Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: wierd on July 15, 2019, 03:32:52 pm

By that, I mean your hypothesis is not sufficient. There are other ways people get into the rabbit hole, such as "Profound epiphanies" (such as very vivid dreams, hallucinations, mental changes from traumatic injury, etc), and lack of sufficiently solid education in the face of charismatic believers seeking to actively recruit them. (Born into a cult setting, and suffering sunk cost fallacy issues.)

This does not mean you are wrong; a good deal of people probably do end up in the rabbit hole the way you suggest-- it just is not sufficient to be the single answer, so you should not treat it as such.


My attestation was more in the vein of "Regardless of how they got there, they exhibit this pathology"-- Namely, that no amount of evidence of the falsity of their claims will reverse their belief.

Oh, I'd agree with that; I didn't mean to imply this is the only way for people to get started, and I'm sorry if I gave that impression. I'm highlighting it because it's one we can do something about. We can't very well stop people hallucinating or being told incorrect things by their trusted friends and family, but we can endeavor to make sure that if they check their hallucinations against what they're told is true, they find information that's as accurate as possible. It's why I try to get my colleagues to do more unconventional outreach, for example.

Nor was I trying to contradict your claim, at least not directly; sure, if you just tell people that they're wrong and how they're wrong, they're going to try to poke holes in your argument all day instead of adjusting their beliefs. That said, if we acknowledge the emotional component -- and it is behind a significant portion of the crankery out there -- it does suggest that we can alleviate the problem by decoupling them being wrong from them being stupid, much like how some racists can be and have been brought round by just associating with the people they're racist against so they accumulate positive experiences on which to base their generalizations. (Not that this is a very good idea to try en masse, mind.) The less of their identity has to change to fix the error, the easier it is for them to fix it. So yes, there's no panacea here, but there are some things we can do to help stop the spread of crank beliefs before they're internalized and no longer amenable to rational disproof and much harder to deal with. Being meticulous is one of them.

Once you get past the defensiveness barrier, if the personal attack actually rings true and the person is self-aware enough to get past their own butthurtness, it can be a agent of change.

I mean, if you get bullied for being overweight, isn't that sometimes a motivator to change? The method may be shitty but the message can be on point.

Quote from: smjjames on July 12, 2019, 02:45:25 pm

Brazillian nepotism, HO!. (Bolsonaro wants to make one of his sons the US ambassador. Maybe Trump can make Ivanka the ambassador to Brazil or something, heh. Not that it'll likely get past the US Senate.)

Said son says he's qualified because "he made a hamburger in the US once".