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Comment by laughinghan | Hacker News Reader

> We should be reaching out to these people and at least trying to wrestle them back to sanity.

If you believe that's what we should be doing, why aren't you doing that? There are people right here in this thread you could be reaching out to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20617883

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Reasoning with these people is like reasoning with flat earthers. You present all evidence and they will still flat out deny that Earth is a sphere. They are not driven by reasoning but their internal beliefs that they have already locked in as infallaible. They have already heard all the reasons you just laboriously articulated and put together. You are not giving them any new information. You are just wasting your time. Their goal of listening to you at all is to probe any possibility to convert you in to their little tribe and they happen to have all the time in the world, often being jobless.

If everyone's beliefs are unchangeable what is the danger of open forums for discussion? I think if you really want to combat this ideology it needs to be done with rational discussion instead of terminating the discussion. If we concede that many of these people were seduced by these ideologies on these sites and didn't initially hold these beliefs (which is one of the reasons these sites are considered so dangerous) don't we have to also concede that they could be swayed back.

These forums attracts unsuspecting vulnerable people and turns them into their cesspool member. Once you are cesspool member your beliefs cannot be altered. That’s the issue.

"Once you are cesspool member your beliefs cannot be altered."

Why? This is the crux of the problem. I don't believe that anyone who could be so easily swayed in one direction can't be swayed back. What am I missing here?

How do you know I'm not? Why would you expect to be more successful on hacker news than one of those open forums?

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