To know what I am talking about, let me give you an example. I have this friend who went crazy over the vaccine issue. She’s done so much research into it that I feel like I can’t talk to her about her vaccine skepticism. Whenever I start to talk about something, she would drown me with a ton of articles and youtube videos and most of the times from the actual websites of UN health and stuff. It would have taken me a day to just go through that stuff. So I gave up on convincing her about vaccines. Might seem cruel but even I lost my certainty about vaccines after I met her. There’s just too much to know and I don’t completely trust the institutions either, but I do trust the institutions enough to vaccinate myself and my kids but not enough to you know, hold a debate about it with someone who has spent days researching this stuff.

You can take any topic which is divisive, which basically looms over the media all day and you can find a ton of articles to either support it or “debunk” it. I think 9/11 wasn’t caused by Bush, I am almost certain, but I won’t bet my house on it. I mean, this is almost a certainty, but yeah.

On other issues which are not this much of a certainty I fail to see how to convince a person who thinks something that they are wrong.

Stuff like earth is round or not, I can prove. But was the virus from Chinese market or from a lab, I can’t.

Have aliens visited earth? I don’t know. It would be wicked if we make first contact, but as awesome as this is, I am not motivated to search about this on the internet. I don’t think I would search anything about the not so cool topics of life. I don’t know enough to hold an informed debate about capitalism vs socialism or any other hot button issue for that moment.

What do you do in these situations?

I can sense that this is poorly written, but I hope you get the gist of what I am trying to say.

  • Candelestine@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Think to the root of it.

    We’re constantly bombarded by information these days, and one way to sort out where to devote your energy is to consider the “next steps” in whatever rational process.

    Who would benefit from institutions lying about vaccines? Who would value that, what could their goals be, what methodology could they be following?

    You’ll find it’s going to lead you eventually to old Jewish conspiracy theories, literally nothing else makes any sense. So, if you do want to participate in those conspiracy theory communities and ideas, ask yourself again, “what next?”

    Just keep doing this, going step by step through the process. If, at any point, you decide it’s a waste of your time, you know where it all began. Where the entrance to that rabbit hole was.

    • Ganesh Venugopal@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      I am sorry, I don’t think that argument is sound. There are pretty good reasons for companies and government to lie about vaccines. Idk, keep the economy going and get people out of home stuff.

      Biden would want to be the guy under whom people got vaccinated and same goes for Trump. don’t get me started on pharma lobbies or any other lobbies for that matter. There are good reasons for people to lie.

      • Candelestine@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Need to remember the details if you’re really going to be thinking about these things. Companies, first off, will lie about anything unless expressly prohibited. I’m not talking about them, they all say their products are great, it’s just what they do. If you were them, you’d probably be saying your product is great too.

        If the govt wanted people out of their homes, then just lift the restrictions and make all the people asking for that happy. Maybe they’ll even think about voting for you, if you make them happy like that. Why lockdown, lie about a vaccine, jab everyone, and then open everything up? Makes no sense, right? Unless it was all just real. Or unless… right?