How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion by David McRaney

 This is another "I found it randomly in the library" book, picked up because I saw it on the shelf while I was looking for something else. Unlike Orlanda, this didn't turn out to be something I was really glad I'd found, but I still learned something from the book.

So, we live in a polarized 'post-fact' world, where at least online there is no agreed baseline set of facts and we all belong to subgroups where 'the truth' is obvious and all outsiders are clearly misguided fools. It can seem impossible or futile to speak to those who do not share our beliefs because it seems impossible to persuade others that even the most ridiculous ideas are wrong. (Flat earthers anyone?)

Do we all give up? Are facts useless? Persuasion impossible?

This book draws upon a variety of sociological, psychological, and political research to argue that not only is persuasion possible, it is foundational to human societies. It then goes on to provide some "how to" recipes.

What did I think? Well, I'm not convinced by some of the research that the author quotes (for example, McRaney refers to some 1950s/60s studies that I think may have been debunked, based on other reading I've done). And as many of the StoryGraph reviews mention, the book itself sometimes feels a bit repetitive, and the arguments overdrawn. But I did draw a few insights that I'll carry with me:

• People are tribal. Asking folks to change what they believe can be the same as asking them to change which group they identify with, and therefore fundamentally asking them to change who they believe they are. (It's shameful that issues like climate change have been 'politicized' in this way by evil assholes, but here we are.)
• "Facts don't matter" in a discussion of this nature, because which facts are relevant or important to a speaker depends on what they value, how they feel about an issue, and which community they feel they belong to. (Facts matter to those of a scientific/technical bent, because adherence to facts is a key principle of belonging to a scientificly/technically literate community).
• People can and do change their minds, even about fundamental issues, sometimes apparently very quickly. For example, remember how quickly North American society switched to supporting gay marriage (polls within a 5 year span changed from 70% against to 70+% in favour).
• You can't change someone's mind, but you can have a discussion that prompts people to change their own minds.  Productive conversations focus on discussing the process of how people have come to have a belief, not the supporting evidence for the belief.
• Why do you want to change someone's mind? Ask yourself that question before proceeding.

McRaney provides a number of templates for how to have persuasive conversations, based on the work of several different organizations/people who independently developed similar techniques. In practise, using these techniques effectively requires empathy, curiosity, and a lot of practise and feedback. So fear not! You will not have your mind changed by reading this blog entry.

Here's one example of a template, based on the work of a Californian organization that does "deep canvassing" in support of ballot initiatives for LGBTQ+ rights:

1. Establish rapport: Your intention is to explore their reasoning, not to shame them for their beliefs. Ask their consent for the conversation.
2. Ask how strongly they feel about their belief on a scale of 1 to 10.
3. Share a story about someone (perhaps yourself) who is affected by the issue. Ask if that changes the 'number' for that person. If the number changes, ask why.
4. "Why does that number feel right to you?" Explore how and why the person has their level of certainty. Ask questions. 
5. Once they have summarized their reasons, repeat their conclusions back to them until they agree that you have summarized accurately.
6. Ask if there was a time in their life before they felt this way, and if so, what led them to their current attitude.
7. Listen, summarize, repeat.
8. Briefly share your personal story of how you reached your position, but do not argue.
9. Ask for their rating a final time, wrap up, thank them for their time and wish them well.

The key part of all of these techniques is getting the person you are speaking with to reflect on why they hold the position that they do, and why they have the level of certainty that they claim. Other templates prompt questioners to ask "why not a 1?" or  "why not a 10?" "Have you always been a 9 on this issue? When or how did you come to that conclusion?" What information would have to change for you to be a 1/10?" "Why do you think that someone with the same information you have might draw a different conclusion?"    

In other words, we all have a variety of beliefs on a variety of subjects, some of which we hold strongly, and some of which we have never examined carefully. By careful and empathetic questioning, we can prompt others to examine their own beliefs, and sometimes, change their own minds.  Not necessarily immediately and not necessarily 180 degrees, but in real and significant ways.

Which is an encouraging idea in a discouraging world.

Johannes Gutenberg: A Biography in Books by Eric Marshall White

 This is a book for Wikipedia editors who are accustomed to beginning discussions of their contributions with "Well, actually...."   In other words you could call it "meticulously researched" (as the Storygraph AI summary does), even though words like 'precise' and 'persnickety' were the ones that kept leaping to mind as I read.

But that's not actually a diss!  This is also a book for those who are interested in how we know what we think we know about history.  As White traces each historical reference that credits (or ignores) Gutenberg's contribution to the invention of movable type, you get a much better sense of the fragility of historical records, and of how our sense of our joint past is created both by the stories we tell one another and by the information we retain or lose as time passes. 

The book is also full of fascinating details, like the fact that Johan Fust, Gutenberg's business partner, made the then-largest order of paper in European history to print the (probably) 158 copies of what we now call the Gutenberg Bible. Or that we can tell that 6 different teams of printers working in concert produced that bible, based on differences in ink composition, paper, and the minor printing discrepancies between the various 'quires' of the books of the bible.  It was also interesting to learn that the Gutenberg bible was *not* the first widely distributed piece of printed material -- that honour probably goes to a mass of indulgences that Gutenberg printed for the church the year before (that were intended to raise money for a campaign against Muslims after an attack on Cypress). 

I found Johannes Gutenberg: A Biography in Books an interesting read, even if I personally have no particular interest in printing, medieval history, or Johannes Gutenberg per se.  Recommended for students of any of those subjects, or for those, like me, who sometimes enjoy learning random things.

Orlanda: A Novel by Jacqueline Harpman

 So this novel is an example of why I don't keep "To read" lists, why I hate searching for something to read in Libby, and why think that the internet and the algorithm is the death of discovery.

I would never have picked this book up if I hadn't run across it in the library.  Orlanda was on a "New titles" shelf near the door, and somehow the combination of the title, its 50s style modernist cover, and the note under the author's name stating "author of I who have never known men" (which I think I've heard of?) whimpelled me to pick it up. ('Whimpelled' is an inadvertent coinage, but it's perfectly apt so its staying). 

I took it out.  I read it almost immediately.  I'm really glad I ran across it.

Bookstores. Libraries. Physical copies of books that enter your life, and sometimes wait patiently on your shelf for years until it's the right time for you to read them. That's how I want my reading life to unfold.

Anyway, what is this book, and why am I glad to have found it?  Orlanda was inspired by Orlando by Virginia Wolf, and our heroine is in fact reading Orlando as the novel opens. Unlike Orlando, where the protagonist mysteriously changes gender multiple times over a fantastically long life, in Orlanda the protagonist looks up from her reading, bored, at a beautiful young man having a coffee in the same cafe -- and half of her soul leaps. From that point on, half of Aline remains Aline, 35 year-old literature professor with a staid life, and half becomes the carefree, carelessly sexual Lucien Lefrene. 

This is not a novel premise for a novel -- viz Orlando, of course, but also Larque on the Wing by Nancy Springer (winner of the 1994 Tiptree award). What makes Orlanda compelling is the execution.  The writing is wonderful.  

Let us listen too for awhile.  Schumann had such a brief life that we owe it to him to devote a few moments to his music. Time kills us, second after second, and we fools continue to be impatient. Oh! for tomorrow, next week, for the moment we're awaiting finally to come. But, reckless soul, it will all end! Suppose you tried instead to enjoy the present? Stop, listen. Your heart is beating, thick blood flows through your veins, you are alive, make the most of it now, don't say that enjoyment will come later. It's here, it's happening now, and it won't last long, every note of the concerto dies away. When you come to the end of the first movement, you can play the record again, but you can't restart the record of your life, for that is only played once.

And the structure is interesting too.  The story is told by 'the author', who addresses the reader directly, as in the passage above, explaining, exhorting, popping into the perspectives of Aline, Lucien, Orlanda, Orlanda's lover, Lucien's sister, etc. as needed to move the story along.  It's lovely to read something that isn't in the ubiquitous "close third person" that is de rigeur in modern genre fiction.  And it's lovely to occasionally read something literary.

What is the message of the book? Of course, as in Larque, Harpman chooses a sexy 20 year old gay male persona to be the foil for her middle-aged female protagonist. But the sex (from which 'the author' mostly deliberately and prudishly turns her face and her pen) isn't the point. The point is both to compare the freedom and care-freedom possible in young male life with the repression and responsibility common to 'properly raised' middle class women. (One of Orlanda's first acts after being freed from Aline is to bound energetically across a station platform to catch his train, enjoying the exhilaration of unself-conscious movement, the freedom not to care about snagging his stockings or looking weird.)  But Harpman digs deeper too.  The two halves of Aline's severed soul both relish their freedom from one another, but they are also increasingly attracted to ..... Each other? Themselves?  Would we be our own perfect companions? What do we need from others? What do we need from ourselves?

Just a few of the questions that Orlanda raises, but of course does not answer because this is literature, not a user manual.

An enjoyable brief read, republished in English to mark the 30th anniversary of its original publication in French.  (A book that would be very different if written today, as highlighted by the new afterword provided by a modern novelist who ponders and then rejects the hypothesis that Aline is trans.)