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.
My approach is rhetorical in that it focuses on understanding the motives behind people's statements rather than evaluating their truthfulness. We're living in an age often described as "post-truth," where the emphasis is not so much on factual accuracy but on what a statement achieves:
post-truth signifies a state in which language lacks any reference to facts, truths, and realities. When language has no reference to facts, truths, or realities, it becomes a purely strategic medium. In a post-truth communication landscape, people (especially politicians) say whatever might work in a given situation, whatever might generate the desired result, without any regard to the truth value or facticity of statements. If a statement works, results in the desired effect, it is good; if it fails, it is bad (or at least not worth trying again)
In this context, the question is not, "Is this person telling the truth?" Instead, we should be asking, "What is this person trying to persuade me to believe or do, and how are they going about it?"
So, when you find yourself in a debate and you're not well-informed on the topic, consider the true objective of the conversation. Is it genuinely about searching for truth, or is it more about making a spectacle to win points, irrespective of facts or logic? Reflecting on this can help you decide whether the debate is even worth your time and effort.
Addressing your concern about convincing others they're wrong, it's important to remember that in a post-truth world, facts are often secondary. Instead of trying to prove someone wrong, try to understand how their incorrect beliefs serve them. What value or emotional payoff are they getting from holding these views?
Take vaccine skepticism as an example. For some, doubting vaccines aligns with a broader narrative that the government aims to control its citizens. This perspective provides them with a sense of resistance and preserves their individuality against what they perceive as an oppressive force. Their beliefs are deeply tied to their identity, which is a common human trait. Facts against the narrative of which they're convinced is often construed as an attack on who they are as a person. And for that, you can just be a normal caring person.
If you really want to talk to these people (or better, shut them up), ask why their version of events matters. Often they are just very excited about finding "the truth" about something with no consideration of whether their version of reality will effect anything around you. If they think the Bush administration did 9/11, or if we never landed on the moon, or whatever, why does it matter?
Let's say their internet fu is somehow better than everyone else and they found a smoking gun that says covid was an accidental lab release. So what? Are we going to kill all Chinese people? Does the virus go away? Should we not take a vaccine if the disease came from a lab? Most of their excitement is based on the belief that everything that happens has to have a grand conspiracy make it go that way. And people who believe this have probably never seen how hard it is to pull off a church bake sale. Getting people to coordinate and cooperate on simple things they believe in is already hard. Getting people to go out of their way to do secret, harmful things is rather out there.
Now sometimes the "why does this matter" helps save time in the "should I be around this person" decision, because if their delusion of why this matters involves not taking appropriate steps to protect yourself and loved ones (like taking the vaccine), they are a hazard and a disease spreading vector and you should take caution. The world has gotten relatively safer over time, to the point where people think it must always be safe. These are the people that pet wild bears. You generally don't want to be around during the find out phase of their fucking around, unless you are making a Youtube video.
But we all know your Youtube video is fake, Ted died of Covid but they wrote "bear attack" on his death certificate because they get more money that way.
The core issue is ignorance and and poor abilities at investigation. School fails so many people. And, societally, most people seem to feel they're entitled to opinions even if they know nothing or very little about a topic, which helps keep them ignorant and unable to critically investigate topics and sources.
Finally, the "trust in institutions" issue. These institutions should not be trusted, they have been overtaken by capitalism. Healthcare is profit-driven and the tendency is towards poorer science that covers up dangers and inflates benefits. In addition, people have no sense of agency over the state (they're correct about that), so a feeling of understanding can temporarily substitute that.
The question is what to do about it. Well, individually, you can do very little. You can try to convince people through argumentation, like you mentioned, but this is very difficult. The example of vaccines makes it clear that this is someone that bought into these ideas without critically engaging. They probably did so for a number of reasons, including societally-ingrained hubris, peer pressure, personal experience, personality, politics, and the production value of whatever got to them first. Your task is to sow doubt (ask challenging questions) and try to rebuild from shared understanding.
The best way to combat this, more generally, is not as an individual, but as a member of an active organization that combats all of this at once, and with a plan for how to do so adequately. This would best be a socialist org, as the thing you're fighting is actually the discursive mass media and education aspects of capitalism. e.g. on COVID's origins, the common understandings and claims in the West are simplistic and unscientific, and only exist for political reasons, to scapegoat why a given country did so poorly at handling the pandemic, to isolate China in a new cold war. You could become an expert in the science, follow geographic phylogenies and the terminology of epidemiology, but you don't really need to: you really just need media criticism skills, which is all about politics, economics, and being a big nerd.
To me you either 1) have the many years of specialized education required to understand (for real) how vaccines works, or 2) trust the national and international institutions that vouches the work of estimeed scientists, or 3) do your research and perhaps watch your children die of fucking measles.
Trying to convince someone that chose no.3? Your only hope is to make them understand that they cannot understand, a very very hard task.
Trying to convince someone that chose no.3? Your only hope is to make them understand that they cannot understand, a very very hard task.
that's rather depressing isn't it. I trust the scientists but when politics gets mixed into science, it's hard to know who is lying and who's not.
Understanding who is lying is also impossible for the majority of us not having the specialized education etc etc (see no.1), so I just trust the scientific consensus. It's so easy!
that's the last thing you can trust rn. Scientific consensus. But that's getting out of hand too. Corporations funding research that shows them in a positive light, perverse incentives for some streams of science and media misrepresentation of facts are concerning.
If the other person is arguing in good faith, I'll listen and exchange views until that becomes pointless. If the other person is loaded with an opinion and won't listen to anything different, I basically shut down and leave them hanging.
It's not poorly written. I understand it bc I feel this way, but I've come to a different conclusion.
I'm OK not knowing everything. I'm not ecstatic about it, but I've settled with the idea. Experts exist for a reason and I have to trust in that. I can't research every issue to a college degree level. I gotta make dinner for the kids.
Let your friend have their vaccine research but just don't bother talking about it to them. Accept the fact that you don't need to understand every facet of reality to live thru it.
