 So the first of the six leads is for people to ask themselves what do you really believe anyway and it's really tempting to think that Things are either for you or against you They're either good or they're bad. They're black and white to mention as a really nice example of this Picturing the world the fence is the name of the song and picturing the world is either black or white for me Or against me instead of having shades of gray in between the same thing happens with opinion change That's right. And if an observation is surprising enough. It allows you to to think about to understand what you really believe How what's really important to you now? This is actually what a lot of university courses are trying to achieve Now the second of the six leads is how well based is the opinion that you already hold Now sometimes support for an opinion can't always be based on formal data or experiments that the data may just not be available So personal experience might be the only thing we have to go on. That's exactly right and We obviously are looking through the lens of this personal experience that has been heavily shaped by your Interpretation as we've just seen in the end throughout the episode the way that we see the world may not be the same way That other people see the world and so that personal experience might be somehow tainted In a particular way and so that leads us to the third Lead which is how good is the evidence is is it based on experiments? Is it based on that personal experience? How good are the data? How good is that evidence? What most people do when they're faced with surprising evidence like the large-class small classes They they have this new evidence and then they just disregard it. They just ignore it from that point on Yep, all look for flaws Flaws in the evidence or the data, but even if you do find a flaw You have to ask yourself is that flaw so terrible that you have you can Legitimately disregard this new piece of evidence that you've been given it is is the data so bad that you can just ignore it Like in the large-class small-class example are the experiments that have been done Just so terrible that you can ignore them and continue to to believe what you believe and that leads us to the fourth lead in opinion change, which is Does the evidence really contradict what you already believe? so is there a way of Reframe the issue of stating the evidence in a way that allows you to to to use this new information this new evidence rather than just Rejecting it outright Absolutely, and so given the problem that's in front of you given the evidence that somebody's presented if that's not enough For you to change your mind Change your opinion and what would be enough if if I've just presented evidence or if I've just received evidence That's somehow flawed or somehow insufficient You need to ask yourself if that's not enough what would be enough? Yep And you need to if you can't find any evidence if you can't think of something that would change your mind Then it's really time to be cautious there about the basis of that belief now that leads us to the sixth lead in opinion change which is Is it worth finding out about or is it just a case of why not? Why don't I just continue to believe this stuff? So How much is what's the cost can I just persist in this belief like for example? Should I just take the pill it doesn't cost much and it doesn't taste bad So why not stick with it? That's right So going back to Jane's case if she just took the vial of water and she felt better It's water right. It was cheap. It didn't taste bad. She took it. She got better. So why not just persist in that belief? That one's tricky. I mean yes but we need a caveat on that sixth lead where People can really use that one almost as a get out of jail free card and just say oh well the cost is low And therefore it really doesn't require me to Figure out what I actually believe about it So I'd be cautious with that one, but yes if the cost is extremely low and the payoff is high Yep, why not just go with it? So these six leads are gonna become extremely important now We're dealing with kind of benign kind of examples at the moment But we're gonna be moving into things like ESP paranormal belief applied claims health claims where These issues these opinions that people have might not be so easily dismissible And so I think having these six leads is going to be really useful when people start Examining their own opinions and examining the opinions of other people if you want to change someone else's minds Someone else's mind or their own mind then it's really worth considering these and keeping these in their toolbox and I've asked the mythbusters Exactly about this issue of opinion change both The opinions that they hold or the myths that they test as well as other people's the viewers Opinions that they have and here's what they had to say