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Comment by ALittleLight | Hacker News Reader

My intuition is that this is not very good advice. I don't think it is very likely to talk someone out of a conspiracy theory - unless you're really well prepared for the discussion and they are willing to listen and change their mind.

If you model the conspiracy theorist as being similar to yourself, I think you'd have to assume there is roughly equal likelihood that you will convince them that covid is caused by a virus (or whatever), as there is that they will convince you that it is caused by their cell phone - that is, not much chance at all of changing people's minds by discussion like this.

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Sadly there is no reasoning with stupid, I don't mean that in a totally derogatory way, we are all a bit stupid over something, that topic where our reasoning stops and our emotions, fears and justifications take over.

The only way to deal with stupid is more stupid.

The best example I have heard of this is countering anti-vaxers with "Is is possible anti-vax is miss-information spread by insert "enemy" country to destabilise the health of this country's population?"

Or "I wear a mask as it makes the government cameras and microphones harder to track me" (which actually isn't all that stupid probably)

It's not necessary that people are stupid but the logic is so flawed that you just can't help it. Also, people hate to be wrong,so even if the entire world tells different, they'd just defend their line even more stronger. I think this year, I lost all hope for humans seeing masses spouting utter nonsense like it's bloody dark ages..

Sadly I believe you are right. There are people on the fringes of a "conspiracy" that are still open to reason. They want an explanation for their world gone un-understandable (as I like to calll it) for them. Their worldviews just broke and their sense of security and normalcy received a huge blow.

When the first soft lockdown was in place in Germany I stumbled into a small anti-mask/anti-corona discussion. There was a leader type (a medical doctor who should know better) that was unreachable. And there were some clear disciples of his. But there was also one guy who presented numbers and stats printed on paper about how much more deaths the flu season 17/18 caused.

Gladly I knew my numbers and could point him to some facts about the numbers. First he only had data about said year. That some few years before there were only two-digit flu death numbers in Germany he didn't know (and I could point him to the same source of original data he was quoting showing this).

The more and more I took his arguments seriously and only was arguing in a fact based manner based on his sources, the more I saw that he started to think about what he said. I also was clearly not putting him down and even stating, that some of the government's measures seem illogical to me (as they were at the time and still are), but that I - from the values I was raised with - valued the knowledge, that I do everything not to endanger people who cannot protect themselves as good as I can (they were mostly arguing against masks).

I argued that I am guided above all by the value of humanity and that I therefore follow the principle of caution and prefer to wear the masks in a store where I might accidentally get too close to other people, even if I find it unpleasant, rather than taking the risk of possibly endangering someone in the risk group.

While we talked, more and more people of this group as well as bystanders started to listen and I saw that at least in some parts the seemingly homogeneous group split into disciples and people starting to think.

Do I think I was able to argue somebody out of believing? Clearly not - but I am hopeful, that I was able to plant a seed. One would need more time and more real talks to really pull someone away from the fringes of a conspiracy. Someone captured deep within is imho sadly lost.

[Edit:] Forgot - I really like your irrationality approach. Will copy it and try it.

If you have time and they do t seem totally all in then the reasoning approach is still the best I think (as you out here)

On illogical governments I’ve managed to calm friends down by saying “yeah, not all lock down rules seem sensible but you know what? We’ve not done this before, we’ve not been through a pandemic in about 100 years and the world is very different now. We are all making this up as we go along and so inconsistencies will arise, mistakes will be made and we will all get through this together by playing our role. Don’t rage at the system, realise the system is flawed but the end goal is the same, stop the virus spreading until we have a vaccine” it seems to have helped a number of my friends who were on the “it’s like these rules are designed to get us in trouble” train

“Never assign to malice what can be explained by incompetence” - is a happier way to live in my books

You're absolutely right we haven't gone through this 100 years people are way smarter now they understand how germs spread we'd be okay without lockdowns we'd be okay without masks I trust in humanity people are smart enough if they're taught to just cover with their arms and take regular baths.

When global leaders were in power they sent me to Iraq to look for wmds they expected toxic environments and put me through mopp training a lot of those guidelines were created by CDC. If a manufactured virus was to be loose the following guidelines were taught. This is military training overseen by CDC. Improper use of mask covering is worse than no covering, touching the mask to adjust it is improper, reusing mask is improper, improper disposal is improper, improper construction and material is improper,...... Then all of a sudden everything the CDC ever taught me flew out the window overnight and they started editing manuals to sound ridiculous.

I don't think that's fighting stupid with stupid, but more so pitching black-sheep thinking to someone who likes the idea of being a black sheep.

Your first example isn't entirely unlikely (I'd make it part of my effort if I were trying to destabilise a country) and as you said, the second example isn't too stupid.

A friend of mine dated a woman recently and she was partial to some qanon business. When he carefully probed with an argument to see how firm her thinking was, she said literally "I don't want to change my mind," which is likely quite insightful.

Y'all sound like you just trying to indoctrinate and force a conformity what happened to diversity is our greatest strength diversity of thought will save us all if you just blindly file into a line like CNN tells you you're going to walk off a cliff

I have a problem with that logic because it's not working on me I would say I'm a pretty smart fellow and I used to think anti-vax was retarded but seeing all of the genome and DNA sequencing that's going on around the SARS virus and all the copywriting trademarking going around the DNA structure of the virus I'm starting to wonder if this whole sickness was manufactured just to sell drugs. As I said before I spend a lot of time in the hospital and when doctors are marking people who slipped on ice as dying of covid you got to start to wonder what the crap is going on.

Exactly. This is why organized religions were invented.

The first falacy described in the article highlights how much conspiracies are faith based. Where someone deep enough in the rabbit hole believe it to such an extent that it's part of their identity.

If you have a religious person, think how almost impossible it would be to convince them that their faith is a human created fiction.

I'm not sure that religion is a good example. I mean, religion is quite openly a set of guidelines and rules that establish how a society should operate. Some religious text books use parables as rhetoric devices to show scenarios that illustrate how behaviors harm or benefit society. Thus, we don't need the supernatural to be religious. It helps, but it's not necessary.

Yeah, plus large swaths of land have grown irreligious in relative short timespans (< 100 years), indicating that religion is pretty vulnerable in the memetic war.

Even in the Islamic world the number of secret atheists is growing. [0][1][2] It is not too hard to become disillusioned in faith if you witness entire countries pulverized in the name of God.

[0] https://insidearabia.com/the-rise-of-atheism-in-morocco-and-... [1] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/aug/1/atheists-in-... [2] https://thearabweekly.com/iraqs-growing-community-atheists-n...

The distinction from OP might've been "human created fictions"? That was my interpretation anyway. If you were all about the societal guidelines, would you find the idea that those parables were invented by humans inoffensive?

There are religious people and then there are those who believe the Earth is 5000 years old, and that humans lived along with dinosaurs prior to the Deluge.

Whatever mechanisms that enable that kind of belief were useful in our evolution, but now are an existential threat to our species.

How do we teach adults to seek the truth? How do we get people to not share stories just because they want to believe the story is true?

I dunno I still firmly sit in the 9/11 was an inside job camp. I've looked to be debunked and disproven many times over the years wondering if I was just young and naive.

Everytime I look I still arrive at the same outcome.

I don't think this is some faith I hold. I just can't see how the "truth" actually matches with the reality I saw with my own eyes and the reality I determine byaking a judgement call about the government's actions at the time.

I could actually let the twin towers go. Pentagon crash was just simply too unlikely. Doesn't help the evidence we needed was taken away and hidden never released.

The biggest danger our minds face, and I say this to you with all the kindness, is that our minds cannot be used reliably to measure themselves individually. Seen from the inside, insanity looks sane.

:-(

I have a dear friend who doesn't believe we landed on the Moon. Otherwise he's highly intelligent and successful. I joked with my therapist that his job was to help me debug myself, as nobody can do it alone.

We all are subject to small malfunctions. We just need to be aware of that.

Indeed. These facts are why I so highly value my own awareness and willingness to change my mind.

I'd love to have someone prove me wrong.

Over the years much of 9/11 has received reasonable doubt worthy mythbusting.

But at some point the arguments are just too overwhelming. To me, the "MythBusters" actually sound delusional. They're unwilling to confront evidence, and are guilty of most the things this article lists.

One of the problems with this case in particular is how isolating it all is. I don't tell people I'm a truther. You learn real fast how "wrong you are" from the screeching mother's about how dare you? As if questioning the so trustworthy media narrative is somehow offensive just because people died.

Yes they died, I'm disgusted by it. I'm more disgusted by the idea that the govt was behind it.

But the problem with this isolation is that you can't get dissenting ideas. I have to seek out confronting views this in itself is uncomfortable. Past this, I have to wade through the myth busters jokes and jabs at my expense, being compared to moon landing hoaxers and antivaxxers.

I can see how people fall into conspiracy theories and get shutout of society for it.

To this day I hope I'm wrong I hope one day someone can convince me. But to this day. Nobody has, and given how much evidence is now lost or destroyed there really isn't much chance of this happening.

> I'd love to have someone prove me wrong.

Nobody is going to do that for you. Sorry, but truthers are in exactly the same bucket as moon landing hoaxers, antivaxers, and flat earthers. The burden of proof is on them. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. "I believe in X, prove me wrong" is Argument from ignorance [1], where one asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance

I don't think that's a very representative view of what my post was about.

I actively search for contrary opinion and dissenting facts.

Hell this convo spurred me to re-watch and re-read a bunch of the old criticisms.

Regarding moon landing and antivaxxers being the same that is entirely false. There is plenty of evidence we landed on the moon, there is plenty of evidence vaccines work.

Truthers don't argue if planes hit the towers. They argue the people behind the act were not those you have been lead to believe with little to no evidence.

Truthers don't believe the narrative. And aside from the more extreme individuals that believe everything that Alex tells them, truthers don't disagree with facts.

In fact truthers seek fact. The only problem is that they we were met with obstruction at every turn.

When you're prevented from looking at the evidence, when the evidence is quickly cleaned up and destroyed without standard practice investigation taking place it leaves questions open for interpretation.

You can't tell then me the sky is green, no you can't look, and no, your argument that it is blue is an argument from ignorance, how dare you open these old wounds.

Some conspiracy theories are true.

I don't even care what the truth is. I just want people to stop hiding it.

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