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Comment by blhack | Hacker News Reader

>Are they quoting a fringe YouTube video (which may have been fact-checked and debunked)

We have got to get away from this idea that you can "debunk" something with some authoritative source of truth. That is just not how reality works, and the idea that you can "fact check" and "debunk" your way to a healthy, functioning system of rhetoric is absurd.

NO argument has EVER been won by somebody pointing to a third party "fact checker", and honestly the idea that there is some infallible arbiter sounds like it is lifted directly from an Orwell novel.

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"infallible arbiter sounds like it is lifted directly from an Orwell novel"

Actually, I think 1984 was more about the fact that the party was clearly not infallible but that ultimately that this didn't matter as all records were constantly rewritten to be consistent with what the party claimed was true at any moment in time.

"Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present, controls the past"

So the solution is a party that is, in fact, infallible?

Exactly, my share of nuts in my feed are already convinced fact checkers are in the conspiracy, too.

Personally, I only try to have instructive discussion if I care about the person. Then it's time well spent. Strangers on the Internet? No, thanks.

Calling into question fact checkers is a good thing, skeptics should be welcomed. But I suppose there is a subjective line between reasonable skepticism and near-schizophrenic skepticism.

Sure. On the other hand, my newsfeed's nuts complain about fact checkers flagging their "nanobot infused COVID-19 vaccines by Bill Gates that can be controlled by 5G towers on command by Soros" posts as censorship and shills of the NWO.

Of course, fact checkers come with their own sets of biases, and any (educated) reader can identify those.

But the fact that reporters from all around joined fact checking campaigns is a good thing.

Their interests align with those of the population, even if the population thinks otherwise: you can't compete with trash media with real news and coverage, so either you crush them with "fact checking" and try to eventually deplatform them, or you become another Daily Mail and roll up your sleeves for a mud fight.

It won't stop hardcore conspiracy theorists from believing anything, but it will save me time from explaining my mom that no, Bill Gates isn't gonna inject us with microchips to have us located 24/7.

The Bill Gates ones are just the weirdest. I watched someone try to dig in to this a bit with someone pushing the idea that Bill Gates was trying to control us with vaccines/5g.

"Why would he do that?"

"Oh, there's money! There's lot of money in controlling people with vaccines. I know if I had that kind of power, I'd want to make money like that". (paraphrasing, but only just).

I think people have a difficult time comprehending the level of wealth/power someone like Gates or Bezos already have. Having wealth north of $100B is something only a handful of people will ever experience. To think someone has worked their whole life to get that sort of money, then... someone, would decide to say "I want to control people with vaccines because I can make a lot of money that way!" is ... off-the-radar silly. For a time, Gates had a lot more potential control over the information itself, and likely could have enriched himself even more directly, without needing to resort to medical intervention.

People are scared. The world is changing around us faster than many are able to keep up. Focusing your fears on a few outsized larger than life names to try to make sense of things is... I guess understandable to a point, but... these 'theories' can't seem to stand up to much basic logic.

Using the word "debunk" when really you should either be using "refute" or "rebut" appropriately does not help.

Over the 2.5 years the number of conspiracy theories coming from my father in-law has increased dramatically. Initially I tried debunking them but that didn't work and often made things hostile.

What I've found helps keep things civil is to have a real dialog.

These ideas are shallow and built on soft ground, let them shoot the crazy idea out there, ask clarifying questions and peel the onion.

> NO argument has EVER been won by somebody pointing to a third party "fact checker"

I don't think the article claims that.

How I understood it, a person at risk might be unaware that a video they watched has been proven false; in that context letting them know about it might help them.

Later the article says "always listen to people's deeper concerns".

A fact-check doesn't need to be done by an authority. Pointing out logic errors (i.e. correlation != causation, loops in chain of reasoning) in the argumentation can be done by anyone, and be understood by anyone willing to think.

> Pointing out logic errors ... can be done by anyone, and be understood by anyone willing to think.

Human beings are social animals, and people are likely to bristle at someone trying to poke holes in their worldview in that way, unless they have already established some kind of rapport. (Even the Socratic method expressed in Plato’s dialogues was practiced on people who belonged to the same city-state and social class as Socrates – and he eventually got charged and sentenced to death regardless.)

This is why one of the methods advocated for in curing people of conspiracy-theory thinking, is providing them a warm and supportive atmosphere where they feel part of a community, and not trying to challenge their ideas head on.

> This is why one of the methods advocated for in curing people of conspiracy-theory thinking, is providing them a warm and supportive atmosphere where they feel part of a community, and not trying to challenge their ideas head on.

Very interesting. I guess by creating a network of trust, they can begin to trust information from outside sources.

Where can I find information about this method? I have a friend that is deeply into conspiracy theories. The "head-on" approach has not worked, any advice appreciated. It's sad to hear that people give up on life-long relationships, I know I have a limit too but I try to remember who they were and recognize that they have good hearts but unhealthy minds.

That assumes the other party is acting in good faith; one can probably point out logical errors to the non-conspiracy arguer as well.

I mean (bear with me), you say the coronavirus is real because scientists say so? Which scientists? You're using weasel words and you're appealing to authority.

Ultimately, almost all arguments against conspiracy theories boil down to appeals to authority. Only a few people have personal evidence of the moon landing, the rest are relying on authority.

The main issue with convincing people who believe in conspiracy to return to orthodoxy is that there aren't many tools beyond appeal to authority. If your only tactics are appeal to authority and bullying you are not going to win many hearts and minds.

The threshold for self experimentation is raising though. One can buy a plane ticket or launch a rocket with a camera to see that the earth is not flat. Telescopes that can see evidence of humans reaching the moon are more attainable.

My guess is that's why more widely believed theories are increasingly elaborate or are those that require more effort to disprove.

Religions too seem to be evolving to increasingly abstract beliefs or face ever more mental gymnastics to justify. (Part of the reason I'm no longer a believer.)

There's an old quote that I'm probably butchering, and I don't know who said it, but it goes along the lines of "you can't use logic to get someone out of something they didn't use logic to get themselves into."

I used to be someone who would perpetually argue with friends and family members who believed in all this conspiracy crap, usually devolving to me sending links to Snopes and Politifact and whatnot, but I later realized that it was completely irrelevant, and probably just made them feel stronger in their beliefs, since they could always just dismiss me as "in on it" whenever I said something they didn't like.

Nowadays, I honestly just don't talk to family members and (former) friends who believe in really problematic nonsense, since by the time that they've fallen into the QAnon rabbit hole, it's not like a beautiful and logical argument from me to going to have any effect.

I'm not sure what the best strategy for fighting this kind of weird mass idiotic groupthink is. There's a part of me that thinks that the best thing to do is to make fun of them and mock them, but of course that's a lot easier to do when it's not your friend of family-member on the other end.

> since they could always just dismiss me as "in on it" whenever I said something they didn't like.

I get this same effect when talking about vanilla non-conspiratorial things, agree with their concerns, and I've been asked what I think. Since I don't tow their party line by focusing my attention on the same bad people, I'm "othered" and written off. This is more pronounced when talking to people on the red team than people on the blue team, but happens with both.

A simple example is "GPS satellites tracking your phone". Trying to explain to people that the GPS satellites only transmit, but that it's applications on your phone spilling your location, so there are steps you can personally take to avoid that - it just doesn't work. It's like my model of the situation doesn't fit into their model, and rather than doing the work to understand what I'm saying, they'd rather continue with their comforting simplistic answer that generally combines defeatism with condemnation.

> I'm not sure what the best strategy for fighting this kind of weird mass idiotic groupthink is

If anyone has any ideas please share them. For basically any social movement, when I see it gets some traction I'll think finally people are starting to care. But then as things progress, the movement takes on a life of its own and heads in the wrong direction without fail. It's like instead of staying focused on the problem, opportunists looking for power supply a "solution" that steers the crowd into an easy non-answer to benefit themselves. And it doesn't take many of them, because once the red herring becomes the groupthink dogma, pointing out its problems gets you othered.

I think the catastrophe we're now experiencing is from the wave of "normies" discovering conspiracy theories. Early Internet denizens went through this phase a long time ago, and had to contextualize wild theories within mainstream thought. Even if we found them very compelling, we couldn't just rant to everyone we met. But now that everyone and their aunt is on faceboot, not only can you repeat all the nonsense you've heard without being socially ostracized, you will actually gain popularity from it!

I don’t think mocking as a strategy will work.

I think attacking things from the side by targeting how to think critically rather than any specific topic is the best bet. It allows people to learn ideas without being immediately defensive.

Lesswrong is mostly this.

Pretty much everything you said also applies to religion which the vast majority of people in the world believe (in some capacity).

Believing clearly wrong things is a part of humanity - arguably the default - and people have to learn to overcome it.

I wonder if they're saying something similar though.

The fact that most fact checkers run with terms such as "Mostly false" etc. makes it even worse.

This comment resonates a lot with me. What I observe is that people mistake "fact" for "truth". A "fact" is the _interpretation_ of something that has happened. While truth is what objectively really happened. Most people can't detach their personal world view from an "absolute" reality and hence their "facts" are biased by the way how they _perceive_ the objective reality. But what's an objective reality? Everyone lives in their own subjective reality! And this is where their "facts" come from.

TLDR; The discussions around "facts" are totally useless to me. Unless you accept that someone who pushes through their "facts" does nothing else than pushing their worldview onto you. Everyone is free to learn "truth" through their own perception. Other people's "facts" don't support this much.

> A "fact" is the _interpretation_ of something that has happened.

This is not how I'd understand it.

From Cambridge dictionary: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/fact , "something that is known to have happened or to exist, especially something for which proof exists, or about which there is information"

Objective reality doesn't have a native representation in human language. When an event is recorded in text or speech it is neccessarily an interpretation. Even in memory, the record of an event is a mere interpretation of reality.

I'd also argue the words "known", "proof," and "information" all require interpretation as well.

Let's take one of the older conspiracy theories: 9/11 was an inside job.

* "something that is known to have happened" - Yep, 9/11 did happen. And some people say they KNOW that it was an inside job.

* "especially something for which proof exists" - job of the CIA is to exactly prevent such a thing, they did not.

* "or about which there is information" - come on. I won't link conspiracy theory websites here.

So, in the end, your definition does not contradict that someone calls the 9/11 conspiracy theory a "fact".

The first point is debatable - but then you could apply the same logic to WW1 or any other history event.

Therefore, I don't like your definition of fact.

The second point is also debatable:

> Job of the CIA is to exactly prevent such a thing, they did not.

This is not a proof that 9/11 was an inside job. Alternative interpretation: they did not do their job well enough.

It's sounds like a teenage Solipsism, and its really boring and tedious for other people.

For whom it is boring besides yourself? Are you presenting a „fact“ or your opinion ;) ?

You d go faster humiliating someone in front of an audience over a silly argument for sure.

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