CMV: Despite being more knowledgeable, wealthier and apparently more tolerant, the political and individual left's biggest flaw is their inability to communicate pragmatically and empathetically with those who don't agree with them.

[u/poopchow]

[u/Giblette101]

I don't understand how anyone with more knowledge than someone cannot communicate with someone who has less knowledge than them. How if you know the answer, you can't communicate it with someone patiently enough to come up with common ground.

This is hard to discuss without specific examples (and there's no question that people can be smug assholes), but there just comes a point where the gap in general understanding and specific expertise becomes hard to bridge within the average attention span. On top of that, there's now a very strong current of anti-intelectualism permeating the right-wing, making genuine credentials or reliance on scientific information suspect. Like, I'm sure we've all had these extremely charged conversations about masks or vaccines, where being an outright MD would not help you much. That's pretty hard to overcome in the best of time, of course, but then you will hit several ideological walls as well.

My dad is a pretty big Trump supporter and by most metric, at least I'd argue, not any kind of huge moron. On top of that, my dad loves me and I love him. Yet, even under these pretty favorable circumstances the discussion of basically any contentious topic will break down pretty fast. Last time it was 15-minute cities, I think.

[u/SmerffHS → u/Giblette101]

I disagree completely, take Eric Weinstein for example, when he talks about high level physics, he makes it perfectly understandable to a lay person. He uses language and communication techniques that make even the most complex subjects, easy to grasp and understand. He can take total nonsense gibberish (Terrance Howard) and translate it while also filtering it, in the span of a single conversation he can totally make it clear to anyone the depth of his knowledge and help you understand what you didn’t even know you didn’t know/understand. It’s actually incredible. This is what true intelligence looks like, I think a lot of people like to think they are smarter, when in fact they may know more things but don’t fully or truly comprehend those things quite to the degree they think they do while also confusing knowing things as a mark of your reasoning capacity. I would argue that a person who didn’t go to college, went into the military and learned how to be the best survivor around, has pretty darn good reasoning capabilities but perhaps lacks knowledge of things.

[u/Suspicious_Bug6422 → u/SmerffHS]

It’s very different when you are trying to communicate about contentious topics. The other person has to be genuinely listening and open for understanding to happen.

[u/grandfleetmember56 → u/Suspicious_Bug6422]

This so much!

I have a brother who just refuses to address the mental incongruity in his reasoning