I suspect the only people that will be swayed by such "reasoning", would be people who already believe (or want to believe) such "facts" and "reasoning" (whether real or perceived).
In general, most people tend to look for "facts" and "reasoning" (whether real or imagined) which conforms already to what they believe a priori, while mentally discarding facts and reasoning which do not conform to what they believe (or what they want to believe).
This is better known as the "confirmation bias".
Confirmation bias - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This may very well be an extreme exaggerated form of the notion that older people's minds are difficult to change (whether by external sources or by one's own will).
On confirmation bias, I suspect there are "undecided" people who don't know the theory, but are predisposed to believing it once heard, or predisposed to disbelieving it.
Much like the religion gene. Folks with it are more likely to believe in a deity, and see certain events as holy (like surviving an accident). Whereas others just can't accept religion as plausible. Note, I'm not bashing religion here. There was some science last year or so that showed this. Based on genes or brain wiring, folks are predisposed to accept or reject certain ideas.
as for old people not changing their way, it's probably based on longevity of the idea being worn into their brain. An old person has idea X reinforced in his head for 50+ years. A young person has maybe had 10 years.
Neural network tends to path reinforcing. So if you hit a new decision branch unlike any ever seen before, it's like a coin toss on which way you will go. Once chosen (left or right), that choice earns a point. Everytime you have to make a decision, the evidence is reviewed, and the past points on the choice you made are applied as evidence. Which causesyou to decide again the same way as last time. and earning another point on that path.
As a result, a groove wears in that you'll have no choice but to keep picking the same path.
Now that's a pretty loose explanation of how neural networks work, which is not my specialty. But I've dabbled as a programmer and know more than my dog does on the subject.
But basically, an old guy has made the same choice for so long, his neural network won't let him choose something else with out some new factor to manipulate the trickle through effect of the decision.