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Comment by brutusborn | Hacker News Reader

This idea is why I think we should take lunatic conspiracy theory hypothesis seriously (enough to study them): if the mainstream scientific community ignores them, they end up being ‘tested’ by the ignorant masses using unsophisticated methods.

For example, it’s hard to find papers on heterodox hypothesis for climate change where a few good papers showing null results would help convince a lot of skeptics (although of course there will always be skeptics who distrust all academic data and are immune to changing their mind).

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On the other hand, there is a large contingent - probably the vast majority - for whom no amount of rigor or proof would be sufficient. Flat Earthers can be shown evidence for days and reject it all, for instance. Because it isn't really about the facts for most folks.

I also think - and suspect TFA agrees here - that taking lunatics (or, more likely, the intentionally dense) seriously emboldens them, and lends their ideas the unearned merit of your efforts. Sartre had something to say about that, too.

Believing that society should hide debates on truth from the ‘ignorant masses’ for their own protection is the reason we are in a low-trust situation where people refuse to get vaccinated.

Treating people like children leads to them acting like children. I am yet to see any evidence that discussion ‘emboldens’ them; rather suppression makes them angry and angry.

Also, I think this view aligns with TFA. Don’t try to convince stupid people because they will just be reactionary. All you can do is give them the evidence, but to do that you need to take their hypothesis seriously.

I don't think it's so much about hiding debates as not seeking them out if the other side isn't arguing in good faith. In that regard, conspiracy theories like the earth being flat are a good litmus test that a debate isn't worth the time or energy; if you can't reach common ground with someone on well-established, non-controversial facts, there's no point in trying to debate them about more nuanced topics.

To the contrary, I’ve seen experiments falsify flat earth theories where the dogmatists suddenly are forced to rethink their views.

If you don’t have these experiments or debates, you have 0% chance of changing people’s minds. At least give them a chance.

Experiments disproved flat earth literal ages ago. So you're saying not just "do experiments on crazy theories" but do them forever in perpetuity?

Agree to a debate when they have disproved the experiment and provided reproducible proof. Better yet if they can get it peer reviewed (though that can be hard when you’re challenging “the system”).

Barely better, the replication crisis and other problems in academia have shown that peer review doesn’t work well.

It is a band-aid solution to the demarcation problem that simply doesn’t work. I wish more people would read Lakatos and do reviews using his research programme paradigm. It’s the most reasonable solution we have. Alternatives like peer review are just window dressing.

>So you're saying not just "do experiments on crazy theories" but do them forever in perpetuity?

Yes? When I did science at school we repeated various experiments to prove various Newtonian principles. I'm pretty sure those are settled matters but still useful to demonstrate for educational purposes.

I'm very doubtful that there'd be no flat-earthers if they'd all gone to schools that did experiments to demonstrate the earth was round instead of simply describing those experiments in their science and history books.

The guy who killed himself trying to build a homemade rocket to see the curvature of the earth for himself is a scientific hero, in a way.

This is too pat.

Treating people like children is exactly what many political leaders do to shepherd their own partisans into continuing to support them and it often works. Fearmongering, lies, emotions. Telling them they need you to protect them.

And are we pretending that the anti-vax movement is now perfectly transparent with information and acts like it's an adult debate where they simply make reasonable points? That this cause wasn't driven people who came into it already convinced, who never took the hypothesis of "this could be an effective way to vaccines" seriously at all?

Not every vaccine skeptic is spouting "it's going to rewrite your dna" or "they're tracking you with microchips" and "it's the mark of the beast" but the nutjobs are a quite significant fraction and none of them ended up there because they went looking for data on clinical trials and didn't find as much as they wanted to.

Why did they end up where they are?

Some things that I often wonder:

- why are the fundamentals of philosophy not taught as part of standard curriculum?

- why do the fundamentals of philosophy not play a bigger role in journalism and mainstream/official discourse?

- why do few people wonder about this and other obvious(?) things? Might that be related to the preceding points?

- will this ever change, enough to carry the day considering our load of problems (known, unknown, mistaken, etc)?

The son of a friend has an autoimmune syndrome. She also has one as has her mother. The son got his autoimmune from vaccines of course and doctors who say otherwise are paid by the establishment. If I want to end our friendship all I have to do is point out these facts to her. Foundmentals of philosophy will not help at all.

> Foundmentals of philosophy will not help at all.

It may(!) not help her, but it could help you realize that "the future" you are describing is not what you think it is, and if you can realize that maybe you would be better equipped to help your friend.

Rationality and optimism are very useful skills to have in one's kit.

Do you think that articles, television shows, print columns, etc that treat things like the moon landing or the holocaust as items up for debate, and which give equal merit & time to the "two sides" of that debate, are somehow valid? Your ability to find real evidence is going to be DDOS'd by their ability to absolutely make shit up. And you're going to enable a lot of chemtrail bullshit, but also a lot of really virulent nasty racism.

Giving these very stupid views access to the same platform as any rational actor, placing them in the same context as - or even right next to - real actual science or history, is such a poor choice.

No, they are not debates but diatribes. They are usually one sided and have shitty ‘experts’ because the best experts refuse to go on them or are scared of being taken out of context

The best solution is long form debates where the whole thing is available, so each party cannot be taken out of context. If you don’t have these kind of debates people looking for heterodox views will find them anyway and an ‘entertainment’ industry spouting bullshit is created.

You don’t need to put all heterodox views in textbooks, but they shouldn’t be generally shunned because it is counterproductive.

As Joe Rogan says about people with black belts in Jiu Jitsu: there are levels among black belts.

You, like many "smart" people, have an air of confidence about you...but if you really think about it, you think there aren't people out there that couldn't absolutely ragdoll you on the intellectual equivalent of a Jiu Jitsu mat, if the above is the type of game you bring?

It is not about hiding debate. It is about not pretending that bad faith actors are somehow trying to have honest debate.

The debate’s purpose is to reveal the bad faith actors. Deciding who is acting in bad faith ex ante is not possible.

That doesn’t make them stupid, per se, merely ignorant.

> there is a large contingent ... for whom no amount of rigor or proof would be sufficient. ... Because it isn't really about the facts for most folks

Conspiracists demand the lies.

Look how Fox News lost control of the Big Lie narrative. They (sort of) tried to tell the truth. Their audience rejected them.

That's also partly the reason why people abhor mainstream scientific community - due to arrogance, corporatism and dismissal of claims with phrases like "I am the science".

Additionally, mainstream scientific community is not something that shouldn't be challenged - quite the opposite. Just like any other community it is prone to corruption in every possible sense.

This corruption has long term consequences for society.

>although of course there will always be skeptics who distrust all academic data and are immune to changing their mind

Vaccine skeptics mostly fall into this category. I mention it because the author of this blog appears to be one of them.

I agree that more effort should be put into the "fringe" research to disprove these things, but I'm concerned that no amount of proof could ever help, which ironically is the point of this quote.

they reject all the contrary evidence as "mainstream government funded research that lies to you" so there is no proof of evidence that would make it work

This generalisation is simply false. I know well educated people who are skeptical of vaccines for sophisticated epistemological reasons such as disagreements over things like what effect sizes are considered significant.

Painting this broad brush is not useful or based on evidence, it is simply the mainstream narrative.

> I know well educated people who are skeptical of vaccines for sophisticated epistemological reasons such as disagreements over things like what effect sizes are considered significant.

But that doesn't sound like something that would be changed one bit by doing serious research into lunatic conspiracy theories like microchips for tracking in covid vacines...

Are there any actual examples of "serious research" into "lunatic conspiracy theories" (lunatic here being your word) changing the minds of people buying into those theories?

IMHO, the problem is the gradient across complete confidence in the safety of x, concern about the safety of x, doubt about the safety of x, and assuredness about the evil ulterior motives of x.

I’m just as worried about anyone with complete confidence as I am someone who immediately assumes evil ulterior motives. Over time, the probability of one having a medical procedure with overpromised outcomes or under-disclosed side effects approaches 100%.

And there is no amount of research or evidence or debate that will change their mind. It is literally same thing, just more sophisticated

Do you think there's any amount of research or evidence or debate that could make Normies aware that the sensation of omniscience that they experience when contemplating the nature of the individual members of their abstract conceptual outhroups is actually just a clever trick played on them by consciousness + cultural shortcomings?

Personally, I happen to believe there is, and I bet it might even be way easier to do than it may seem.

I am a very well educated person that is skeptical of vaccine efficacy and safety before the trials were done since it was fast. reading the trial data convinced me it was as safe as any drug you take. I don't like taking unnecessary drugs and avoid pain pills until it's unbearable.

what you present is an anecdote of a few skeptics that are educated but it's by and large not the majority of these people that can't be swayed with evidence to the contrary. painting with this broad brush is based on evidence.

How does one do this without reforming academia?

Convince funding bodies that there is a large upside to studying heterodox views.

And who is going to pay for it? Pharma’s going to fund pro-pharma research. Where is the money opposed to pharma at scale?

I’m probably past the point of jaded, but if there isn’t money behind it (and even more to be made), even if the results are valid, it will just be crushed by those with incentives to bury it (until, like tobacco for example, it can’t be ignored anymore).

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