How to talk to conspiracy theorists about Atlantis · Gabe Stein
It’s tempting to think of conspiracy theorists as uneducated, unintelligent, insane, or bad-faith actors. But we’re increasingly finding that the inverse is often true.
In a fascinating and somewhat controversial newish preprint , a group of MIT and Wellesley researchers dive deep into COVID anti-mask belief, relaying insights both from a quantitative study of thousands of images and from qualitative “infiltration” of anti-mask Facebook groups. Their core finding is one that everyone working in news, misinformation, and related fields ought to internalize: Far from ignoring scientific evidence to argue for individual freedom, antimaskers often engage deeply with public datasets and make what we call “counter-visualizations”—visualizations using orthodox metho
related reading
- Lizardman’s Constant Is 4%slatestarcodex.com
- Cargo Cult Sciencecalteches.library.caltech.edu
- The debunker’s delusion | Sebastian Milbank | The Critic Magazinethecritic.co.uk
- Confront reality (Aaron Swartz's Raw Thought)aaronsw.com
- An AI chatbot helped Americans who believe in conspiracy theories “exit the rabbit hole” | Nieman Journalism Labniemanlab.org
- Epistemic Minor Leaguesastralcodexten.substack.com
- America is giving up on the pandemic? | Hacker Newsnews.ycombinator.com
- Losing Faith In Contrarianism — LessWronglesswrong.com
- You Are Not So Smartyouarenotsosmart.com
- How People Think · Collaborative Fundcollaborativefund.com
- web.archive.orgweb.archive.org
- Rule Thinkers In, Not Out — LessWronglesswrong.com