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Comment by LatteLazy | Hacker News Reader

Facts don't convince people. That's the problem with flat earth and trump and 1001 other issues. If your father believes in flat earth, explain how upset you are by that then get him some friends so he doesn't need to join fringe groups for a sense of belonging.

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This is pure speculation on my part, as I haven't looked into any data to back this up, but I also believe that a lot of conspiracy theorists become conspiracy theorists, whether they realise it or not, for the sense of belonging and community that is perhaps lacking in other areas of their life.

I mean think about it - if you don't have a satisfactory social group, what better way to fill that void than by joining a group of hundreds or thousands that all think and feel the same way as you, and will gladly welcome you with open arms.

It's not about logic, it never was. It's about belonging. A strong enough emotion trumps rationality, just as people refuse to evacuate before a natural disaster because "it's their home".

>if you don't have a satisfactory social group, what better way to fill that void than by joining a group of hundreds or thousands that all think and feel the same way as you

...kthartic posted on HN...

We just have to encourage each other to think and feel differently. More disagreements are good for healthy discussions..?

I agree. After watching 'Behind the Curve' [1], this is the feeling I got from the whole thing.

[1]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8132700/

This is true. When you are younger and inexperienced, you believe fact will change people's minds. This is just not true. I didn't figure this out until I was in my 50's.

It is very important for some people to convince others that their ideas are correct (which they very well might be).

Let go of this "I need to convince people to agree with my view." Instead, love your father for his other qualities and allow him to have his harmless ideas.

> Instead, love your father for his other qualities and allow him to have his harmless ideas.

The problem starts when some ideas are not harmless. For example idea that covid is dangerous. Some people don't see evidence of this around them (myself included, I don't personally know anyone who had covid), so they don't believe experts, so they don't protect themselves and others. Some people even have idea that they are in the right, experts are lying and they need to actively prove that experts are lying in any way they can, even misrepresenting facts.

Plenty of people have their mind changed by facts, they're called scientists. The rest are usually uneducated laymen. How do you change their minds? You don't, you educate their children to prevent the entrenchment of idiocracy.

This comment is so incredibly smug. People change their minds all the time, even "uneducated laymen". You just may not know the foundation of their belief and show evidence against something peripheral. It takes time, effort, and understanding in order to change someones mind and a level of openness and vulnerability that may end in you changing your mind yourself. Also, if you think that scientists or highly educated people are somehow immune to holding onto a false belief in the face of opposing evidence, you're deluding yourself.

It feels insidious that "harmless" ideas like flat eartherism and creationism have crept to include broader conspiracy theories that actually do harm people. We know that at least one think tank[1] has had extensive effects on American policy by casting doubt on science -- starting with the fact that smoking is harmful.

That creates a large population of people primed to expect scientists to be lying to them. Flat eartherism is harmless in itself, but I suspect that the OP's father also believes several other conspiracy theories -- and votes according to them.

That doesn't change the OP's problem, or your observation that you can't fix it. But if you can't even solve the readily-demonstrable fact that the earth is round (just phone a trustworthy friend a few timezones away and ask where the sun is), how are you going to get people to agree about things that actually cause harm?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartland_Institute

> I didn't figure this out until I was in my 50's.

What changed your mind? :)

I must have read something - maybe on hacker news. :-)

“Figured out” was a poor choice of words because I didn’t have an epiphany, “learned”would be more accurate.

I was curious, but it was more a joke :)

Aah, I see what you did there. :-)

>That's the problem with flat earth and trump and 1001 other issues.

I would add some of those 1001 other issues include things Well educated and common sense folk “know” to be sound, backed by evidence and scientific research. I would cite the reproducibility crisis which is not limited to just social science but endemic in academia and corporate driven research. Further I would hi-light the “fake news” situation is not ideologically limited nor is propaganda or any individuals personal biases leading to a kind of myopia to counter examples and challenging ideas. Suffice to say it’s easy to throw stones at flat earth and trump but if you think somehow your primate brain is not as broken or fallible as the next person then you’ve surely been had.

Everyone gets fooled sometimes. It's choosing to continue being fooled that's the issue.

Saying "facts don't convince people" is a way of saying "begging the question doesn't convince people", I think.

"begging the question"? I'm not sure i understand...

Edit: I get it now. To be clear: I'm not presenting proof, I'm just making the observation.

To beg a question is one of the ways to skip over the weak part of your argument. There are other ways. Begging the question is a way that leaves a remainder that must be true because it's true.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

Ah, thanks, I've never heard that used that way!

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