But honestly, how do you talk to those people? They’re so caught up in their us-versus-them mentality and think they have the monopoly on truth, that I don’t see any way of convincing them that they’re not only making a potentially fatal mistake but are a danger to those around them.
I just don’t bother TBH. Same with all these alt-right type people who keep trying to start pointless arguments online, I just ignore them. You can’t combat nonsense with facts, they’re not going to learn anything or change their views, I’m certainly not going to come around to whatever they’re peddling, all they want to do is get their little dopamine hit by blasting bullshit at me until I give up because they think that’s what winning is. It’s a waste of time and energy as far as I’m concerned.
There are times when it’s useful to engage these people, though never for the purpose of convincing them. Sometimes, there’s an opportunity to provide a counterpoint for anyone else “listening” who hasn’t yet been sucked into crazy-town, to help keep them away from that path.
I like to put it that “science education isn’t a cure, it’s a vaccine”; you can’t realistically change the mind of someone (especially of a stranger) who’s already bought in to a mindset like this; but in some cases, you can help prevent it from spreading.
That said, if you’re not particularly good at e.g. public speaking, or science outreach, or whatever, you can end up playing into a troll’s hands (assuming you’re interacting with an intentional troll and not just a deluded person). So it can be tricky, and personally I’m not very good at it.
While I mostly agree on the topic of fascists, with anti-vaxers just ignoring them basically means leaving them to die and potentially take a bunch of people with them, which seems rather cruel.
Even with fascists it boils down to hoping that whoever else they encounter is sufficiently immunised to not fall for their bullshit. Also less than ideal.what’s the alternative? if somebody can’t be reasoned with should we just force-vaccinate them? then you’re just providing them with much needed conspiracy confirmation from their perspective. if they’re so far down the antivaccine rabbit hole, best thing to do is distance yourself (physically, too) and let nature play out. no sense trying to save them who don’t want to be saved.
propaganda (where I am including fascists now) is also tricky due to the built in failsafe that ‘if they disagree with us, we are right, there’s the proof’. how do you even combat that? with vaccines, fence-sitters might be swayed by the potential risk to health if they don’t take it and some survival instinct may kick in, but propaganda is free to take up with almost no risk to immediate survival.
We may not be allowed to forcibly vaccinate people, but I’d argue we could quarantine them. If someone has a history of attacking people we lock them away to protect the majority.
If someone refuses to get vaccinated without compelling medical reason, thus deliberately increasing their risk of an infection, and don’t wear PPE, thus deliberately increasing the risk they pose to those around them, that is a very similar situation, albeit with less violence.The failsafe in fascist reasoning only works if you have no understanding of logic, which obviously they don’t. But yeah, it’s like playing chess with a pigeon.
Yes i have become a virus, destroyer of cells
You were the Chosen One! It was said that you would destroy the virus, not join them!
OMNOMNOM CELL MEAT
conspiracy theories are consistently just objectively cooler and more awesome than reality, like when conservatives start shouting about luxury gay space communism as if that’s supposed to be bad.
I wish i lived in the world where we could inject people with something that turns their DNA into RNA and somehow they continue living, that’s rad as hell.
No way is “the moon landing was faked” cooler than the fact humans walked on the moon 1961. And there is absolutely nothing cool about flat earthers!
That’s the thing that gets me about conspiracy theories, they’re always way too interesting to be real. There are real conspiracies out there but they’re almost always boring because the last thing they want is to draw attention.
It’s always fun to compare left-wing conspiracy theories to right-wing ones, left-wing theories are just “rich people are psychopaths who exploit our labour and earth is going to be miserable in 50 years, i want to die”
People like this can’t be talked with, since they missed their lessons about what DNA even is.
You no longer have DNA
Bitch, it’s a vaccine, not a lethal dose of radiation
MY DEOXY’s HAVE BEEN OXYED!!!
