Read more at http://ozanvarol.com.

1. But here’s what does:
Facts don’t
change minds.
Ozan Varol | www.ozanvarol.com

2. Several years ago, I would have told you
that drowning the opposi9on with facts
was the best way to prove that …
1. Global Warming is real.
2. The war on drugs has failed.
3. The current business strategy
adopted by your risk-averse boss with
zero imagina9on is not working.
Ozan Varol | www.ozanvarol.com

3. But there’s one problem with
that approach…
The mind doesn’t
follow facts.
Facts, as John
Adams put it,
are stubborn
things, but
our minds are
even more
stubborn.
Ozan Varol | www.ozanvarol.com

4. We undervalue evidence that
contradicts our beliefs and
overvalue evidence that
confirms them.
Don’t believe me?
Ozan Varol | www.ozanvarol.com

5. Recall the last ?me you
Googled a ques?on or topic.
Did you me9culously dissect the contents of each
link to get a broad objec9ve picture?
Or did you skim through the links looking for the
page that confirms what you already believed was
true?
Ozan Varol | www.ozanvarol.com

6. We filter out inconvenient truths and
arguments on the opposing side.
As a result, our opinions solidify and it
becomes increasingly harder to
disrupt established paOerns of
thinking.
Ozan Varol | www.ozanvarol.com

7. If facts don’t work,
how do you change a
mind - whether it’s
your own or your
neighbor’s?
Ozan Varol | www.ozanvarol.com

8. Number One:
Give the
mind an
out.
Convince the mind in ques9on (yours or your
friend’s) that your prior decision or prior
belief was the right one given what you knew.
But now that the underlying facts have
changed, so should the mind.
What NOT to do: BeliOling a mind will cause
it to dig in rather than give in. Once you’ve
equated someone’s beliefs with idiocracy,
changing that person’s mind will require
nothing short of an admission that they are
unintelligent.
Ozan Varol | www.ozanvarol.com

9. Your beliefs are not YOU.
When your beliefs are entwined with your
iden9ty, changing your mind means changing
your iden9ty.
That’s a really hard sell.
A possible solu9on, and one I’ve adopted in my
own life, is to put a healthy separa9on
between you and your beliefs. I changed my
vocabulary to reflect this mental shiW. At
conferences, instead of saying, “In this paper, I
argue…,” I began to say, “This paper argues…”
It was no longer personal. It was simply a
hypothesis proven wrong.
Number Two:
You are
not your
beliefs.
Ozan Varol | www.ozanvarol.com

10. Number Three:
Build up
your
empathy
muscle.
If someone disagrees with you, it’s not
because they’re wrong and you’re right. It’s
because they believe something that you don’t
believe.
Playing Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth to a
room of Detroit auto workers won’t change
their mind on global warming if they’re
convinced your agenda will put them out of a
job.
Instead, show them how renewable energy
will provide job security to their
grandchildren.
Now, you’ve got their aLen?on.
Ozan Varol | www.ozanvarol.com

11. Number Four:
Get out of
your echo
chamber.
We friend people like us on Facebook.
We follow people like us on TwiOer.
We read news outlets that are on the same
poli9cal frequency as us.
The means our opinions aren’t being stress-
tested nearly as frequently as they should.
As Mac Andreessen says, “Strong beliefs,
loosely held.”
Strongly believe in an idea, but be willing to
change your opinion if the facts show
otherwise.
Ozan Varol | www.ozanvarol.com

12. It requires courage and determina9on
to see the truth instead of the
convenient.
But it’s well worth the effort.
Ozan Varol | www.ozanvarol.com

13. If you liked this presenta9on, you’d love the Weekly
Contrarian — a newsleOer that challenges
conven9onal wisdom, celebrates unpopular opinions,
and changes the way we look at the world. Subscribe
at hLp://ozanvarol.com and get the free Contrarian
Handbook: Eight Principles for Innova;ng your Thinking.
The author of this presenta9on is Ozan Varol, a rocket
scien9st turned author and law professor. He has been
featured on BBC, TIME, CNN, Washington Post, Slate,
and Foreign Policy. He writes about contrarian thinking
at hLp://ozanvarol.com.
Ozan Varol | www.ozanvarol.com