In the case of anti-vaxxers (most of whom are probably sincere,) when you become upset or even infuriated with them it cements their beliefs. They interpret your anger as evidence of their position being right. Therefore if you want to change their minds, the first thing you must master is your own emotions. Hiding your anger isn't enough, because people always leak information about their emotional state. You need to find a new frame of mind that allows you to have discussions with people who are wrong without becoming upset. I know this is difficult with antivaxxers since their beliefs put children in harms way, but it's necessary.

A zealot is eager for the arguments, to test the strength of their beliefs. If they still believe after all the facts, data, experience, it's scored a victory (dopamine rush).

I can't quickly refind her original post. Will update later if I can.

I've started asking for a commitment up front whenever a disagreement comes up. So for flat Earthers, before bringing up any other points or discussing anything, just ask what would convince them to revise their views.

I sometimes preface this with saying that I think it's important to be honest about how certain I am about some position, and to state upfront what would prove me wrong. So I would be convinced that the Earth was flat if I ran an experiment, like a high flying balloon, that then showed 0 curvature in the Earth at high altitude where we'd expect some curvature. Then ask them the same question.

Now you're both on the same page, and if you're committed to resolving this question, you have a way to move forward and see who's right and you can do each step together to ensure no tampering, etc. And as a bonus, they get to learn exactly how science is done.

Can we usually anticipate precisely what would and wouldn't convince us of a proposition? Particularly when it involves making a judgment call based on imperfect evidence?

After doing this two ore more times, you can easily make the argument that it's just simpler to abandon that model, or to suggest that perhaps they believe what they do not for empirical reasons, but for some other reasons (like being part of a community they like).

If the threat of diseases we've eliminated returning isn't enough, then perhaps only the diseases themselves will do it.

That is like saying people should not be driving cars since there is someone dying of a car accident every day. And that a person is to blame if they took their family out for a joy ride, and ends up in an accident killing them all.

That is also like expecting someone never to ride in a car, because someone dear to them were killed in an accident...

Some 25 years ago, I learned from a homeless man on the streets of Vancouver a curious hypothesis: AIDS probably originates from those damn condoms themselves! The molecules of the latex rubber mutated into the virus, you see ...

The rabies vaccine is part of rabies treatment, but it's used in the window between being exposed to rabies and developing rabies. People who've been exposed but haven't been previously vaccinated also get Rabies Immune Globulin, which provides immediate antibodies until the body can respond to the vaccine by actively producing antibodies of its own.

CDC: "Rabies vaccine is given to people at high risk of rabies to protect them if they are exposed. It can also prevent the disease if it is given to a person after they have been exposed."[1]

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/vis/vis-statements/rabies.h...

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/rabies/diagno...

Maybe the vaccine can still stimulate you or immune system faster than the virus can take hold?

Well, if you want to have a constructive dialog with them, getting angry isn't so great. In this sort of situation the content of the argument isn't what's at issue; far more important is the motivation for holding the position. The conversation should be directed towards contextualizing the position in the person's life. Your goal in the discussion shouldn't be to convince the other person, but to understand what they're thinking and why.

If you mistrust scientists, why the hell would you be convinced by scientific evidence? The productive discussion is to be had about the mistrust. You can't just ignore their mistrust and argue as if scientific evidence is admissible: that is assuming your position in order to justify your position. I'd also like to emphasize that unless you're the one doing the research, and even then, there is scarcely ever concrete evidence available. Especially for something like vaccines where the positive benefit is the absence of something negative, evidence is quite indirect. You and I trust science. I believe that trust is justified but it is something that needs justification.

An important thing about people is that they are more rational in the small, especially about concrete aspects of their day-to-day lives, than they are in the large, especially when it comes to lofty concepts and abstract models of the world that they don't have direct experience with. Conspiracy theories are dangerous because they allow the latter irrationality to negatively impact the former rationality. However, turning it around, reasoning from a person's concrete life and point of view towards understanding abstractions such as institutions of medicine, science, politics, etc. is a way to counter conspiracy theories.

So, tl;dr; it's not that rational arguments can't win such people over, it's that you have to start from a different viewpoint and you have to use a process that isn't quite listing evidence, weighing it, and deducing logical consequence. Rationality is much bigger than that sort of thing. If you apply rational methods empathetically, you will convince a lot more people. This is true in all spheres of life. Even at the lab bench.

I used to believe we could just talk (hug) it out. But now I've given up.

If you find examples, guides, howtos, case studies for what you're suggesting, I'm all ears, please share.

Do you think that is fabricating evidence is not possible? Is the possibility to fabricate evidence in favor of vaccines as outlandish as the claim of flat earthers?

I am also curios as to why when ever there is a discussion of flat earthers, there's is always someone who tries to throw anti-vaxxers or vaccine-skeptics into the same bunch.

No; one is about a 13.6 on the logarithmic outlandish scale and the other 15.1.

http://bigthink.com/experts-corner/decisions-are-emotional-n...

Some of the people who believe these things are not stupid at all, and while it may seem smart to you to just accept what you hear from the professionals, it actually doesn't require any intelligence to follow what they say.

I've been working with professionals a lot, and I know they are just repeating what they are told. Every profession is like that. Experts even more so, since otherwise they lose credibility and are not experts anymore.

The human mind is extremely susceptible to various fallacies such as confirmation bias. Usually this is beneficial, but often it can be very harmful.

I don't think it's productive to label anyone stupid, but a complete inability to properly weigh probability is damning to claims of intelligence. For instance, the scope of the conspiracy needed to fake the moon landings is completely implausible. And when you consider the incentive the USSR would have had in exposing it as a hoax, it goes from implausible to literally impossible. Similar arguments apply to the safety of vaccines, flat Earth, and other absurd hoaxes.

This is considerably different to the repetition of "common knowledge" which ultimately turns out to be some kind of urban legend.

Chickenpox is not a horrible disease that ought to be vaccinated against. Pro-vaxxers don't realize that they're missing the big picture too: we can't vaccinate against everything, and it's just as important to address all the conditions that result in children developing an especially bad case of chicken pox.

Medicine is a fickle field. The tragedy is that modern medical practitioners think they now know what they're doing. Otto Warburg was probably always right about cancer [0], but conventional doctors are still working with the 'kill all the cancer cells' theories of cancer treatment.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/magazine/warburg-effect-a...

> I've been working with professionals a lot, and I know they are just repeating what they are told. Every profession is like that. Experts even more so, since otherwise they lose credibility and are not experts anymore.

There's a human tendency to trust "received wisdom". I think Thomas Kuhn's book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, is about the phenomenon...

Professionals who build things that are expected to just work (bridge engineers) are a little different than professionals who try real hard to help their patients (certain medical specialties).