I don't know how many of these conversations you've tried to have, because the confirmation bias is very real.

We're not discussing skepticism of nematode behavior, but of the politicization of a pandemic, which makes it opinion. You can't reason with someone out of an opinion who didn't reason themselves into it to begin with.

Rational bad actors abuse this notion that they have the right to play, to be heard, to have a discourse; when in reality they're repeating the same disinformation ad nausea to profit for themselves.

I also think misconceptions about Occam's razor are to blame. It's a good heuristic for choosing which hypotheses to test first, but a lot of people seem to misuse it as a heuristic for which of two propositions is more likely to be true, which is unfounded and very often leads to incorrect conclusions. It's basically on par with "there's no smoke without fire".

People tend to assume that if they cannot prove P and cannot prove ¬P, then ¬P must be assumed to be true. This is of course not correct at all, and most propositions can be rephrased so that Q=¬P and ¬Q=P.

If there is no evidence either way, then neither P nor ¬P is supported, and we should remain uncertain.

>>The phrase "disingenuous skepticism" is difficult to imagine.

I find it easy to imagine and indeed can pinpoint many observed instances. A lot of "I'm not saying anything, I'm just asking questions" ARE in fact saying something, quite strongly, with minds made up and no curiosity or eagerness to learn, but are being disingenuous. It's not skepticism: they are not awaiting or hoping for data or facts or claims, rational discourse or healthy discussion; their mind is not open to change; they have an objective, they are aiming to persuade and recruit, or sow doubt. To the point that when a user made an innocuous comment in this thread and ended it with "not a criticism, just an observation:)" we all assumed he was in fact disingenuous and was criticizing, because that's the current (unfortunate!) norm for that form of statement.

A lot of cult-like institutions or groups understand, consciously or subconsciously, that their views are not agreed upon and appreciated. So they have devised disingenuous ways of promoting them. From naming ("Discovery Institute" is hard-core creationists, "National Vaccine Information Center" is hard-core anti-vaxx group etc), to appearances (websites are full of stock photos of people in white lab coats and charts, to appear science-y), to discourse (again, the frequent, "I'm not SAYING anything, I'm just ASKING"; "I'm not AGAINST vaccines, I just have QUESTIONS on the timing" - all pulled from distributed talking points),disingenuous skepticism has become the norm, I'm sad to say... and thus trivial to imagine.

edit: All forms of discussion like this ultimately converge to definitions; so to be explicit and hopefully drive us to point of mutual understanding, to me, skepticism implies seeking facts, data, truth; openness to change your mind; genuine looking for mutual objective truth and agreement. As such, there's disingenuous skepticism aplenty in this world of ours :-/

The tongue in cheek term for this is "JAQing off". JAQ = Just Asking Questions. It is also known as "concern trolling". Any fool who spends the effort to successfully address the face value concern will find that the troll has immediately transitioned to having a new concern which happens to support/oppose the same exact things as the previous. It is a textbook example of motivated reasoning laundering itself in the clothing of skepticism.

It is like fighting a squid. The moment you've caught it by one of the tentacles it slaps at you with the other 7 while the first 1 slips away.

This is exactly right, and what the original comment was describing I believe. Although I wonder if the subject is muddied as the adjective may be applied to the wrong noun.

Their _skepticism_ is likely genuine and sincere, but their _engagement_ is not in good faith and is disingenuous.

One problem, I think, is that it the communities are self selecting. Skeptics who engage in good faith on well understood topics become converts; all who remain over time in the community of skeptics are those who do not engage in good faith.

It's a worthwhile question to ask why they don't engage in good faith, which I think has a more complicated answer than either straightforward ignorance or malice.

How much evidence would it take you to come to believe that masks work or that the risks of vaccines do not outweigh the risks of the disease?

And what do you do if the answer is "No amount of evidence"?