>What proof could make me not believe this?

The real answer is shame. Deep, aggressive shame.

Our culture did not experience a tidal wave of anti intellectualism in the last 20 years, it experienced a tidal wave of unencumbered shamelessness.

A very tall hairy person that lives in Washington and summers in Alaska joins the conversation. He regales you with tales of tourists trying to take his picture. Every time you look at him, he appears blurry.

If the all the all knowing gods that have been proven to exist tell me Bigfoot doesn't exist I will believe it.

[removed]

Okay, if it was shown to you that all the “evidence” supporting the idea that he exists was faked, would you accept that there was no reason to believe? How about the people involved in faking the evidence explaining to you how it was done. How about being shown the origins of the idea, that were clearly written as fiction? What if the entire us army devoted five years to searching every inch of Washington and Alaska, going so far as to burn down every tree and raze every building, and came up with nothing?

There is some reason or reasons you decided to believe in Bigfoot. If those reasons were shown to be invalid, would you accept that it is more reasonable to assume that there is not a giant hairy half-ape/half-man creature who has managed to avoid capture and whose existence can’t be anything close to “explained” by everything we know about the world?

If you know why you believe in something, or don’t believe in something, it’s not that hard to see what would change your mind. If you don’t know why, shouldn’t you figure it out?

Um. Not really. Even if the discussion is only about opinions, especially if it is only about opinions, an unwillingness to even consider changing your opinion makes it a pointless discussion. Facts are not subject to change by discussion.

There is technically a new world order any time new world leaders are elected and change policy. I'll accept that as fact, though it isn't very meaningful to me. If you ascribe different meaning to "new world order", particularly outlandish conspiracy, I might need you to clarify whether our shared words have shared meaning. I may then need to retract a previous statement, assume you have a poor understanding of what facts are, and back away slowly as you shout at me.

That is slightly different from being unwilling to consider that I am wrong. It is the regretful acknowledgement that from now on, anything presented as fact by you will no longer receive the benefit of doubt. Your facts are tainted. I may however accept the same facts if presented by someone else in a careful, self consistent way that agrees with my observations and avoids common fallacies.

[removed]

Bigfoot is real, I believe that because he's been sighted in Washington in photos X Y and Z.

Evidence of X Y and Z being fake would change my mind.

What's so hard about this? You have to understand what their stance is, and what evidence they have to develop that stance. Then you break down their evidence.

I don’t believe in God, but if God simply showed himself and started bringing the dead back to life, that may convince me. Or if I had a 50 digit number written on a piece of paper in my pocket, and he could recite it to me, that would potentially be convincing.

Or I don’t believe in the existence of unicorns. But if I were to see a real life unicorn and upon scientific analysis, could confirm it isn’t a horse with a superglued horn in it, and that this unicorn could reproduce with other unicorns over several generations to create new unicorns, and that I could see the birth of a new unicorn with the horn, that would convince me that unicorns exist.

Your statement is completely wrong. It’s entirely possible to be aware of what would convince you, without actually being convinced if it beforehand.

What does the word “hypothetical” mean and why is relevant to your response?

You can know what would change your mind, but you don’t know if it’s true or not. I can say forever that I know for a fact that the cat in the box is alive, because I can hear it yowling. What would change my mind? Schrodinger, showing me the recording of the cat meowing and the box with the dead cat inside. That doesn’t change the fact that based on my current evidence, I know the cat is alive. I can think of the evidence that would change my mind, but as it hasn’t been presented to me, I’m going to go with my current knowledge.