or give nut jobs more validity than they deserve. it used to be one guy in the corner of a bar spouting off his mouth and that was his sphere of influence... now that guy has a megaphone and the smarter people are mostly doing things and don't have the time or the inclination to say "no that's obvious bullshit because x y z" so the crap rises to the top.
Have you seen this tested? Have you evidence that this works?
Crucially, does this work at internet scale or in social medai-esque content environments?
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I can say that we know for a fact, that exposing conspiracy theories by letting people broadcast them independently is a sure shot way of having them infect more people.
We've seen this evidenced all over web forums, and social media. Bad ideas get amplified. Worse, the more complex the logical counter argument, the far better the bad idea will fare.
Here are what we know, for certainty:
1) People DO NOT want to spend cognitive power.
1.1) Content that forces cognitive expenditure will gain fewer views and therefore be harder to go viral.
2) Emotion driven processing is cheaper.
2.1) Therefore emotion engaging content will proliferate
3) this is worsened over general demographics
3.1) Proofs or logical arguments that require more than common knowledge will need novel approaches to propagate.
Our human web of knowledge is a growth medium that suits conspiracy theories, self referential beliefs, and superstition.
Reason is the interloper here.
"I wonder if there’s a similar effect in the antivax movement – autism seems to really be on the rise (0.7 to 1.5% in this century)."
CDC is reporting that Autism has increased MUCH MUCH more than this. By their own reporting standards it was 1 in 150 in 2000, to 1 in 68 by 2010 (https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/images/autism_data_graphic...) and the exponential increase has continued.
The idea that Autism and Vaccines is not linked is fake news. The CDC's own experts have blown the whistle saying their research was faked at the behest of the CDC to engage in a coverup.
An entire book was released on this subject: https://www.amazon.com/Vaccine-Whistleblower-Exposing-Autism...
And the semi-secret vaccine court which is heavily stacked against vaccine injury claimants, recently found that Autism was caused by a vaccine and paid out millions in damages. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/family-to-receive-15m-plus-in-f...
There are secret studies buried by the CDC showing profound increases in auto-immune diseases that RFK Jr. had to dig up via FOIA, example: https://twitter.com/Perpetualmaniac/status/12040577205858836...
The idea that anti-vaxxers are misguided and need to be algorithmically silenced by some form techno-fascism will be seen as the scariest time in human history. This is nothing but a coverup for big pharma. It will go down in history as the biggest medical coverup in human history, dwarfing the "cigarettes are healthy for you" that the CDC pushed in the '60s.
The fact that the left is pushing this anti-free speech mantra is absolutely disgusting. The left used to stand for liberal values like free speech. Now they stand for big pharma, big tech and chinese style censorship to invoke cancel culture.
How shameful!
> CDC is reporting that Autism has increased MUCH MUCH more than this. By their own reporting standards it was 1 in 150 in 2000, to 1 in 68 by 2010 (https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/images/autism_data_graphic...) and the exponential increase has continued.
What do you think 1/150 and 1/68 translates to? now ask yourself if you are that wrong about a fundamental condition of your argument what else could you be mistaken on?
It translates into the increase in ONE DECADE. Now go read the claim by the author: that this increase happened in ONE CENTURY.