The easiest heuristic is always to first ask qui bono, and then heavily discount information whose content if true would advance the interests of the information supplier.

Thus: if Pepsi runs an ad on TV saying Pepsi is the schizz and Coke is just fizz, you discount that information heavily b/c Pepsi's just talking its book.

There's a loose analogy to information-theory proper here: the information content of a message is proportional to its unpredictability; if for example you could reliably reproduce an N-bit message once you had the first k < N bits you'd say the message only has k bits of information, not N.

Thus if knowing who is speaking lets you know what they'll say you should just ignore them; if you ever want to find out what they said you just have to remember who they were and reconstruct what they were saying, so you can defer considering it until you have a reason to care.

This looks like ad hominem but isn't; it's just avoiding low-information-gain use of your time.

The other thing to do is to back away from the twin notions that:

(1) holding true beliefs is in and of itself as valuable as you think it is

(2) most participants in a debate (a) attach the same importance to holding true beliefs that you do and (b) would switch to a different belief if the evidence supported it

(1) is probably the hardest to let go, but it's something you have to let go (holding true beliefs when such beliefs are inputs to an important decision is important; otherwise not so much).

(2) is more important.

A good general rule of thumb is that most people like to think of their lives as having had some kind of meaning or purpose, etc.; just living, enjoying what life brings you, and peacefully shuffling off the mortal coil isn't a satisfying life for many people (probably b/c our brains are hardwired for a difficult life in the jungle and get bored in the absence of real threats to overcome).

In places where life is nasty, brutish, and short survival itself is enough of a challenge that the struggle for simple survival is itself enough to cast your life into a narrative where you're a hero of some sort; in modern societies the challenges of life aren't generally enough on their own to provide a convincing narrative of moral heft and so other struggles have to be invented to fill in the meaning.

A first consequence of this impulse is firstly that people tend to assign excessive moral heft to the things they're good at:

- someone who has eg bootstrapped themselves out of a bad situation by virtue of wise decisions and self-restraint will assign a high moral value to wise decisionmaking and self-restraint, so that their life's story has a heroic bent to it above-and-beyond simple utility maximization

- someone who has strong aesthetic or artistic preferences or beliefs will assign a high moral value to aesthetics and artistic purity so that the decisions they have made (not "selling out", etc.) take on a heroic bent above-and-beyond simple utility maximization

- and of course someone who believes themselves to be good at arriving at true beliefs will assign an irrationally high importance to holding true beliefs (if you doubt this just count the # of times pundits or would-be "thinkers" write sentences like "I used to believe X but then I learned about Y and after some struggle I now believe Z instead X")

...etc. and a second consequence of this impulse arises from how it interacts with social life; people are at heart social beings and thus it is very easy to add additional axes of meaning to one's narrative by banding together into a faction as part of a larger struggle against other faction(s).

These affiliation-derived meanings range from sports teams to political labels to "sides" in an argument or public debate.

These two dynamics intersect in areas of contention in predictable ways:

- on each side of an argument you'll have some nucleus (core members) who will be a mix of people who assign a huge important to true beliefs (and currently believe in the side they're on) and shills (representatives of those whose interests hinge on what way the debate gets resolved if it gets resolved)

- then thanks to the way that additional meaning can be added to people's lives the mechanism by which affiliation-derived meaning can be added just by taking a side means that many hangers-on pick sides based on the meaning it gives them to do so (or because they've already made a commitment to a faction in exchange for enhanced meaning and "in for a penny in for a pound" (eg: joining a church makes it easier for them to cast their life as partially a struggle for virtue and against sin; b/c of that prior commitment they also commit against evolution as in the church they joined they can't do both))

With the following consequences:

- the people who hold true belief important can be convinced by reasoning and argumentation, provided the argumentation is sufficiently, overwhelmingly powerful that it's impossible to see said argumentation without coming to agree with it as a rational being; most argumentation -- especially on debatable issues -- is not that strong, and thus not enough on its own merits to nudge someone on the "other side" to take the hit to their self-esteem (as a discerner of true beliefs) and switch

- the shills can't be convinced by anything; they're dishonest participants and will argue their case as long as they keep getting paid

- the affiliational-types aren't going to be convinced by reasoning; the get convinced only when it becomes clear that greater meaning-in-their-lives can be had by switching to the other side, which is more about reconciling conflicting affiliational claims than it is about winning a debate (eg: finding a away to reconcile their religious beliefs with the other side -- thereby letting them keep their religious affiliation and join your side -- is more important than convincing them your side is right). A huge downside of even trying to argue is that arguing with them increases the amount of meaning their participation in the struggle gives them -- as it starts to look and talk like a real struggle, with conflict and bad guys and so on -- best just to make your side seem like the more-meaningful side

Which en fin is why such issues are best ignored. Things will only get worse as technology improves: allowing more communication => more opinions transmitted to more places => more factions / debates (and thus less time to learn the intricacies of each of them even if you wanted to) => more opportunities to join factions and add meaning to life => more of the same only more so.

This will be especially true for historical stuff, since history is vastly underdetermined by the available evidence and the same set of historical facts can usually support dozens of reasonable interpretations; much of the apparent previous state of consensus about what happened historically is as much a function of the previously high barriers to entry in publishing stuff as it is a sign that the previous consensus opinion was correct.

I dislike the word "revisionism" as a slur against the standard position. Revision is good. When more data comes to light, one should reevaluate what one things one knows. "Revisionism" is another word for "the scientific method" ; it should not be a slur.

I've done a fair bit of reading on all of these, and I am convinced of the "standard" position on all, except two. Anthropogenic Global Warming and Peak Oil have a lot less solid science behind them than the others, and replace it with (IMO) dubious modeling.

I find these topics fascinating. In fact, I think everyone should dig into one just as a mental exercise. Convince yourself. You will learn a tremendous amount, even from the most bizarre. And not just about science or whatever topic is at hand, but at logic, fallacy, and how people think about and convince themselves of things.

I've dug fairly deep into things like 9/11 conspiracy theories, creationism, moon hoaxes, tax protesters, and other assorted "alternative" theories (like homeopathy). I am 100% convinced they are all nonsense, but I encourage anyone to dig in. You'd be simply amazed how much you can and will learn.

EDIT: he also has a Force Skeptics page that might be relevant to our discussion. http://home.netcom.com/~rogermw2/force_skeptics.html

I'd pick a name other than "tax protesters" for them, though, to distinguish them from your run-of-the-mill folks who like to protest that taxes should be lower.

That brings up an interesting point. After all, the OP didn't say "anthropogenic"; he only said "global warming". And some people deny that as well. That gives us three positions: (1) the earth is warming up and humans made it happen, (2) the earth is warming up and humans didn't make it happen, and (3) the earth is not warming up. And then there are endless variations about how much it will warm up, and how much this is a problem, etc.

My point is that, when two sides debate an issue, they can both be wrong. Simply because we are presented with two positions, does not mean we have to choose one of them.

Thus, when the conservatives say one thing, and the liberals say another, we probably need to pick one of the two as something to vote for, but not necessarily as something to believe.

4. The CO2 (and other anthropogenic greenhouse gases) is warming the earth, but the stratospheric sulfur dioxide produced by China's burning of lots of sulfurous coal is beginning to counteract the CO2 warming.

To answer your methodological question about how to tell the difference between competing ideas, learn to read the peer-reviewed scientific journals on each subject. Now that the Public Library of Science (PLoS) journals all have open online access, it's easier than ever to practice reading scientific literature. See Peter Norvig's guide to reading scientific research

http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

for what to look for while reading.

Holocaust: well it's impossible to discuss, and to me personally it has little relevance. Whenever I tried to look for more information, I hit on a lot of question marks. So I think the details are very unclear, but no doubt a lot of people died. Thing is, it was before I was born and there are hardly any traces left, so how to ever be sure?

Unfortunately, most people have such an emotional reaction against questioning anything related to the Holocaust they completely give up reason and instead become blind to any scientific argument.

I have not seen any of the footage. Where can I see it? I have seen movies of concentration camps when the American soldiers first set foot in them. But I don't know enough to be sure that it wasn't diseases that killed a lot of people and led to the starved looks, for example. Also, how did anybody survive at all? It seems difficult also to judge pictures from war times from our modern perspective. (corpses were probably a common sight - not so much today).

Not that I want to deny the HC, it is just that I don't take things at face value. Luckily the HC issue is not relevant enough to me to get too involved. It is sufficient to me to know that a lot of people died, and I know that humans can be very evil. Nitpicking on the details is also likely just something the revisionists start.

Anyway, the idea that you can keep a secret that 100,000+ people are in on is just silly. If you really want to know, use sonar to look at the mass graves. Still the allure of conspiracy theories is huge. So it’s easy for people to ignore evidence that does not support their pet theory.

PS: My favorite theory is idea that UFO's where created by the US Air force to misdirect the Russians when people in the middle of the country started seeing strange objects in the sky they would see reports from the US of the same thing. The advantage of this theory is it would take a small number of people to create, and those in the know would have little reason to tell the truth thinking it's a good joke.

100,000 would be hard, but 10,000 vetted employees threatened with the power of the state for the rest of their lives is definitely done in militaries all over the world.

Look at the never ending revelations about the early Soviet era. Many aspects of the GULAG system are only becoming clear now.

I do not find the argument that governments can't keep secrets convincing at all. Even if the seal isn't airtight there is often such a highly effective ability to muddy the waters the truth becomes impossible to see through the disinformation.

PS: Governments have discovered the best way to keep secrets is to tell as few people as possible. There are not 10,000 people who know how to create the best radar absorbing paint used by the Air force. So, even as we are constantly compromised each leak is limited to what that person or computer system knows.

There are no mass graves, apparently.

Edit: thanks for the link, sethg. It only highlights the problem - after a while of reading discussions it get's confusing... Maybe one thing to take away is to avoid public discussions and try to find more reliable sources. In this case of course I believe your link, I am just surprised how the other sources I read could get away with it.

http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/aktion.reinhard/belzec/A...

http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/orgs/german/einsatzgruppen/ftp...

(there is of course more evidence available for those who seek it, but I just want to establish that the number of mass graves is greater than zero)

I suppose it could be some sort of elaborate ruse being forced on us by older generations, crazier myths have formed. But, I find it more likely that the Shoah happened.

That is just emotions though, not science. There are gruesome pictures from any war - I think few POW camps were very pleasant, for example. At the Kosovo war there were also fake pictures from concentration camps distributed by the mainstream press.

Again I don't want to deny the killings, I just feel there are things missing from the story. For example, if all the nazis wanted was to kill, why have concentration camps to begin with. Why were there any survivors at all? I suppose they made the able ones work for the war effort, but then you mention the near death - presumably they were not that able to work anymore.

February 14, 1942: The Führer once again expressed his determination to clean up the Jews in Europe pitilessly. There must be no squeamish sentimentalism about it. The Jews have deserved the catastrophe that has now overtaken them. Their destruction will go hand in hand with the destruction of our enemies. We must hasten this process with cold ruthlessness.

March 27, 1942: The procedure is a pretty barbaric one and not to be described here more definitely. Not much will remain of the Jews. On the whole it can be said that about 60 per cent of them will have to be liquidated whereas only 40 per cent can be used for forced labor.

(quoted in http://www.nizkor.org/qar-complete.cgi)

B) Occam's razor applies. Conspiracy to fake the Holocoust is invariably more complex than it would have been for an openly racist & facist regime to have done it.

C) You would need an alternative explanation for 6 million missing persons, 2 million refugees and all those abandoned swiss bank accounts. Again Occam's razor.

Vaccination is a more about what a person believes, and the individual circumstances (like primi's, genetic history, and living environment)

There are actually cases where several hundred years of history have been faked, so it is not that out there to consider such things.

"You would need an alternative explanation for 6 million missing persons, 2 million refugees and all those abandoned swiss bank accounts. Again Occam's razor."

The numbers don't seem so clear (how to confirm them?), that is what I mean by the missing traces. Supposedly the archives with papers (for example from the red cross) are still not open to the public.

Not that I want to make that argument, but it is one of the arguments of the revisionists: if the nazis supposedly were so efficient and bureaucratic, how come there are (supposedly) no documents about the missing persons? (Really, I just want to give an example of the kind of arguments - I have not tried to find the archives by myself, so I don't know enough to comment).

It seems the only choice is to either A) just belive the public version or B) dig through archives by oneself, which would be a huge investment of resources.

The museums are just emotional "pieces of art" in my opinion. They help me to learn something about the nature of humans.

http://www.amazon.com/People-Believe-Weird-Things-Pseudoscie...

which is well worth a read.

You must be a good bit younger than I am if you don't personally know Holocaust survivors, or at least much more socially isolated from Jewish people of European heritage than I am.

The book sounds interesting, will take a look.

I have read biographies by Jews, for example Marcel Reich-Ranicki is very famous in Germany and I trust his words.

Sorry, but this really gets my dander up. If you can't be bothered to study history then you're possibly going to repeat part of it and that is a very scary thought.

I only mentioned the HC because at times I stumbled upon such discussions. The discussions are of course all in the details, which I suspect is one of the signs for revisionism. At times I tried to validate or reject some of the claims and as I said, I found more question marks than answers. Then I decided to not research further because the subject is too dangerous. As I said, I accept that millions died and humans are evil.

Sorry, no that's just weaseling out of something by playing the definition game.

Let me make it easy for you: between 11 and 17 million people, amongst them 6 million Jews got murdered for simply being who they were.

If you're Jewish you might want to use the word to mean 'just the six million jews', so there is a little leeway in the definition, but not enough to use that as a way to pretend that it didn't happen.

It did, and it's horrible.

> As I said, I accept that millions died and humans are evil.

There is a large difference between 'dying' and being brutally and systematically exterminated, the word is 'genocide'.

That said, I think everybody should be free to deny it as much as they please instead of having this criminalized, after all it's just an outward display of utter stupidity, and it helps to be able to identify the stupid people so we can keep them out of positions of power.

I also think that Israels actions of late are not in its own long term interest, but that's a wholly different kettle of fish and not really pertinent to the discussion.

> Then I decided to not research further because the subject is too dangerous.

This makes absolutely no sense to me, what was dangerous about the research ?

Just see what happens here with the subject. If you start a discussion about it, you are quickly being pushed into the revisionist camp. In Germany that means your career is dead and you are forever an outcast of society.

I don't know if actual historians (like with a degree) are able to discuss the subject. But normal people can't.

Germany is still coming to terms with their part in all this and that is why they are over reacting, another big factor is that there is a definite surge in the numbers of neo-nazis.

The funniest thing is that some of the extremist rightwing people (notably Wilders) are best friends with Israel, I never really understood that one.

The revisionist bit comes from taking up the position that you think that because it happened before your time must mean that you have to be unsure about it because of a so-called lack of evidence.

The evidence is there for everybody who wants it to see it, no 'belief' is required.

Clever people in the revisionist camp abuse the basic insecurity people have about things that happened before they were born to push their own agenda forward, and with some success. Which is why you get the reactions you are seeing.

My parents and grandparents lived through the war in Europe, one of my grandfathers was sent to a work camp in Germany but fortunately survived, lots of people they knew were less fortunate. I know personally plenty of people where the whole family tree is balanced on a single survivor that made it - miraculously - out of one of the 'death camps'. To me it's all pretty real and very close to home.

I think you just did push me into the revisionist camp. I did not make a claim, except that there are people who deny the Holocaust. I also say that I personally can not verify it, but that is not making a claim.

Merely taking up the discussions means that you will mention arguments of the revisionists, which will end up making you look like a revisionist. Having a question about the HC makes you a non-believer.

I did not see you ask any questions, only state your doubt.

> I also say that I personally can not verify it,

Yes, you can. Find some camp survivors and have a chat with them, then wonder how we will remember when the last ones have died.

- That 9+ million people were killed?

- That this was done in a methodical and organized fashion?

- That the vast majority of the people killed were Jews, gays, gypsies, and other smaller/marginalized social groups?

I'm all for an organized and civilized debate, but if you want to do that without being called a nutjob, you need to clarify exactly what parts you are questioning, and provide a somewhat sound basis for doing that - i.e. if you have a problem with my first point, then explain why people think that, and why you disagree?

As Truzzi said, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof." Questioning the Holocaust is a pretty extraordinary claim, so bring it...

That this was done in a methodical and organized fashion?"

I think the actual numbers are what the debate is usually about. Also if the killing was planned from the beginning (I think some say that it was only later that it was decided on the killing - they knew they wanted to get rid of the jews, but no clear idea how). Many might have died from bad conditions (which is also killing them, but different from actively shooting or gassing them).

Edit: I don't really question the HC, I just say I don't know the details. As for the numbers, the criticisms I have heard are that there are no ways to validate them. There are no documents about missing persons that could be counted, and often it is unclear if they might just have fled the country. There are no mass graves, either. The criticism is that required archives are not open to the public (like from the red cross). I don't know if that is true or not.

Excerpt from a 1922 magazine interview with Hitler: "Once I really am in power, my first and foremost task will be the annihilation of the Jews. As soon as I have the power to do so, I will have gallows built in rows - at the Marienplatz in Munich, for example - as many as traffic allows. Then the Jews will be hanged indiscriminately, and they will remain hanging until they stink; they will hang there as long as the principles of hygiene permit. As soon as they have been untied, the next batch will be strung up, and so on down the line, until the last Jew in Munich has been exterminated. Other cities will follow suit, precisely in this fashion, until all Germany has been completely cleansed of Jews."

Excerpt from Hitler's speech to the Reichstag on January 30, 1939, seven months before Germany invaded Poland: "Today I want to be a prophet once more: if international finance Jewry inside and outside of Europe should succeed once more in plunging nations into another world war, the consequence will not be the Bolshevation of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe [die Vernichtung der jüdischen Rasse in Europa]".

(quoted in http://www.nizkor.org/qar-complete.cgi)

It sounds like you're sincere and just trying to find high quality of evidence, but statements to the effect that 'there are no mass graves' seem to contradict established fact.

I am sorry I mentioned the issue.

There are demographic statistics on the number of Jews in Europe before and after World War II. These numbers have a margin of error, but if three million Jews had escaped from Eastern Europe to the USSR instead of being killed, it's hard to imagine how this fact could be covered up.

My great grandfather is still alive today with the numbers on his arm, he didn't tattoo that on for fun.

Pay attention to peer-reviewed studies and meta-studies - look for data that you can study and verify.

Pay attention as well to the manner in which arguments are made. If an argument resorts to informal fallacies like ad hominem attacks, cherry picking data, bait-and-switch and so on, be even more highly skeptical.

It's also important to understand whether the person making the argument has any conflicts of interest (e.g. their own paycheck depends on a particular point of view taking precedence over policy). However, it doesn't automatically follow that such a person is being dishonest just because they stand to benefit from the adoption of their particular stance.

How does one even find peer-reviewed information - by looking into "certified" journals? And don't the revisionists have peers as well?

"If an argument resorts to informal fallacies like ad hominem attacks, cherry picking data, bait-and-switch and so on, be even more highly skeptical."

Agreed, these tend to be fairly clear signs. My favorite is the inevitable claim that "faction x can only resort to personal attacks", which is of course also a personal attack ;-)

http://www.reddit.com/r/hardscience/

It would be nice to have a reliable way to avoid that much work, but if you try to shortcut this you are going to be faced with summery information that's of questionable quality.

Some examples:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_made_from_human_corpses

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_de_seigneur

http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/carrots.asp

To me the Holocaust is even more certain than evolution because I grew up with the stories of it from my grandparents. But if you don't have those stories in your family, you can also look at books, museums, photographs, eyewitness accounts. The sources for facts are endless.

Being concerned about revisionism, I would have thought the OP is worried about losing such facts, but then this thread turned into an outlet for your unwillingness to accept the holocaust.

If you weren't German, I'd simply call you an asshole, but one can imagine it being hard to believe that peers of your grandparents were responsible for killing millions of people for no reason other than race. Although coming from Germany, you should be much better informed than the average holocaust denier, from say, Iran.

Half of my grandmother's family was machine-gunned into a pit outside of Kiev called Babiy Yar with about 30 thousand other Jews by German SS during the first weeks of German occupation. The bodies, bullets, and cartridges are all still there. The executions at Babiy Yar went on for months until no more Jews could be found in the region, at which point the site was used to execute gypsies, prisoners, etc. These events were witnessed by thousands of residents of Kiev during the occupation by German forces, and you can read one such account in the book called Babiy Yar by Anatoliy Kuznecov.

Google image results:

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=babi+yar&sou...

When you look at hundreds of individual mass execution events like this one, you get a more complete picture of the Holocaust.

I do accept the holocaust, it is merely another big issue that displays the revisionism phenomenon. I wish I hadn't mentioned it, though.

Please be careful before labeling people holocaust revisionists. At least in Germany it is not a harmless thing to accuse somebody of.

Edit: I have also seen a lot of pictures like that. In Germany we have school trips to concentration camps. I don't doubt the cruelty of the nazi time.

http://amasci.com/freenrg/bead.txt

The scientific attitude to adopt in regard to any hypothesis in my view (and we are talking of subjective things,) can be represented schemat- ically by means of a simple model of a bead that can be moved on a short length of horizontal wire (see diagram on next page). Suppose the left-hand end denoted by 0 (zero) and the right-hand end by 1 (unity), and let 0 correspond to complete disbelief unqualified, and the right-hand end 1 to absolute certain belief in the hypothesis. Now the principle of practice that I would urge on all intending scientists in regard to any and every hypothesis is: never let your bead quite reach the position 0 or 1

Once you're freed of the need to be absolutely certain of whether something is right or wrong, you can, in a more relaxed way, think about what the most sensible level of skepticism for any controversial issue about the way the world really is. Frinstance I'd say that the chance of creationism being right is something on the order of 10^-8. The chance of vaccinations being dangerous is maybe 10^-2, and the chances of them being more dangerous than the alternative maybe 10^-3. Peak oil? I dunno, 20%, depending what you mean by "peak oil". Holocaust denial comes in many forms from the lunatic to the nitpicky, each one needs its own level of skepticism. The "global warming" issue has quite unlikely positions on both sides with more plausible ones in the middle. And so on.

If you question whether the holocaust occurred, you should also be questioning any other events which you didn't personally observe. And maybe even ones which did happen to you. So unless this kind of philosophical debate is what you are wrestling with, including the holocaust on your list muddies the question you are asking.

With global warming there are at least four positions argued: GW is real and man-made, and we need to take direct action against it; GW is bogus; GW is real and man-made, but a cost/benefit analysis for allocation of limited resources says we should still spend time and money on other things (fighting malaria, improving education) besides carbon reduction; GW is real but natural, so attempts to change it via human behavior are a waste.

The mainstream media (and many online writers) like to portray controversy (real or invented) as having only two sides: Politics is always left v right, Democrat v Republican (there's no in-between or off-the-2d-axis thinking); health care reform debate is only for or against the Obama plan (you can't possibly be for reform yet think Obama's plan is wrong); global warming is either a man-made issue that demands immediate direct efforts or else it's total nonsense (one cannot possibly agree with the science but disagree about what's the best use of time and money).

There are two issues here. One is how to deal with out-and-out revisionists. The other is how to encourage healthy debate on complex nuanced topics, part of which is to not demonize as revisionists or deniers or obstructionists all dissenters from the orthodox view.

Well I take it for granted that most things I see on the news are not the truth, and that I can never know the truth if I haven't been there (and even then it is debatable, as you point out). For example in wars, the official history version gets written by the winners of the wars. That is actually one reason why I avoid firm opinions about WW2 - since I witnessed the "official history fabrication" in several cases during my lifetime, why should it have been any different for WW2?

I also can not personally experience the global warming or not warming. I don't see how the HC is very different from the rest of the list?

As Carl Sagan said, they laughed at Galileo and they laughed at Einstein, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

That's not "debate". That's just random lunacy.

The consensus theory of truth is a good starting point, but it is not sufficient.

Q: All those C++ users and overlords can't be wrong, can they? Why should I believe you?

A: This sort of thinking will get you in trouble, since it's recursive and it has no termination condition. Very large groups of people with the usual subset of those having impressive credentials are known to have been wrong for very long periods of time (the flat Earth issue comes to mind; these people weren't stupid, mind you, "wrong" and "stupid" is not the same thing). Supposing you are in a group of people who are wrong right now, how do you plan to find it out using your kind of thinking?

Maybe you have an excessive need for certainty. Most people who enjoy thinking about these sorts of issues at all are willing to come to a conclusion without running their own personal experiments or doing primary source research.

You could consider making your views less informed and more tentative. It's not so bad if you have some wrong opinions. Almost certainly you do, some on subjects you've never even thought to question.

That said, you might find lesswrong.com and overcomingbias.com interesting places to hang out.

Also, when people adopt an unfashionable or non-PC position they are more likely to experience ostracism and even persecution. That would seem to be a significant barrier to entry into these "opposing factions".

http://www.nizkor.org/