Someone (who chose not to be tagged in this post) asked this question:
How are some of us aware and appalled that this (misinformation) is happening and others just go all in with the conspiracies?
What do you all think? What makes the difference?
Please refrain from just calling people stupid, I know it can definitely feel that way, but we can do better than that.
@RickiTarr The origins of this go a long way back. Carl Sagan was writing about this 30+ years ago.
"The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.”
- Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan, The Demon-Haunted World, 1995
Sagan didn't like calling people who buy into it stupid.
"In the way that scepticism is sometimes applied..., there is a tendency to belittle, to condescend, to ignore the fact that, ... supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings... Their motives are in many cases consonant with science... let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped."
The "fun" question is:
How can we be sure that a given conspiracy myth isn't actually "true"?
I mean:
If a conspiracy thing conventiently blames all the people a certain kind of person hates for all problems, that sounds "too easy".
Or if the secret society is just thinly veiled antisemitism.
But in the end the best thing we can say is likely "this conflicts with my mental model of the world" or "this sounds very unlikely".
The best argument against most conspiracy myths is "this is way too complicated, why don't they just do x instead".
But on the other hand: A lot of people are not known for applying rational thought.
Ricki Yasha Tarr
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Not a Spring Onion
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