I asked what his confidence level was, zero to one hundred. He said ninety-nine. Then I asked, as Anthony had suggested, if he saw evidence that suggested to his satisfaction that the flat Earth model was incorrect, what would he do?

Explore the reasoning behind their hunches with empathetic questioning and listening. Ask what justifies their confidence, and how. Then share the same.

So when interacting with someone who is vaccine-hesitant, you’ll get much further if you frame it as respectful collaboration toward a shared goal, based on mutual fears and anxieties, and demonstrate you are open to their perspective and input on the best course of action.

At any one time, for any given system, thousands of us are banging away at it hoping to make the difference that changes the world, but no one knows where the vulnerable cluster is at. No one can will the system to cascade for them.

Which is the point—persistence plus luck is what changes minds, not genius. The ideas that change the world are the ones in the heads of people who refuse to give up.

Being wrong, we think, is always a thing of the past. Today, we think, and will continue to think, we have finally arrived at certainty.

“We are what we know, and when the body of knowledge changes, so do we.”

As individuals and as entire cultures, we move from paradigm to paradigm—models that explain reality for as long as we can hold on to them.

For an idea to spread across a network in such a way that it flips almost everyone from thinking in one way to thinking in another, you don’t need thought leaders or elites. The crucial factor is the susceptibility of the network. If there are enough connected people with low thresholds across groups, any shock—any person—can start a cascade that w