I don’t want to change anyone’s mind anymore. I’m so tired of trying. I just want them to STFU and believe their wacko shit in private like the good old days.
Ain’t that the truth. Social media is one of the worst things for humanity, instead of every “village idiot” being shunned as they deserve, now they can all find each other online and circlejerk about how they know “the real truth” and everyone else is just “blind to reality” as if they knew any better.
The worst thing about stupid people is that they’re to stupid to know they’re stupid. Anyone with a shred of intelligence knows there’s a ton of things they don’t understand and leave it to people that actually put in the time and effort to become knowledgeable about their particular field of knowledge.
But no the dumb fucks of the world think a google search and reading a few blog posts, a few facebook posts, and a few youtube videos is equivalent to being able to write and understand a scientific paper.
Just keep asking questions. The challenge is to keep up for as long as possible.
I have tried to out-crazy them, but crazy has gone beyond my ability in the last few years.
Honestly give the Socratic method a try. You can’t go wrong there. It’s challenging and you’ll improve a skill at the least. You might shed some light on a topic for them or yourself.
Coming up with good questions is hard (and let’s be honest, staying calm) but the real difficulty lies in keeping up and genuinely understanding what is being meant.
At some point I just genuinely don’t understand any more. It’s something the other person will notice and take with them. If anything you’ve shown them how to be critical.
I often ask them to tell me what they think “the scientific method” is.
They tend to waffle about big pharma and Hiroshima so I give them a four minute ELI5 animation from YouTube to watch. They never do watch it though.
It’s simple, when the science gets politicized, many people stop trusting it.
Nothing involving the thoughts and ideas of millions of people is simple.
Hell. Very little involving the thoughts and ideas of a individual person is simple.
The scientific method is what should count, not the soundbyte.
Good place to start with the 8 out of ten thing is with the pew research comparing the public vs scientists opinions on things.
https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2015/01/29/public-and-scientists-views-on-science-and-society/
Only 16% of… scientists and 29% of the general public rank U.S. STEM education for grades K-12 as above average… in the world.