-- https://scitechdaily.com/correcting-online-falsehoods-can-make-matters-worse/External Quote:
I'd avoid debunking, or anything else that's triggering, unless they actually want to talk about it. At some point they will start to question some of the claims, but until they get there you might want to focus simply on being friends with them. Establish and maintain effective communication first. Debunk later. Maybe a lot later.
How can a trigger happen so quickly? She only got into this by starting to watch videos in November and is fully sold now. I won't engage her though she is asking me to refute claims pushed out. For example, asking me publicly for a response to the 60 minutes report last week that didn't have any counter arguments. I ignored her but she sees that as further evidence I have no valid response rather than I don't want to engage so either way I contribute to her getting deeper into conspiracy. She brings of Bob Lazar/Area 51 which I think is horrible evidence but everything is proof I'm part of the conspiracy. I guess for now I just ignore.
are you male? if so, the old wisdom is that women get cranky because men always try to fix things, when women just need to vent.
She thinks she's discovered the real truth about the world. And thinks of counter-evidence as being propaganda.
"Why do you want me to respond? Why is that important to you?"
I really only specifically mean when you get the "internet argument" vibe.
tell her your Republican friend says (hand to God) the Moderna vaccine is safe and she needs to get it. The only people i know who had any side effects at all are younger people. Her dog likely won't die if she gives it COvid, but why take the risk.
I keep seeing people say this and all it does is just reaffirm what I already believe: that what I believe is the truth, and that's why people discourage non-believers from talking with me. A bit like how a cult discourages cult members from talking to outsiders.
If it's safe, why do the people who don't care about my health (and actively work against my healthcare) desperately want me to get it?tell her your Republican friend says (hand to God) the Moderna vaccine is safe and she needs to get it. The only people i know who had any side effects at all are younger people. Her dog likely won't die if she gives it COvid, but why take the risk.
Thing is that she is a nice old lady and I like talking to her usually, even about some other kinda conspiracy type stuff sometimes, but it's really about that "framing". I am happy to talk about conspiracy stuff but it just feels toxic, like I'm being transplanted into an unseen Facebook argument.
because they care about other people's health and the cost to the medical industry when you (or the people you infect) get sick, take up ICU space and traumatize health care workers who have to watch you die from it.
I don't see it being like that at all. Who do you think is discouraging people from talking to you - what are the reasons they give for this avoidance of dialogue? Personally, I think that very little positive can be achieved by avoiding mature respectful dialogue, and therefore it should be encouraged.
How do you read "by engaging them" as "discourage non-believers from talking with you"? It literally means the opposite.
Because they make money from it.
i think s/he is saying their conspiracy theorist friends tell him/her not to engage with debunkers. I know, the writing style is a bit confusing.
It's in what I quoted. See: "You will almost never convert the actual peddlers of misinformation (especially those in it for the grift), or those who have adopted it to the point of identity." saying that people like me will "almost never be converted"? How can that be? The only possible way I could take that is if I'm actually correct in my beliefs? This part "by engaging them you can catch those in the early "this is new" stage of interest, keep fence sitters from falling, and keep the bandwagon effect from taking over. To put it a different way: You can never bring back the dead, but you should still tell people to wear their seatbelts. " seems to be saying to discourage people who are new to conspiracies from talking with such people. Maybe I read it wrong?
The opposite. The people I find who aren't willing to chat tend to be the ones who aren't conspiracy-minded. It appears they have the notion stated earlier of "it's pointless since conspiracy theorists will never change their mind". Also I'm a girl, so it'd be she
I hope we both agree that arguing with con men ("in it for the grift") is fruitless.
FWIW, during my High School days I was pretty into UFOs, Lake Monsters and the Bermuda Triangle. At some point I had read what there was to read, that I could get my hads on (this was WAY before everybody could find all sorts of information and misinformation on the Internet. After a hiatus of a year or two, I found a book called "The Bermuda Triangle Mystery: Solved" which went through the famous cases (up until that time, of course) and popular works on the mystery, and showed that many of the events I knew well did not happen as reported, did not happen in the "Triangle" or in a few cases did not happen at all. That was about the same time I read "Shark Attack" by David Baldridge, which took all the data in the Navy's shark attack files, and subjected it to analysis, and introducd me to the concept of control data and,more indirectly, that you have to be very careful about seeing patterns in data where they mey not exist, and of the unreliability of eyewitnesses.
I think the real issue is that any phenomenon gets so conflated and tangled up that believers are always able to say ' but what about case XYZ ?', under the illusion that no matter how many cases have been debunked the remainder somehow glues everything together. That was certainly my own stance at one point. It is only when one treats every case entirely on its own merits and removes the entangled house of cards that one gets a true perspective. The variety of UFO reports then appear less self supported by other cases and the whole house of cards starts to fall apart. So the key to getting people to have a more skeptical approach is precisely that dis-entanglement.
I read this and the only thing I can think is: people who don't believe conspiracy theories can't refute the arguments put forward, so they must make emotional appeals. Isn't that a logical fallacy? I'm someone who has an open mind, and have changed my views on things numerous times. So it seems odd that as soon as refuting conspiracy theories is concerned, that's no longer an option.
I don't really think this gets at the core. I see a lot of "debunks" when it comes to *individual theories* and usually the ones presented aren't ones that are involved in the grand conspiracism/truther culture/worldview. For example, there's *lots* of places I could go to get a debunk of flat earth. Yet most truthers are not flat earthers. And most flat earthers aren't truthers. Separate communities. I see a lot of debunks for "fake" conspiracy theories. IE stuff like the 5g fears, anti-vax, etc. which again aren't really a part of the general conspiracy culture. And even if a single belief is "debunked" I still don't think that gets at the core of the issue. Fundamentally, many conspiracy beliefs start with a standard view: that those in positions of power are malicious and nefarious and out to deceive and harm people. But the problem I find is that that seems to actually be a pretty standard view, both among the left and right politically. So conspiracism is really just looking at a less commonly viewed side. Perhaps this is why people can't be "deconverted"? Whenever I see stories of "ex conspiracy theorists" it's usually that they believed in a single theory, that theory was debunked, and then they moved on with life. Never people deep into the roots of it all.
I used to be a ufo skeptic. What changed me to be a believer on this topic are essentially 3 core things that still hold: 1. My own eyewitness account of seeing a ufo. 2. The government declaring ufos to be real. And 3. certain videos which to me appear legitimate and unaltered, such as photos directly from the nasa website. For me to reject this I must: deny my eyes, reject the government, and reject nasa. Which then further fuels *other* conspiracy theories (ie that the government nor nasa can be trusted).
I think you make too much of the whole Mirage Men thing....which was really just Doty confessing to the one rather bizarre case he was involved in. And that was a case where the UFO believer was directly 'spying' on a USAF base, and clearly some counter-measure had to be taken. So Doty was involved in deception and admits it. But that's a far cry from there being a more general deliberate policy of inserting UFO stories, especially as the more general interpretation of UFO historians is that the Pentagon, etc, did NOT want communication lines clogged up with UFO reports.
