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Comment by obedm | Hacker News Reader

This is true. I struggle with the branding iron myself.

For me a big part of it comes from frustration that I (we, science) know the answer to things, and someone refuses to accept it.

We don't know everything of course. And most of the time the excuses use are illogical, paradoxical, or easily disproven, and yet the person refuses to understand that theatre wrong. Hence frustration.

I never feel frustrated if my child doesn't understand something or refuses to, because she's a child. But treating adults like children is condescending, hence frustration.

> The other side welcomes everyone and presents their ideas politely.

This is a huge problem. It's just like how people selling snake oil are fantastic listeners and make people feel welcomed and understood, just to sell them literal water disguised as medicine.

We are hardwired to trust nice people over logic of facts :/

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> And most of the time the excuses use are illogical, paradoxical, or easily disproven, and yet the person refuses to understand that theatre wrong. Hence frustration.

I see it.

Just remember that each time you brand someone asking questions to you, you almost definitely won't win that person and there is a fair chance you drive them away.

Edit: Also, sometimes, like with the lab leak theory it turns out the questions weren't crackpot after all. I've seen no apologies from anyone over that either so I guess a fair number of those have learned a lesson too about who to talk to.

Yup I've tried to deal better with me frustration in these cases.

Hah my wife has been shoving off the lab leak thing at me, she said it was like that and I said nah at the beginning of the pandemic.

In my household we very much agree we have no way of knowing wether it's a lab-leak or not.

Our newspapers tell us the same, as well as reporting different opinions during the whole thing. We recognize opinion as opinion, not propaganda or fact.

Why are everyone on the net seemingly living with insane politics and media? And what is so hard about saying the words: "I don't know, yet.."

>"I don't know yet"

To me that seems to be a core problem in public discourse today. People have been conditioned by modernity to receive instant gratification. In the realm of information they want to know what is factual and what is not even when it is too early to draw conclusions. One can also see this in the whole Trump Russia scandal and before that the Iraq WMD fiasco. There was no "there" there (a phrase I hate btw.) But never the less people were led to believe there was by the manufacturers of "facts."

Maybe part of the problem is this: People read paper as paper, something somebody clearly has written. We know that it was printed in 1980 and full of flaws compared to today's knowledge, but maybe also some insights.

Online material we read like facts, even when it's opinion, we rarely check dates and don't think of the content as dated. Also anyone can publish anything, including deceptive texts, as the barrier to entry is much lower. The cost is next to free.

People also engage more actively with online material, internalizing anything, even when it's garbage and transitory.

As has been said here with social media, there's lack of quality controls, but also distrust in quality measures.

Somehow, I'm not convinced all the online material is worth reading, but the trick is how to make sure people engage in quality without reducing freedom and differing opinions.

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