Fair points:

• I see how that joke can be fine in the sense that, if everyone in the group shares values, there is no need to consider how a staunch Trump supporter will respond to the joke. After all, I think there are very few staunch Trump supporters reading this.
• I also see that it can be very hard to convince people to reconsider tightly-held beliefs, or at the very least gain perspective on them. It sounds like you do not believe changing perspectives is even possible, that no dialogue can ever be worthwhile or useful.

I see you appreciate facts and information, the scientific process and the institutions that enable it. We have that in common. That’s why, ironically, I’ll start with anecdotal facts and then move on to more robust and generalizable findings. Do you know about my friend who went from defending “one dollar, one vote” (a couple of years ago) to explaining how the lack of third spaces is associated with inequality (a couple of weeks ago)? I don’t expect you to at all, so do you know Contrapoints’ impact on radicalized people who reach out to her (https://www.vice.com/en/article/contrapoints-interview-2019-natalie-wynn/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Nrz4-FZx6k)?

These may sound like cherry-picked examples, but there’s actually evidence of massive shifts in people’s political views: the World Value Survey. Do you know how world values have changed ever since the WVS started?(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIXdRVe92gg)

In the face of the WVS shifts, it may seem like value changes only occur when material conditions allow for it, but there’s evidence within the WVS literature that material conditions are not as important today (in particular, the variance that explains the change in values used to be mostly explained by material conditions, but now it is mostly explained by connectivity). However, we can also look at another set of scientific literature that shows that the way that things are presented can lead to changes in political attitudes. Do you know about the moral reframing literature? I’m sorry for the paywall https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12501 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337861541_Moral_reframing_A_technique_for_effective_and_persuasive_communication_across_political_divides

lol I interpret this as sarcasm, as with many of your other comments around Lemmy. If they are so, I think they’re funny and so far I agree with what you actually value, democracy. However, it took me some time to understand your sarcasm. This might be just me, but I wonder if your comments could be subjected to Poe’s Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe’s_law). Is it impossible that they could be interpreted as candid?

While it’s certainly possible that Pavlov ended up ‘doing’ operant conditioning on himself, I think something different is going on here. I think Pavlov is a victim of humanity’s language capabilities: we do not only link concepts on one direction (dogs -> bell) but do so bidirectionally (dogs <-> bell). There is a whole line of research that goes into how associations (which are the ones in classical and operant conditioning) are not the same as relations (which are the ones that we humans are proficient at, blessed with, and cursed with).