Coincidences and hijacking minds

It is weird how some things work out at times. As you can imagine, living in Finland means that we don't get many visitors from Australia so having my brother and sister-in-law here is pretty special. Today, we are going to go down to Helsinki and have a look around but, we are also going to see a friend of mine who I haven't seen for almost 20 years. What are the chances of the coincidence? Slim but, here we are.

The guy we are meeting is a good friend of mine from university who moved away from the city we lived in a few years before I myself moved to Finland. At uni, we were often in the same courses so often paired up for assignments because we worked well together and could hammer work out quickly without having to argue or worry whether one of us was going to get things done.

There was one assignment in particular that was a debate and the topic was on illegal immigrants arriving in Australia. It was our job to defend them. It was a very contentious issue at the time and my friend was quite strongly against them, so defending required him to take an alternate stand.

We left the prep work until about an hour before the debate (students) but after 30 minutes of research, my friend had changed his mind about them coming in. What had shifted? Wealth generation. He is a finance person to this day but without going into all of the ins and outs, every illegal immigrant that came into the country created on average 3 times the national GDP which means, 3 average jobs. Not a bad defense base.

We were facing a team of four which meant we both got to speak twice. He took the numbers side of the argument and I took the societal aspects. Going into the debate we were classed the severe underdogs because of public perception of illegal immigrants at the time but, at the end of my closing statements we had decimated the other team to the point that two of them left the lecture room in tears. Our lecturer came to us after and congratulated us on a job well done as we had one the audience over so absolutely.

What I found most interesting at the time was how easy it was to change the minds of people who strongly felt one way based on poor information. Within 30 minutes of debate, we had been able to introduce new information to them in such a way that it fundamentally shifted their world view on something they likely never thought could change. in those minutes, we changed the narrative, hijacked their thinking and likely altered their behaviours for the future. Too easily, in my opinion. People don't think too much for themselves so a compelling argument can be all it takes to shift their perceptions. Be careful.

It will be nice to catch up with him after 20-odd years and see if it is going to be one of those, pick up where left off kinds of cases. Except in the case of the two of us both now with families, likely with a great deal less drinking involved. We threw some great parties back then but, those stories are for another day ;)

There is likely going to be added security i Helsinki today for the upcoming meeting between Trump and Putin. How much of the public narrative is going to be fakenews?

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]