Germany’s Promising Plan to Bring Conspiracy Theorists Back from the Brink | Hacker News Reader

Germany’s Promising Plan to Bring Conspiracy Theorists Back from the Brink

slate.com

10 pointspaulpauper11 comments

It's nice to see a story about reconciliation. For a while now I've been slightly frustrated with family members for having what I perceive as backwards views. But arguing over whether or not a certain conspiracy theory is true generally leads to more anger and a dead end. I still love my relatives after all, I just heavily disagree with some of their world-views.

Despite this not seeming scalable, it's at least comforting to hear the state dealing with these conflicts on an emotional level. Conspiracy theories are, perhaps unsurprisingly, not fueled by facts or logic.

There's a difference between views you disagree with and conspiracy theories.

Well yeah, the difference is that conspiracy theories purport that a group of people are secretly conspiring in order to fool the public into believing a false narrative. I disagree with some views that fit that description and I disagree with some that don't.

But this is more about people close to me espousing fringe views that seem to do nothing but cause them anger. These views are baseless, but I'm not particularly interested in trying prove them wrong at this point. I just don't like seeing my loved ones being hateful.

> Well yeah, the difference is that conspiracy theories purport that a group of people are secretly conspiring in order to fool the public into believing a false narrative.

You mean like this:

1. https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/

2. https://www.npr.org/2021/10/15/1046519838/katie-courics-ethi...

How much more do we need to see before we realize that indeed there is a group of people conspiring in order to fool the public into believing a false narrative. The only thing the conspiracy theorists have wrong is that it is secret.

I mean sure, although the time article uses the word "conspiracy" in a sensationalist sort of way. It's about Trump's efforts to weave a false narrative and the bi-partisan "conspiracy" to ensure the election was fair.

But again, my point is not towards uncovering or debunking conspiracy theories or convincing anyone one way or the other. I just appreciated the approach described in the article where they instead targeted emotional issues to help loved ones disagree amicably.

EDIT: As an unrelated aside, I really did appreciate you posting that Time article, it was quite an interesting read.

And a related aside, to your point, I agree that we should be vigilant of actual malicious conspiracies, that just wasn't my intended topic of my initial response.

> It's about Trump's efforts to weave a false narrative and the bi-partisan "conspiracy" to ensure the election was fair.

No it's not. That is a conspiracy itself. The times article clearly articulates an at-the-time secret cabal of people meant to swing the results of the election via control of information and putting out a narrative (for example, by censoring the hunter biden laptop stories, which we now have pretty incontrivertible proof of).

Please stop the gaslighting. Have you considered your conspiratorial friends are correct and you are wrong?

That's just not what I took away from the article. Out of sincere curiosity I would happily re-read it if you provided some quotes from the article that led to your interpretation. Maybe I can try to see it from your perspective if you highlighted parts that stuck out to you--I may have glossed over some parts that you read more carefully. My intention is not to gaslight; I'd like to keep an open mind, and of course I'd like to understand viewpoints currently counter to my own. And again, please hear me when I say this curiosity is sincere.

As I said previously, what I appreciated from the original slate article was the focus on amicable disagreement.

I remember an earlier article on HN where a skandenavian country was giving anti-propeganda training to all school students.

Anyone know of specific anti-propaganda training to help train a community not to get sucked in ?

Sorry, but counseling small groups of people hardly seems like a scalable "promising" plan.

Sorry, but counseling small groups of people hardly seems like a scalable "promising" plan

My solution would be to stop conspiracies, such as TIME magazine's self admitted conspiracy on behalf of clandestine, powerful players to affect the election outcome.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com