cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/10902481
Facts don’t change people’s minds because most people wield them rhetorically as thinly veiled appeals to authority.
At the end of the day, facts are meaningless themselves. Facts are the residue science leaves behind but the living process of science is one of skepticism.
We let oil companies steal the word “skepticism” and change it from meaning the process of learning something extremely well but still retaining doubt along with a curious impulse to question deeply held beliefs about said thing… to meaning someone has just decided impulsively not to believe something in favor of some random conspiracy theory they found on the ground next to them.
Often I think the best defense of science isn’t to lay down a barrage of facts but to jump into the exciting and curious aspects of the particular science and overpower the conspiracies with the truth that has far more weird details anyways. Convey how weird, strange and mysterious the real scientific truth is, imbue it with the energy of the unknown while still being careful to keep sticking to the real science.
It is that emotional experience that people desire that leads them to believing in conspiracies and I think in some strange way it isn’t that different from the emotional experience of being a scientist driven by the weird mysteries they keep uncovering.
A lot of people turn to conspiracies and dumb ideas because they want to feel like there is something more to the world around them than meets the eye (even if it is sinister). Meeting that energy with facts doesn’t work because it is like trying to smush desire away with banality.
