I have two friends whose parents have gone down first the anti-vaxx, then the flat earth, and more recently the QAnon rabbit hole.

They describe it like losing a family member to a drug addiction, or a cult. Quality time with their own family is no longer a thing that can happen, because how dare the children suggest that basic pandemic precautions be taken, or even think of supporting the vast pedophilic democratic conspiracy.

Pray tell, how should they bridge that chasm? This is a serious question.

It's well and good and morally smug to suggest that the problem is that 'you don't spend enough time talking to people holding insane beliefs'. The problem is that you can't use reason or empathy to get someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.

> Pray tell, how should they bridge that chasm? This is a serious question.

It's not a serious question, it's a self righteous rhetorical question.

Instead of grousing about the tone of the question, could you answer it?

I'd be happy to forward your suggestions to them - they'd appreciate being able to visit their parents every once in a while without being subjected to a firehose of crazy.

Yesterday's flavor of that unsolicited firehose was "They called those four states for Trump, and Biden is at 215 now."

I was talking about opposite side of the political spectrum but obviously not insane people.

It seems you are grossly mischaracterising people of a certain political orientation which brings me to think that maybe you never really attempted real contact and/or you didn’t try hard.

Some of those conspiracies you mentioned don’t even have any link with any specific position on the political spectrum e.g. here in Sydney some politically progressive suburbs are amongst those with the lowest vaccination rates and as you probably know this is also true in many other large cities across the world https://www.smh.com.au/healthcare/rich-suburbs-have-low-immu...

I've done that. It doesn't really help because there's no effective, scalable antidote to enragement engagement, herd behavior and people who are susceptible to emotional manipulation.

It's not like red state people have a monopoly on this behavior, but it seems to be a bit more common among them.

Politically we seem to be in some sort of positive feedback loop of anger/fear/suffering -> lashing out -> more anger/fear/suffering. It's scary.

Even in person? What you described is normal online but I would think it wouldn’t happen so often when you are face to face