It's only fake-believe: how to deal with a conspiracy theorist

If you model the conspiracy theorist as being similar to yourself, I think you'd have to assume there is roughly equal likelihood that you will convince them that covid is caused by a virus (or whatever), as there is that they will convince you that it is caused by their cell phone - that is, not much chance at all of changing people's minds by discussion like this.

Some theories are scientifically proved wrong (earth is flat), other are partially wrong (climate has always changed... yes but not that fast), and others are just far fetched ( hydroxychloroquin has been fought against by big pharmas to try and sell their own expensive drugs). And then there are theories or rumors that happened to be correct after all ( watergate, contras, etc).

This is not a black or white thing.

Humans will always fall prey to grifts. And the problem of conspiracies in our age seem to be grifting at scale.

I think the attempts to censor conspiracy theories are far more troubling. They are works of political fan fiction or at worst someone's erroneously held opinion. Sometimes they even turn out to be true. Censorship is completely indefensible in any case.

https://thebulletin.org/2020/06/did-the-sars-cov-2-virus-ari...

A very troubling idea if true.

Shame them for seeking "alternate facts" when the real truth always seems work out in someone else's favor and it only reinforces their beliefs.

Why does this article prefer the latter?

I wish we could build an Internet bot to go around and address this one.

The changes in view I've seen is when the underlying need to quell a fear has been met, the story they discuss openly tends to change a bit.

I find it promising though how at least some people see through articles like this. On the topic of conspiracy theories on hn, I generally keep my comments meta to avoid devolving conversation, which I will do here as well to demonstrate how this article itself is full of fallacy.

1. The strawman fallacy and false consensus. Almost always articles of this sort, henceforth generally referenced to as "tfa", start off with or contain some variation of the strawman fallacy, wherein the weakest versions of any given conspiracy theory or set thereof are used to establish the baseline expectance that you the reader also should assume there is no merit to any of this, because there is no nuance. The article does this in the first paragraph. It attempts to use the false consensus effect to solidify the strawman.

2. The cherry picking, texas sharpshooter, and composition fallacies. Via rhetorical devices like "Since many conspiracy theories arise from feelings of uncertainty and fear..." tfa creates an illusion that there is no truth to be had in any of said conspiracy theories. The use of the word "many" softens this effect only slightly, and most readers will glaze right past it and fall for the rhetorical trick. It creates a false consensus that conspiracy theories aren't arrived at by those searching for truth based on the evidence, but rather by some faulty reasoning or cause. Of course uncertainty and fear contribute, and may sometimes play a part in the origins of conspiracy theories, but very often there are many kernels of truth (ignored by detractors) that are the true origins, with uncertainty and fear only being mechanisms by which they are spread to those who didn't understand the at least partially true origins in the first place.

3. The meta-dragon. By ignoring the very real issues with scientific incompetence and malice, the part about invisible dragons applies to itself.

4. Appeal to authority. The great irony of the fake authority section is that it itself is a logical fallacy in an apeal to authority. Even more convienient when they get to predetermine who the authorities are worthy to appeal to. Even more ironic in this part is the reference to the tobacco industry using the tactic they speak about in an attempt to explain why pharma industry wouldn't ever do that.

5. Begging the question about bandwagons and black and white fallacies with some straw thrown in. Section 3 does them all. I tend to lean towards Michael Parenti's views in the way he turns the ridicule around on what he calls "coincidence theorists". It's used all the time to dismiss arguments, and almost never stands up to scrutiny. Phrases like "most people had the good sense to dismiss" (bandwagon), "electromagnetic waves caused the disease" (strawman), and "you could just as easily point to the 2011 film Contagion and argue that director Steven Soderbergh has been plotting the whole thing." (the fallacy fallacy) all together turn section 3 into a version of the black and white fallacy.

All in all, the entire article is an explosion of fallacies attempting to show how fallacious the conspiracy theories around the topic are. I shouldn't have to say this, but please note, I'm not defending any of the particular theories put forth (though some of them have more merit than the impression given).

“Don't take security in the false refuge of consensus.” - Christopher Hitchens

I want to be clear that I don't agree w/ Barrington Declaration, and given the hopefully now under 2 weeks away arrival of initial vaccinations in the USA herd immunity looks like an especially poor idea.

But I completely detest this style of argument, where a bunch of extraneous guilt-by-association is tossed on top of "most experts disagree" written by someone who doesn't seem to understand what the hell they're talking about but writes in the most condescending, let me explain it to these dumb plebs manner possible.

To be clear, "epidemiological research" cannot really answer the public policy question of how to respond to a pandemic - this is ultimately a political choice and in a democracy must be subject to some degree of public input. For example I think evidence strongly suggests China's draconian responses have been incredibly effective tools and yet would be completely intolerable in our political culture.

Beyond that, all evidence I have seen suggests the author's own authoritative claim rejecting the idea "that herd immunity is achievable without a vaccine" is itself not correct. The reality is we are dealing with a novel virus so it's difficult to make any claim about long-term immunity, but all the data we have on mutation rate, lasting immune response from those infected, low rates of reinfection, some pre-existing immunity in select populations, and, importantly, really the entire idea that these vaccines will work ... is predicated on the idea that herd immunity would be achievable without a vaccine.

Perhaps the above paragraph is arguable, but it is certainly not some Qanon 5G pizzagate conspiracy theory. You can be entirely opposed to let-it-rip herd immunity on public policy grounds while believing it is scientifically possible.

What disturbs me more than crank randos online believing nonsense is western mainstream media's increasingly neurotic and self-discrediting attempt to label anything that disagrees with perceived expert consensus as some completely insane disproven earth-is-flat falsehood, belief in which is akin to a mental illness, and that the ideas must be suppressed and/or re-educated out of those afflicted. Especially given that SARS-Cov-2 was treated by many of these same people as akin to a conspiracy back in January and February.

One of my favorite examples is from Cass Sunstein[1], Obama oracle of nudging the hoi polloi away from their dumb irrational choices. But there were many others[2]:

As psychologist David DeSteno wrote on 11 February in the New York Times, “our fear distorts our thinking about the coronavirus”. Two days later, the same newspaper picked the brains of several eminent psychologists in a piece titled, “Coronavirus 'hits all the hot buttons' for how we misjudge risk”. And finally, in a Bloomberg article on 28 February, Cass Sunstein (co-author of the bestseller Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness, published in 2008) summed up the advice of many cognitive experts by saying that “a lot of people are more scared than they have any reason to be.”

Journalists and opinion-makers would do well to eat some humble pie and treat the public more like peers than children to be educated.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-02-28/corona...

[2] https://www.philonomist.com/en/article/why-were-we-so-blind

> 1. Hunting an invisible dragon

This is basically saying: Stop digging. If you find nothing in the top soil, stop digging, there is not going to be treasure below. If you find some coins, stop digging. Or dig just a bit more, find nothing, and take that as proof that you are hunting an invisible treasure. And when the treasure is unearthed, it is not invisible anymore, so stop hunting for invisible other treasure.

They state "there is no credible research proving the dangers of vaccines, the link between 5G networks and Covid-19 symptoms in humans, you may be told that there is a concerted effort to prevent such evidence from being released". But there is credible research proving adverse or ineffective effects of vaccines, and that these effects are graver/more common for Black people. There is no link with Covid-19, but a concerted effort to prevent misinformation, which amounts to anything not validated with a randomized trial. There is a concerted effort to stop newspapers from reporting a certain vaccine is 52% effective (enough for herd immunity, but hard to understand for lay people who the public health authorities need to take it).

> 2. Fake authority

Fake authority is the other side of appeal to authority. Your guy says A, but he has a poor education and is not an expert, my guy says B, and he is a well-esteemed professor, who steers well-clear of such murky/unclear issues. Is B more likely to be true? Probably. It is established fact after all. Should we discard A, without investigating the claim on its own merit, because only fringe people hold opinion A? No. That's an appeal to non-authority to avoid debunking the statement with facts. Naturally, there will be an authority imbalance on taking stands on controversial or fringe issues. Don't misuse that imbalance. Don't find the most vocal and most unhinged spokesperson for an entire conspiracy and then pit them against a moderate professor. Don't use status quo as an unquestionable pedestal, where everything on the ground is fake, and not worth looking at when someone picks it up. It is also much like: If it was true, it would already be on the pedestal. If aliens existed, they would be on the news.

> 3. Coincidence or covert operations?

This is attacking a clear weakness of conspiracy theorists to cast a wide net and to causally connect seemingly unrelated things. Ingoring that this is a necessity: If Snopes or Wikipedia would have cast that net, and proven causal connection, then its not a conspiracy theory, but just being well-informed. The example the article gives is also casting this wide net: saying conspiracy theories are not true, because these are formed on spurious causal connections. "the MMR vaccine can lead to autism" or "the MMR vaccine can lead to manifest onset autism" is a conspiracy theory, but a theory based on the fact that vaccine research is highly political, that the government really has a hand in shaping public opinion on vaccines, has ulterior motives for public (not individual) health, by attacking a flaw of overgeneralization, instead of pointing to supporting facts. The very same researchers in charge of the adverse-effects vaccine-research, were writing papers stating that the veterans complaining about cancer and birth defects (again, only possible to make that connection by casting a wide net, without full access to causal knowledge) were attributing these health issues to a coincidence, not because they worked with Agent Orange, and that it would be painful and costly for the government to admit is used chemical warfare on its own troops. There is presedent for a "covert" operation.

> 4. False equivalence

A false equivalence is when you take a ridiculous conspiracy theory ("Holocaust did not happen", "5G causes COVID") and use that focus to paint all conspiracies or controversies surrounding a topic ("Every war has victors/survivors who get to write the narritive, possibly introducing irregulatities/falsehoods, due to bias." or "We don't have scientific evidence that states that 5G is not damaging to biological life, so a roll-out before that is risky.")

> 5. The thought-terminating cliche

This is when you ridicule or weaken conspiracy theorists for making a living from it. By questioning their motives, you make it seem they are dishonest, or not believing in the things they say, but saying it because they make money. By attacking their most terrible conspiracy theory, you deny thoughts that say they may be correct on some topics, or to some degree.

Examples are: "Go buy Alex Jones virality pills then, if you want to agree with his conspiracy nonsense of chemicals turning the frogs gay" and "There is good evidence that conspiracy theorists such as David Icke are themselves reaping huge profits from spreading misinformation" and "David Icke is a crank who believes the world is ruled by elite shape-shifting reptilians".

> "the virus was created as a Chinese weapon"

Facts that may make this seem that way:

- The SARS virus is considered a Category C bioweapon - The SARS virus is a viable bioweapon, because it is incredibly disruptive (not due to low mortality) - Chinese labs are experimenting with defensive and offensive biowarfare, also with gene-targeted coronaviruses - Such an offensive weapon research (or military defensive gain-of-function vaccine research, where they enhance artifically the virality of coronovirus) are conducted in labs all over the world, including the Chinese. - There is circumstancial evidence that security and processes at these labs were insufficient - There is still no clear information on patient 0, nor the animal transmission chain, which are signs of biological attack.

"The virus was formed naturally". Ok. Where is anything to back that up? Which animal chain? Which patient 0 not on the meat market? How did virus from cave bats hundreds of miles away made it to Wuhan?

You can say: "We expect and think it was likely the virus formed naturally" (which the narritive does). But how does this give you any proof that the virus was not a Chinese weapon. It doesn't. It is a possibility. It is up in the air (like how the authorities refused to admit COVID-19 was airborne).

"The danger, of course, is that their ideas will discourage people from taking the vaccine, leaving them vulnerable to the actual disease."

Dangerous ideas. Ok. But not illegal ideas. And not necessarily untrue ideas. Attack free speech because it leaves other people vulnerable to actual disease. Discard their real concerns about the contents of vaccines, and their free will decision to take a vaccine, being forced, or made impossible?

It is also a dangerous idea to discourage people from thinking for themselves. From excercising their free speech. From not curbing their actions, because those actions are fully illegal, but because those actions are inconvenient to public health. Challenge all you want. If truth is on your side, it should be able to discard conspiritorial ideas as false, not attack them because they are "dangerous". That's what the evil conspiritors would do.

We would have to throw out vast amounts of science to make that true. It's basically magic, but scientists and the media tend to be so cautious that to some people it may seem that there is genuine doubt.

I understand that we don't want scientists and the media being overconfident - saying "there's no evidence the covid vaccines have any significant side-effects" is fine, you couldn't say "there is no conceivable way this vaccine could cause a problem". But I do think the distinction between science and fantasy should be made clearer.

"Conspiracy theorist" is basically a label for anybody who does not rely on argument from authority. Half of the time they get it wrong, the other half of the time, the authority gets it wrong.

There are some people who believe anything they are told. They might be on either end of this spectrum: Believe anything that an "authority" tells them, or believe anything that the "anti-authority" tells them. The rest are somewhere between: You have incomplete information and must draw your own conclusions.

Simple example that resonates well with current situation - when covid broke out I was spending a lot of energy ingesting everything I could. To my surprise, the vast majorities of predictions made by experts did not come true. I remember back in April-May-June media would predict that cases will skyrocket in two-three weeks and everything will go to hell. But it did not; in "two-three weeks" someone else would again say "we are two-three weeks away from disaster". No one ever retracted their pieces or issued a correction, everyone just forgotten about predictions that never came true. Most of my friends are happy to keep on listening to such experts. The media are happy to promote the experts further.

So how am I supposed to not be... heavily sceptical when we don't held opinion makers accountable for what they say?

(I know what I'm saying is not 100% related to article, but I just want to see through media bullshit, and need to vent somewhere.)