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Comment by simonbarker87 | Hacker News Reader

The thing I find most infuriating speaking to anyone who believes in a conspiracy theory is that no rational argument can win them round because their arguments are rarely rational or based on concrete evidence. Antivaccers are particularly difficult because they simply have no faith in science or doctors and believe that any evidence is fabricated.

Has anyone found effective methods to counter the above traits? While not engaging is usually the best option it is sad and concerning when it is a family member so I don’t feel like ignoring it is the best approach.

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> "Has anyone found effective methods to counter the above traits?"

In the case of anti-vaxxers (most of whom are probably sincere,) when you become upset or even infuriated with them it cements their beliefs. They interpret your anger as evidence of their position being right. Therefore if you want to change their minds, the first thing you must master is your own emotions. Hiding your anger isn't enough, because people always leak information about their emotional state. You need to find a new frame of mind that allows you to have discussions with people who are wrong without becoming upset. I know this is difficult with antivaxxers since their beliefs put children in harms way, but it's necessary.

Years ago, Digby had a great post "The Action is the Juice" that explains this. (It's a quote from Heat.)

A zealot is eager for the arguments, to test the strength of their beliefs. If they still believe after all the facts, data, experience, it's scored a victory (dopamine rush).

I can't quickly refind her original post. Will update later if I can.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170131-why-wont-some-peopl...

But, how in the world does one train himself in such a way?

I'm sure there are many ways. Self discipline, meditation, practice, or cannabis.

> The thing I find most infuriating speaking to anyone who believes in a conspiracy theory is that no rational argument can win them round because their arguments are rarely rational or based on concrete evidence.

I've started asking for a commitment up front whenever a disagreement comes up. So for flat Earthers, before bringing up any other points or discussing anything, just ask what would convince them to revise their views.

I sometimes preface this with saying that I think it's important to be honest about how certain I am about some position, and to state upfront what would prove me wrong. So I would be convinced that the Earth was flat if I ran an experiment, like a high flying balloon, that then showed 0 curvature in the Earth at high altitude where we'd expect some curvature. Then ask them the same question.

Now you're both on the same page, and if you're committed to resolving this question, you have a way to move forward and see who's right and you can do each step together to ensure no tampering, etc. And as a bonus, they get to learn exactly how science is done.

I see the power in your idea of asking people up front what would convince them, but I question on of your premises:

Can we usually anticipate precisely what would and wouldn't convince us of a proposition? Particularly when it involves making a judgment call based on imperfect evidence?

Well, someone that believes vaccines cause autism or in flat Earth based on imperfect evidence, if they're being honest there should some more convincing, less imperfect evidence capable of changing their minds. Of course, we can certainly think of reasons why it wasn't as perfectly convincing as we initially thought, but I think anyone who starts changing the goalposts realizes they're on the back foot at this point.

After doing this two ore more times, you can easily make the argument that it's just simpler to abandon that model, or to suggest that perhaps they believe what they do not for empirical reasons, but for some other reasons (like being part of a community they like).

I've heard that it can be effective not to challenge delusional beliefs at all, but just to ask questions, and not even questions that seem to punch holes in the delusional belief. Just cause the delusional mind to do the math and flesh out the understanding itself.

Might something like http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/ help? I remember reading there that a quite lot of common and obvious things demonstrably don't work in an experimental setting, like http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/2017/10/30/more-eviden....

I don't believe that anything short of them or their loved ones contacting measles will change their minds.

If the threat of diseases we've eliminated returning isn't enough, then perhaps only the diseases themselves will do it.

> I don't believe that anything short of them or their loved ones contacting measles will change their minds.

That is like saying people should not be driving cars since there is someone dying of a car accident every day. And that a person is to blame if they took their family out for a joy ride, and ends up in an accident killing them all.

That is also like expecting someone never to ride in a car, because someone dear to them were killed in an accident...

You think that a child contracting (not "contacting") a disease, or even dying, will convince some anti-vacc idiot of anything? They will find a way to blame it on vaccines even though the child didn't have a single one. Maybe the child came into contact with a vaccinated child and got the disease from that child's vaccine! Yeah, that must be it.

Some 25 years ago, I learned from a homeless man on the streets of Vancouver a curious hypothesis: AIDS probably originates from those damn condoms themselves! The molecules of the latex rubber mutated into the virus, you see ...

I once asked what they would do if they got bitten by a rabid animal. Rabies treatment is a vaccine afaik. I couldn’t get a straight answer :-(

It couldn't be a vaccine if you already have rabies; vaccines are preventative medicine to build an immune response ahead of time.

The way I read it[1], you're both right.

The rabies vaccine is part of rabies treatment, but it's used in the window between being exposed to rabies and developing rabies. People who've been exposed but haven't been previously vaccinated also get Rabies Immune Globulin, which provides immediate antibodies until the body can respond to the vaccine by actively producing antibodies of its own.

CDC: "Rabies vaccine is given to people at high risk of rabies to protect them if they are exposed. It can also prevent the disease if it is given to a person after they have been exposed."[1]

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/vis/vis-statements/rabies.h...

That’s the treatment though:

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/rabies/diagno...

Maybe the vaccine can still stimulate you or immune system faster than the virus can take hold?

Pretty much. I'd say it stimulates the immune system before the virus does much damage rather than before it takes hold.

You cannot reason someone out of something they weren't reasoned into to begin with.

Well, if you want to have a constructive dialog with them, getting angry isn't so great. In this sort of situation the content of the argument isn't what's at issue; far more important is the motivation for holding the position. The conversation should be directed towards contextualizing the position in the person's life. Your goal in the discussion shouldn't be to convince the other person, but to understand what they're thinking and why.

If you mistrust scientists, why the hell would you be convinced by scientific evidence? The productive discussion is to be had about the mistrust. You can't just ignore their mistrust and argue as if scientific evidence is admissible: that is assuming your position in order to justify your position. I'd also like to emphasize that unless you're the one doing the research, and even then, there is scarcely ever concrete evidence available. Especially for something like vaccines where the positive benefit is the absence of something negative, evidence is quite indirect. You and I trust science. I believe that trust is justified but it is something that needs justification.

An important thing about people is that they are more rational in the small, especially about concrete aspects of their day-to-day lives, than they are in the large, especially when it comes to lofty concepts and abstract models of the world that they don't have direct experience with. Conspiracy theories are dangerous because they allow the latter irrationality to negatively impact the former rationality. However, turning it around, reasoning from a person's concrete life and point of view towards understanding abstractions such as institutions of medicine, science, politics, etc. is a way to counter conspiracy theories.

So, tl;dr; it's not that rational arguments can't win such people over, it's that you have to start from a different viewpoint and you have to use a process that isn't quite listing evidence, weighing it, and deducing logical consequence. Rationality is much bigger than that sort of thing. If you apply rational methods empathetically, you will convince a lot more people. This is true in all spheres of life. Even at the lab bench.

"...it's not that rational arguments can't win such people over..."

I used to believe we could just talk (hug) it out. But now I've given up.

If you find examples, guides, howtos, case studies for what you're suggesting, I'm all ears, please share.

> Antivaccers are particularly difficult because they simply have no faith in science or doctors and believe that any evidence is fabricated.

Do you think that is fabricating evidence is not possible? Is the possibility to fabricate evidence in favor of vaccines as outlandish as the claim of flat earthers?

I am also curios as to why when ever there is a discussion of flat earthers, there's is always someone who tries to throw anti-vaxxers or vaccine-skeptics into the same bunch.

> Does the possibility to fabricate evidence in favor of vaccines as outlandish as the claim of flat earthers?

No; one is about a 13.6 on the logarithmic outlandish scale and the other 15.1.

Care to post the calculations?

The first thing to recognize is that no amount of evidence or logic swayed you to have faith in science, doctors, vaccines, etc. You, like all humans, made that decision emotionally and then chose some evidence/arguments in order to rationalize your emotional decision. Once you understand that it's always emotion, that may help guide you in how to "debate" such topics. The short answer, is that debating them in the traditional sense is a massive waste of your time.

http://bigthink.com/experts-corner/decisions-are-emotional-n...

If you truly want to understand, you need to be open to the possibility that they are right. Since you are not, I recommend not bringing it up.

Some of the people who believe these things are not stupid at all, and while it may seem smart to you to just accept what you hear from the professionals, it actually doesn't require any intelligence to follow what they say.

I've been working with professionals a lot, and I know they are just repeating what they are told. Every profession is like that. Experts even more so, since otherwise they lose credibility and are not experts anymore.

So true. If one looks closely at actual (as opposed to the false caricature most people hold in their mind) "conspiracy theories", very often they are based on reasonable questions or the desire for more details & study, with a big percentage of actual idiots also participating in the discussion. And when you observe their detractors, say on here or reddit, you will usually see an unfortunate strawman or worst-possible-interpretation approach being taken to claims being discussed.

The human mind is extremely susceptible to various fallacies such as confirmation bias. Usually this is beneficial, but often it can be very harmful.

> Some of the people who believe these things are not stupid at all

I don't think it's productive to label anyone stupid, but a complete inability to properly weigh probability is damning to claims of intelligence. For instance, the scope of the conspiracy needed to fake the moon landings is completely implausible. And when you consider the incentive the USSR would have had in exposing it as a hoax, it goes from implausible to literally impossible. Similar arguments apply to the safety of vaccines, flat Earth, and other absurd hoaxes.

This is considerably different to the repetition of "common knowledge" which ultimately turns out to be some kind of urban legend.

Probability is also based on what you know. Nobody believed NSA was collating information about Americans online the way they did, so using probability you don't reach the correct answer. The CIA is smuggling drugs and has committed lots of serious crimes across the world. Again, what is the probability of this?

Quite a few people believed the NSA were collecting everything, but I agree that quantifying what you don't know is challenging. Even so, you often don't need to precisely quantify each outcome so long as you can calculate a relative difference between the various outcomes you are aware of. Most questions in daily lifehave order of magnitude differences between them.

> If you truly want to understand, you need to be open to the possibility that they are right.

Chickenpox is not a horrible disease that ought to be vaccinated against. Pro-vaxxers don't realize that they're missing the big picture too: we can't vaccinate against everything, and it's just as important to address all the conditions that result in children developing an especially bad case of chicken pox.

Medicine is a fickle field. The tragedy is that modern medical practitioners think they now know what they're doing. Otto Warburg was probably always right about cancer [0], but conventional doctors are still working with the 'kill all the cancer cells' theories of cancer treatment.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/magazine/warburg-effect-a...

> I've been working with professionals a lot, and I know they are just repeating what they are told. Every profession is like that. Experts even more so, since otherwise they lose credibility and are not experts anymore.

There's a human tendency to trust "received wisdom". I think Thomas Kuhn's book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, is about the phenomenon...

Professionals who build things that are expected to just work (bridge engineers) are a little different than professionals who try real hard to help their patients (certain medical specialties).

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