People who are skeptical about the effectiveness of, say, the Covid vaccine are passionate about sharing what they've thought of, uncovered, or believe they've uncovered. People who believe that the vaccine is effective and worthwhile appear to be... less enthusiastic about backing up their claims. They'd rather just ban the people who disagree with them than address them in debate.
Why is it that, consistently, on specific issues that come up over and over again, the side labelled "disinformation" is so willing to spend so much time explaining rationally why they believe what they believe while the other side is always so uninterested in making their case?
Have you ever interacted with facebook crazy people? People shouting at you their 'research' with smug superiority is one way communication not a debate.
People believe we're storming the beaches at Normandy. There is no time for careful consideration. There is no time to question authority. Do what you're told or we're all going to die. This is not a completely unreasonable position for pandemics or other large scale emergencies. I think most people felt this way during the first round of "15 days to slow the spread". Since then the number of people who view the situation through this lens has waned.
In some cases, they are paid to do so because their disinformation serves to cause death to an enemy population. Whether they're themselves aware that they're doing this, or not, isn't important to the outcome.
It is worth a lot of money to somebody, to have people explaining (rationally or hysterically) why the cure to the disease will actually turn you to a chimpanzee, implant you with microchips, kill you directly, or make you be a crawling surrender weasel doing meaningless things to appease the libs.
It's worth a LOT of money to keep this pandemic alive and mutating. It has direct benefit… to somebody.
Do you really believe it's a lack of arguments, research, testimony, movies, or museums that allow that anti-semitic trope to fester? How much more does it take to convince these people?
> They'd rather just ban the people who disagree with them than address them in debate.
Personally, I'm not in favor of banning. On the topic of COVID and COVID vaccines, I've just avoided every "debate" and "discussion" from all sides and when someone at work wants to talk about it, I tell them to shove off (in more polite terms).
However, I once made the mistake of trying to engage in a serious discussion/debate with Young Earth Creationists. That experience is what convinced me that it's better to just ignore certain groups, and, for better or worse, the COVID anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers have exhibited the same kind of behavior so I just ignore them as well.
With YEC what I found was that:
1. They were perfectly capable of making a cogent, reasoned argument.
2. They were almost always starting from demonstrably false, or at least very questionable, axioms.
3. They would never entertain a discussion about the axioms, only about the conclusions.
(3) is why no progress could be made. There was logic in the discussion, and I could follow their logic and understand how they reached their conclusions. Without the opportunity to work backward toward the axioms, though, we could never reach a satisfying conclusion to the discussion (even if it was just, "agree to disagree").
In the situation of COVID, the anti-vaxxer and anti-masker crowds are somehow even more emotionally charged than the Young Earth Creationists I used to know. Which further disinclined me to engage in the discussion, even if they have a point that's worth listening to. And the nature of social media discussions is that, well, they mostly aren't. I mean, we're engaging in a discussion here on HN and even on this forum it gets pretty dicey at times. The stricter moderation (compared to, say, Reddit) helps a bit, but we go off the rails all the time and fail at the objective of coming together to form a discussion board.
As to why the side labeled "disinformation" is so willing to spend the time, because of the belief that they are right and everyone else is wrong and needs to be set right, and the corresponding emotional charge that the belief brings with it. When the world is out to get you, you end up with a fight or flight response. Ever had someone tell you you were wrong and felt a small surge through your body? That's adrenaline, it's a natural response but then the choice is how to deal with it. Take a breath and calm down or lean into it and fight or flee from the situation. The visible part is the "lean into it and fight" group, there are probably plenty of people that fit into the other two categories who just don't show up as often.
On the contrary, banning people makes people seek out their narrative even more.
This idea that people aren't smart enough to make their own decisions and need you to spoon feed them the "right" information is the real problem here.
No it really doesn’t. This has been demonstrated repeatedly online and the research so far is quite clear: if you make it harder to disseminate and discuss disinformation and hate speech then fewer people engage in the discussion or share the information. People may believe in stupid things, but lazy is even more powerful than stupid.
> fewer people engage in the discussion or share the information
More like fewer people engage in the discussion or share the information _where those researchers are looking_.
In reality, you're going to push people off Twitter and onto Gab, Parler, and Stormfront.
You can cite all the research you want. I've seen these effects of censorship first hand. Just makes matters way worse. If you believe all these people with different opinions are simply stupid, you're going to have a bad time. And, in my experience, such statements are a good proxy for middling intelligence on the part of the speaker.
Yup, when you tear out someone’s tongue that just makes the skeptic community more adamant about finding out what they have to say and why they are saying it.
The people who are just saying “obey” are the ones who want power over everyone else.
if you're going to ban information then you better be right 100% of the time. The bans on the lab leak thing blew all censorship credibility. That's the problem, if you're going to claim to be a "truth expert" then you better be right 100% of the time because the moment you're wrong you become part of the conspiracy.
> people did try and explain why vaccines are safe
When? Where? I avoid vaccine debates and even so I can't help but come across all the conspiracy theories about the effectiveness of mRNA vaccines. The only counterpoint I've ever seen is "the science is too complicated for your feeble brain to comprehend, take the vaccine".
> They'd rather just ban the people who disagree with them than address them in debate.
The anti-vaccine crowd doesn't engage in a fair debate, because they don't understand the rules/parameters of a debate or in some cases because they're not interested in a fair debate.
Climate change skeptics will talk your ear off about why climate change is a hoax - you literally can't get them to stop telling why you should make no change whatsoever to your life.
Climate change true believers, on the other hand, refuse to waste even one single word convincing the rest of us as to why we should all drive electric cars, stop using straws, and not run our air conditioners in the summers - things which, if they're serious, are necessary to ensure the survival of the species.
That observation alone makes the skeptics look more compelling.
> Climate change true believers, on the other hand, refuse to waste even one single word convincing the rest of us as to why we should all drive electric cars, stop using straws, and not run our air conditioners in the summers - things which, if they're serious, are necessary to ensure the survival of the species.
I think this simply isn't true. Am I, personally, out there evangelizing for a greener life style? Absolutely not. But are there people out there doing so? Well, yes, to the extent that it becomes a comic trope among climate-change denialists (who are having a harder and harder time in the face of the increasingly evident reality of climate change). Think, for example, of all the hate for Greta Thunberg.
I think it's just easier to remember vocal denialism—one can always shout "no" louder—than to remember the quieter and, frankly, boring recital of the same evidence.
It isn't, of course, something that is easily realizable through simple logic. And yet, so many genuinely smart people make this mistake - what could be going on?
Of course, it is "a logical fallacy" of some kind, and most people seem more than content to point out their favorite and leave it at that. But a problem is: people keep doing it.
In this case, what I think is going on is (for lack of a better term) "subconscious tautological categorization". They start by committing a standard logical fallacy (I'm not sure which one his would be), but when their attention is drawn to that fact (not all people behave like that), they ~pivot to something like "yes of course, I know that, I was just speaking loosely, you know what I mean don't be pedantic, etc etc etc". But what they are ultimately relying upon (once their conscious, logical mind has had its attention focuses on their error), is tautological, or by definition categorization: the people that they are referring to is limited to only the people that do those things - which is, of course, correct. But what they don't notice is, it kind of takes the wind out of their argument, as they are essentially saying "some people (they will not say specifically who, or how many (in percentage terms), or describe a predictive model of any kind) do bad things". While this observation is literally true, it doesn't seem to be very important/useful to know, presumably less important than they had in mind when initially making the comment.
I often wonder what the world would be like if people were as concerned with meta-cognition as they were with (for example) their physical appearance. My intuition suggests the world would be a very different place, considering that the world largely runs on top of human cognition.
And this is just one example of the various funny ways in which people think, there are many others (like the percentage of even intelligent people's perception of reality that is based on their imagination). I think the reason no one notices is that it's just a constant in the environment, it's completely normal, it is The Water that we live in, similar to how we typically do not have conscious awareness of our breathing, or the background noise of a city, or the millions of other things going on around us that is filtered out by our consciousness. But a problem is: some things that the consciousness filters out might actually be very important, and the only way I can think of to deal with this problem is try to bring some people's conscious attention to the phenomenon/idea (although, it would be nice if there was a way to scale it up beyond making individual forum comments here and there - if anyone has any ideas on that or related ideas, please let me know).
> Climate change true believers, on the other hand, refuse to waste even one single word convincing the rest of us as to why we should all drive electric cars, stop using straws, and not run our air conditioners in the summers - things which, if they're serious, are necessary to ensure the survival of the species.
Oddly, I heard ton about those. I heard about climate change over 20 years ago and did not stopped periodically hearing about it. They haven't talked about electric cars and straws back then tho. The big topic used to be industrial pollution and opposition to those regulation is serious source of climate change skepticism.
But as of now electric cars are subject of talk quite a lot, so are consumer lifestyle changes. There was mania around straws, tho I found that one unconvincing.
It comes down to power. power doesn't need to explain itself. Why expend the energy? just turn off their mic, ban their Facebook, disappear their YouTube, kick them off patreon, put them on the credit card block list, remove positive takes on them from search results, refuse to route their domain, then mock them when they complain.
It is unreasonable to expect every spurious claim to be engaged with. They are endless and an awful lot of them are based on irrational fear and tribalism so they likely can't be persuaded no matter.
I am not pleased about the "both sides" rallying cry heard on every topic. It presumes that there are only two sides (recall that the objections will be endless) and it presumes they are both in earnest and have a reasoned predicate for their existence. This is not usually the case.
There is of course real, actual debate going on about the safety and efficacy of the vaccines. These are based on research and data and there is no shouting. Then there's the "anti-vaxx" movement, rooted in party politics and paranoia. Screw that.
> It is unreasonable to expect every spurious claim to be engaged with
It is absolutely reasonable, and if you, personally, want me, personally, to get a Covid vaccine, wear a mask, and drive an electric car, you, personally, will have to engage each and every spurious claim that people are risking their livelihoods and overcoming censorship to share with me. If you don't care, leave us alone to wallow in our disinformation until we die of Covid.
No, it isn't reasonable and I don't care on an interpersonal level what you do as an individual, I only care about policies informing me on what I can expect in communal spaces.
As more businesses, employers, and institutions arrive at policies one way or the other regarding the vaccine, then you can make a personal decision about what to do about that. No, you will not be able to raise any random objection and override the entire enterprise. It doesn't and can't work that way.
> No, you will not be able to raise any random objection and override the entire enterprise. It doesn't and can't work that way.
As an individual, you're correct. But a large enough group of such individuals seem to be able to have a noteworthy effect, at least based on all the complaining I hear about them.
I think the difference is faith in authority figures. People who trust those in authority will believe what they're told (quite correctly, in this case), but they won't understand the full argument--they're not authorities themselves. That is, after all, the whole point of having authority figures and experts: the world is far too complex to understand everything yourself.
People who don't believe the authority figures need a reason _why_, and will concoct something. They need to validate their skepticism, both to themselves and to others.
If a skeptic really wanted to understand the argument for the COVID vaccine (in this case), all the information is out there to be had. But to really understand it they'd have to become experts themselves--actual experts, with an understanding of epidemiology, statistics, immune responses, and so on. Years of study. A google search that points out a few problems in isolation doesn't cut it.
A certain degree of skepticism for authority is definitely healthy, but I'd say it borders on pathological in modern American society.
The problem is anyone can be an "authority" if they're persuasive enough. Trust in authority is dangerous from any point of view. Evaluating authority is the hard part, my mother in law sees my brother in law as an authority on everything because he has a PHD from a prestigious school. I see him as an authority on fossilized turtle teeth but that's about it.
I wonder if we've failed to explain the world to our kids... Like why don't people understand specialization? Division of labor is critical to the structure of our society and has been for a VERY long time, significantly accelerated by industrialization and education, yet people still talk about "scientists" and "doctors" as if they're two giant masses. It should be basic that if someone wants to know about whatever that they go to an expert in that and then evaluate them against the other experts in that field. Why isn't this just obvious to every school child?
This doesn't match up with reality though. Most anarchists are in the science camp and thus wearing masks, getting vaccines and, fighting deforestation, fighting climate change, etc. I can't think of any group with less trust in authority.
> Why is it that, consistently, on specific issues that come up over and over again, the side labelled "disinformation" is so willing to spend so much time explaining rationally why they believe what they believe while the other side is always so uninterested in making their case?
We’re tired of wasting our breath on irrational morons.
If you ever had, you'd be more convincing. I never believed that the earth was flat, or that the moon landing was a hoax, or that 9/11 was an inside job, but I have seen fascinating, engaging, intriguing, careful takedowns of all the "evidence" that the true believers of those conspiracy theories believe. My kids actually did believe that the moon landing was a hoax at one point (thanks, YouTube!) until I pointed them to an article that debunks each of the conspiracy theory claims one by one in a way that appeals to rational intuition.
We're - what, 20? - comments into this thread and I'm being downvoted for suggesting that more people are willing to question Covid and climate change, being called an irrational moron, but nobody has yet linked to an analysis of their principal claims about, say, urban heat zones and mRNA vaccines.
Climate change is at least a complicated subject. Reasonable people can quibble about how the computer models are constructed, etc.
For the vaccine, all you need to do is observe the millions of people who’ve gotten vaccinated, who almost without exception have not had serious reactions. And observe further that the vaccinated people are not dying of covid.
In many cases, I doubt there's any particular goal. Who knows, this is millions of individual minds, unlike normal people I have no means of reading them.
you were this )( close to making a good argument. all you had to say was "to understand that taking the vaccine products you from covid" instead you have to turn it around and insult those who have not had the vaccine only furthering the divide.
Why is it that, consistently, on specific issues that come up over and over again, the side labelled "disinformation" is so willing to spend so much time explaining rationally why they believe what they believe while the other side is always so uninterested in making their case?