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Comment by nasredin | Hacker News Reader

IIRC there was a study that said the most effective way to fight stupidity is by ridicule and not by actually educating or debating these folks.

I can't think of NO BETTER target to ridicule than the flatearthers.

Like I said below the man in the Whitehouse seems to brought out the racists and other stupid people out of the woodwork.

There were ALWAYS there BTW, they just seem more emboldened than before.

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Do you have a link to this study?

Intuitively to me, that seems like the opposite of what you should do. If you ridicule someone, they just go deeper into their crazy group, and are exposed to even less correct information. Additionally, people who are a little ridiculed get pushed toward those who are also ridiculed for crazier ideas, because they feel accepted there.

The researchers found that the rationality speech and the ridiculing speech — but not the empathetic speech — were effective in reducing belief in the conspiracy theory.

http://www.psypost.org/2016/12/study-rational-arguments-ridi...

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I was wrong, BOTH rational and ridicule methods are effective. Ridicule is probably more amusing though. LOL.

Very interesting article, thanks!

It looks like this study was done by people who only just heard of the conspiracy (and so, if my anecdotal experience is anything to go by, they have less investment, especially because they haven't put any personal action into researching it).

I wonder if / how this would differ if you tried to reduce the belief of someone who was deep into pizzagate or something like that. Someone who has formed an identity around believing this kind of thing, someone who feels like they themselves "discovered" or pieced this stuff together etc.

I would think most people are conspiracy consumers rather than producers or dissiminators like Alex Jones.

There's also the genuine held belief aspect. I think some of the latest conspiracy theories are not born out of a genuine held belief, but are used just to troll or for political purposes (Obama is a Muslim). Also IIRC Pizzagate was born out of 4chan, it just escalated QUICKLY.

I am guessing trying to debate someone who is genuinely invested in a conspiracy (spent time and money) is harder than someone who listens to late night radio and watches Alex Jones.

Sorry to keep posting OT and about politics but do you know who would be a perfect candidate to study believes in conspiracy theories SO deeply held that they keep talking about them after they no longer matter? Rhetorical. It's Trump. He keeps talking about Obama's birth certificate, losing the popular vote to illegal voters and a new one, the Pussygrabbing tape is fake.

So everybody loves conspiracies, even presidents - a simple, black and white explanation for the increasingly complex, dangerous, chaotic time (e.g. DPRK).

> there was a study that said the most effective way to fight stupidity is by ridicule

Unless people are just trolling, in which case both trying to ridicule or educate them is not gonna work. Just ignore them. Don't feed the trolls.

Isn't flat earth society itself a ridicule of stupidity?

We need to go deeper.

Ridiculing the Flat Earth Society ridiculing conspiracy theories?

We live in an absurd time. "Post-fact", "post-irony"?

Works by Adam Curtis come to mind.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Curtis

I think 2014-2020 is gonna be a ripe field for books, documentaries and such. Such a diverse, disorienting, chaotic yet business as usual time.

Or 2014-2024 if Trump gets his second term.

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