Comment by BeetleB | Hacker News Reader

Comment by BeetleB | Hacker News Reader

One tactic I've found that works (with people I know): From the outset, insist on

1. answers and not questions.

2. positive evidence, and not hypotheses.

For the first, that means that statements like "Don't you think it's strange...?" statements are not permitted. Generally, conspiracy theorists won't provide answers, they will merely provide doubt to demonstrate a gap in your understanding, and then will happily try to fill the gap with a plausible (but usually wrong) theory.

It will start with "Don't you think it's strange/unlikely...?" regarding some aspect of the official narrative, and then follow with statements like "The only way it could make sense is if ..."

I point out that while he may have a compelling hypothesis, he didn't point to any proof of his hypothesis whatsoever. They are much more likely to point out absence of proof in parts of the official narratives, so use this same strategy with them. Positive proof means something actually demonstrated, not inferred.

It works really well. Most of them will fail right at step 1: "You've asked a lot of reasonable questions, but have not provided any proof for your theory."

Providing proof is hard. Coming up with ideas is easy.

Not sure if it'll work with random people though. It may have worked only because I know these people personally.

Edit: One more important tactic. Most of them rely on the "If you're wrong I must be right!" strategy[0] (or rather, they fall for it). So be very open to accepting that the official narrative is wrong. Say (sincerely) "I can believe the official narrative is problematic or even wrong, but I'm not sure I see a reason your narrative is correct. It's quite possible the true explanation is something else entirely."

[0] See the movie Thank You For Smoking for a good reference to this.

This does not work when one with the slightest bit of discomfort in arguing wants to cease and put an end to further discussion.

A lot of conspiracy theorists are fundamentalists. It's like faith. You can't muscle through it with logic, reasoning and data. Answers and positive evidence will lead you nowhere.

Public embarassment, mockery and comedy are the society's ways of dealing with this. Not saying this is a good idea as it bolsters them even further, but this is all we've got.

> This does not work when one with the slightest bit of discomfort in arguing wants to cease and put an end to further discussion.

I find that to be a positive outcome :-)

Of course, if your goal is to change their mind, then my strategy won't work well (or at least is not sufficient on its own). However, paradoxically, the first rule in influencing people is You cannot change people. You'll see this in most communications and negotiations books. The more they sense you are trying to change them, the greater the walls they'll put up. Change almost always comes from within, and you can only help them be making it easier for them to change.[1] Instead, you have to bring down their defenses, which includes accepting them as they are, whatever their perverse beliefs. That itself will be a major step towards change. The sort of person who cannot stomach a climate change denier is the sort of person who should exit the conversation first - their prejudices will usually do more harm than good.

> You can't muscle through it with logic, reasoning and data.

In that sense, they are merely ordinary people. If you've studied the discipline of influence, you'll find that changing people via logic, reason and data is the exception, not the rule. From my time in academia, I can tell you that even amongst highly respected academics, it tends to work only within their narrow discipline, and mostly not in other areas of their life. It's not hard to find someone who is in the top of their field adhering to weird beliefs. And my former academic self who knew little about influence in those days can assure you that logic, reasoning and data almost never swayed top scientists from conspiracy theories. I know because I tried, as did many of their colleagues.

> Public embarassment, mockery and comedy are the society's ways of dealing with this. Not saying this is a good idea as it bolsters them even further, but this is all we've got.

It may be all you've got, but it's a really ineffective way, and simply closes them off to you. If you read the handbook, they too caution not to use this. Not only that, it alienates even those who are on your side. As an exercise, go find people who used to believe in a conspiracy theory and changed their mind. I'd wager at least 80% of them did not change their mind through mockery and embarrassment. For bonus points, ask them what they think about that strategy.

[1] Ridiculing does the exact opposite - it makes change more difficult in their minds.

I really like this breakdown, and I’ve employed it (to some extent) with various people. In my experience, however, it’s not so much that it worked with them; rather, they found the discussion frustrating and became despondent only within the conversation between myself and them. In other words, I didn’t so much change their mind as help them decide to not engage me on whatever particular topic.

I find that incredibly frustrating. Maybe I’ve rubber-ducked myself into realizing I’m not doing something right.

In my experience, it works if people accept the two conditions as reasonable before the discussion starts. At the outset, the conditions are fairly reasonable. Yes, it's a trap, but a reasonable trap.

BTW, I'm not claiming this changes their mind in the long run. It does provide for a good conversation in the moment, though.

Or just admit that you don’t know enough to be confident in any explanation.

Maybe you try listening and maybe they will too.

Maybe realize that it’s more important to understand the person in front of you than score points in your own head.

Maybe start with establishing some common values rather than convince them that you’ll never agree on anything.

Maybe realize that some of the things that you are most concerned about are the things you are least rational about, and this may be that thing for them.

Yes - all consistent with my comment, BTW. I elaborate more in another one:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25616311

But the thing is that these people are the ones whose main prerogative is to score points. They are largely uneducated and disinterested, the world around them is complex and they feel inadequate. So they read something that tells them all the scientists and educated people in the world are either evil or sheeple and with the blink of an eye they have found superiority to you, when in reality, deep down, they know they don't have a position with regards to the big conversations of the world.

Rather than putting work in to maybe get to a point where they still have to be corrected by those they feel jealous of, those they resent for their cultural capital, they instantaneously put themselves above and beyond all of them.

Reasoning with and understanding them is impossible for two reasons. Everything I've said above and also how infuriating they are. There is only so much going around in circles listening to complete and utter tripe that the most patient of us can deal with. And that is what you'll spend your time doing, because reasoning and explanation is precisely what these people resent about you and it is precisely the driver of their beliefs.

The problem, I believe, is that the ridicule just isn't enough. They have each other as a force field. If they all of a sudden came up with a new piece of half-baked tripe which was ridiculed in their own circles, they would backtrack faster than they've ever adopted any of their views. The ridicule needs to be drilled in.

> The problem, I believe, is that the ridicule just isn't enough.

The comment you responded to did not suggest ridicule as a tactic. More than that, I can almost guarantee the commenter would abhor ridiculing as a strategy. The problem isn't that ridicule isn't enough. Ridiculing is part of the problem.

From a disinterested third-party perspective, this reads like it could be applied exactly in the reverse. Would it be any less correct if they were to say the same about you? Are there differences in intelligence between people? Should less-intelligent people have a voice on issues? Is there anybody more intelligent than you? How do you know that you are smarter than someone else? Do they know that you are smarter than them? How would you know that someone is smarter than you? If you are certain that you are right, is someone that disagrees with you certainly wrong? How would you know if you were wrong? If you were to ridicule someone for a belief that turned out to be correct, what is your proper response? Have authorities always been correct for all of human history? Is there any authority figure that you disagree with today? What is the difference between authority figures that you agree with, and those that you don’t?

Let’s take a perspective from statistical theory. Suppose there is a coin that comes up heads 1% of the time. Person A observes it 10 times and concludes that it always comes up tails. Person B does not observe at all and guesses 50/50. Who is more correct? Let’s see what happens when they start betting with 100. Person A is certain that they will win, so always bets everything. Person B expects no gain, so will not bet anything. After 1000 games, what is the probability that person A will have more money than person B? For a more theoretical treatment of why person B is more correct, see: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kullback–Leibler_divergence

I hope that you can understand that, just like epistemology, statistics, and stock trading, civics is not a domain where self-righteousness leads to good outcomes.

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