Re:Facts don’t change our minds (2018)
by tsimionescu on Friday December 10, 2021 @03:14PM
(#29514933)
With the exception of evolution (which is a very religiously loaded question) and humans not walking on the moon (which is quite an outlier among conspiracy theories) the others are really minority positions - even antivaxx craziness is a minority, though one that causes much real harm.
What evolution and the moon landing have in common is that they (a) are facts about history, which is much easier to rationalize being different, and (b) they have little to no impact in people's lives whichever way they believe.
The vast majority of relevant facts are ones that affect everyday life, where there is either broad agreement (basic physics, social cues etc) or complex disagreement (actual political matters, such as the root causes of poverty, politicians' track records on various issues etc).
And especially looking at day to day political facts, it's very very hard to tell who is lying and who isn't, who is massaging the truth etc. An exception here were Trump's election bold-faced lies, but most political facts are complex and multi-faceted.
Let's take a look at "Russia-gate". We know for sure that there was an FBI investigation, and it found some collusion. But, the FBI is a secret service, notoriously hard to trust, with a history of lying to the public. Also, the amount of Russian interference they found was actually small - direct money investments were small, and "troll farms" are very hard to quantify. But, there still was something, and some Trump associates were actually indicted, which doesn't tend to happen for pure propaganda reasons in general.
So, what should you believe? How close were Trump's toes with Russia? If you vote for Trump next election, will you expect him to collaborate with Russia or actually fan the flames of war?
This is much closer to the vast majority of facts I see in my day to day (note, I am not American, but if I gave examples with Romanian politicians are unlikely to be well known to others).
What evolution and the moon landing have in common is that they (a) are facts about history, which is much easier to rationalize being different, and (b) they have little to no impact in people's lives whichever way they believe.
The vast majority of relevant facts are ones that affect everyday life, where there is either broad agreement (basic physics, social cues etc) or complex disagreement (actual political matters, such as the root causes of poverty, politicians' track records on various issues etc).
And especially looking at day to day political facts, it's very very hard to tell who is lying and who isn't, who is massaging the truth etc. An exception here were Trump's election bold-faced lies, but most political facts are complex and multi-faceted.
Let's take a look at "Russia-gate". We know for sure that there was an FBI investigation, and it found some collusion. But, the FBI is a secret service, notoriously hard to trust, with a history of lying to the public. Also, the amount of Russian interference they found was actually small - direct money investments were small, and "troll farms" are very hard to quantify. But, there still was something, and some Trump associates were actually indicted, which doesn't tend to happen for pure propaganda reasons in general.
So, what should you believe? How close were Trump's toes with Russia? If you vote for Trump next election, will you expect him to collaborate with Russia or actually fan the flames of war?
This is much closer to the vast majority of facts I see in my day to day (note, I am not American, but if I gave examples with Romanian politicians are unlikely to be well known to others).