value on the academic facts than others.This in turn becomes a problem when a fact is revealed to be wrong, or worse a deception.Take the mis-classification of a dinosaur.  For me, it matters not one whit that a dinosaur was called one thing, and grouped in one bucket, and there was an error, and it was renamed and reclassified.  It doesn't change in the big scheme of things how the universe works, or the mechanism of evolution or creationism.  It simply refines the model.For the OP's friend, apparently this kind of mistake is justification that the whole topic of science is wrong or a bad idea.Now let's take a different fact.  I have not been sleeping with Quantum's wife.  Odds are good Quantum already believes that, and has no reason to question it.  Now it turns out, I have been decieving him, and making regular conjugal visits.  That's not just a matter of a fact being wrong, it is a matter of deception.  In truth, the "fact" was not a fact, it was believed to be one.  And the damage done by that deception is complex.There are people who have their own model of facts about the world.  They can't handle those facts being challenged or proven wrong.   Quantum's friend sounds like such a person.  Such a person is going to always find themselves at odds with reality and others, because life is about discovery, and the constant revelation that what we knew to be true is both changing and incomplete.</blockquote>

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