I was having a “conversation” with an anti-vaxxer on Facebook once, while simultaneously having a backchannel conversation about it with a friend. He made a point that resonated with me: If someone hasn’t used logic and reason to arrive at a conclusion, you’re not going to use logic and reason to get them to change it. I think that’s the crux of the issue here.

I have another, somewhat related, observation: there are a number of these issues, such as anti-vaxx, flat earth, climate change denialism, and the existence of a “deep state”, where the central premise is that there is some vast conspiracy to mislead the public, with huge numbers of people involved in perpetuating the lie. Once someone believes that these conspiracies are real, any attempt to provide evidence to the contrary is rejected as fake news/lies by big pharma/etc. I honestly don’t know how to reach someone like this.

Beliefs like this used to be a rare thing, something you’d only see in the tin foil hat crowd, but it has spread in recent years to a much wider segment of the population. I’m not sure what is to blame for that.