Conspiracy theoriest family and friends

[slim]

Originally Posted by rayne

How do you deal with family members/friends who are into conspiracy theories/woo/pseudoscience etc? My dad subscribes in Uncensored magazine, Nexus and New Dawn. I opened Uncensored and put it down after I saw an article from vactruth.com talking about how monkeys exhibit austistic traits from MMR vaccines. He likes to talk about what he reads, he's always been a big reader but has recently moved away from science to pseudoscience. He's 62 and a retired builder, I'm happy to let him read whatever because it makes him happy but it's sometimes tiring to hear all the theories. He's not into homeopathy or any woo and recognises it's all a load of bunk.

I'll dust off this thread.

<A friend of mine> has a hankering for government conspiracies, spends a considerable amount of effort and time researching them and finding "evidence" to support them and then tries to convert those he knows.

You can't argue with this sort of person unless you're willing to spend large amounts of time trawling for information; it's very much like trying to debunk religion to a religious person.

The ones I've had him bring up:

• 9/11 is a US government conspiracy.
• Climate change is not real and is a government conspiracy.
• GFC was orchestrated by the illuminati.
• Moon landing was made up; not possible for humans to get through the Van Allen belt.
• Flouride in drinking water is there for mind control purposes.
• Vaccinations are bad.
• The list goes on.

This guy is very good at speaking and manages to put together a reasonably articulate position to support the theories. He manages to alienate friends, family and business associates... It's really quite sad to watch.

[the_gelf]

Originally Posted by slim

I'll dust off this thread.

<A friend of mine> has a hankering for government conspiracies, spends a considerable amount of effort and time researching them and finding "evidence" to support them and then tries to convert those he knows.

You can't argue with this sort of person unless you're willing to spend large amounts of time trawling for information; it's very much like trying to debunk religion to a religious person.

The ones I've had him bring up:

• 9/11 is a US government conspiracy.
• Climate change is not real and is a government conspiracy.
• GFC was orchestrated by the illuminati.
• Moon landing was made up; not possible for humans to get through the Van Allen belt.
• Flouride in drinking water is there for mind control purposes.
• Vaccinations are bad.
• The list goes on.

This guy is very good at speaking and manages to put together a reasonably articulate position to support the theories. He manages to alienate friends, family and business associates... It's really quite sad to watch.

My way of dealing with whackos (If i bother), is to ask them questions from the perspective of the OTHER side.
examples:
FOr what purpose would the illumiati want to cause a GFC? What is the benefit to them, wouldn't it be better for a secret organization to not draw attention to itself? Why is it that you think the internet hasn't exploded with the news of this? How big would the illuminati organisation need to be in order to police <the order>.

My experience is that people like this only think about their immediate surroundings, they only ever think how it affects *them* i.e. they are extremely egocentric to the point that they ignore their place in the world. Compare statistics of countries who have vaccinations, and those who don't. Does he think zimbabwe is a good place to live? Why not live there, it doesn't have vaccinations or illumiati, and a life expectancy of <45. Think ofthe most out of the box questions (there will only be dumbfoundedness, or reiteration, if there is handwaving and dismissal, your reply can be "well it's clear to me you haven''t thought this through"). Attack not the claim, but the consequences and contingency of the claim

Ask him how we manged to get moon rocks to Earth, and wy these types of rocks have never been discovered by anyone else, except for their existence on the moon.

and so forth.
Also ask him if he understands what a refereed scientific journal is, and that if he has a new claim no one has thought of, he should submit a paper to them.

Or just block him on your phone, facebook yada yada.


Also ask him about the hammer+feather experiment

[Glob]

Originally Posted by the_gelf

Also ask him if he understands what a refereed scientific journal is, and that if he has a new claim no one has thought of, he should submit a paper to them.

I like!