I've been in these conversations several times recently. My tips:
Go in friendly. Make an effort to assume and embody good will and rationality. The premise of most conspiratorial thinking is very dichotomous. They see themselves as the open minded against dismissive, closed minded opposition. Don't play into this by being dismissive. Be generous instead and assume that they are truth seeking just like you.
Don't be too defensive. If you don't know the "proof" for Gm1m2/r^2, don't pretend you do. Spend time. Be proactive instead. What's the proposed alternative to Gm1m2/r^2 and why do they think that one is true. Instead of seeking out logical holes and dunking, seek out points you can concede. This creates a common ground and gives them permission to concede points too. Intellectual honest is a reciprocal game.
Make it an interesting conversation, not a game you're trying to win. Almost all of their exposure to the topic(s) is either monologue (probably youtube), or ridiculing/dismissive debate. Good faith dialogue will be a rarity. Be that. It often gets epistemological, and that actually is interesting.
Last, remember that almost no conversation ends with a change of mind. That happens later, if at all. What you can "prove" within the conversation is that not all spherists are closed minded, dismissive arseholes.
I'd also recommend doing it. There's a lot to learn here that transposes onto less fringy stuff... especially politics. You likely can't convince Democrat to be a Republican, but you can convince them that some Republicans have reached their conclusions with an open mind, good faith and good intentions. That's the myth which needs to be busted. Other myths are secondary.
Conspiracy theories are about people and their perceptions of other people, primarily. The object of the conspiracy is secondary.
Do you have any data on the form their mind is creating to hold these theories "true"? The form could be factual data (lists of things) supporting or disproving their theory, creative imagery (internally seen things) obscuring what is normally viewed as reality, or perhaps sound or voices in the form of hallucinations (internally heard things).
After armchair analyzing this for nearly 4 years, I'm pretty sure Trump is a "bigly visualizer" and has some ability? to make others see what he is seeing, while at the same time filtering facts that thinking mind might normally bring.
To clarify, when I mean facts I mean non-imagery or non- sound/vibration based data forms: words, labels, conditionals, etc., which are used to form a process which may be followed by another to arrive at the same "conclusion" to what is currently being seen through our collective awareness.
It would seem about 43% or more of the population of the United States is infected with a means of operation which eliminates or completely disables critical thinking mechanisms and relies exclusively on internal fabricated imagery or audio for their measure of "truth".
>>It would seem about 43% or more of the population of the United States is infected with a means of operation which eliminates or completely disables critical thinking mechanisms and relies exclusively on internal..
IMO, it is about 100%. Conspiracy people are not less rational, or radically so, on average. People just aren't as rational as we believe ourselves to be. Many of our positions and beliefs are acquired socially in practice. Logic and reason are part of it, but remember that we learn from other people. We learn who to learn from. Trust plays a role.
As I said in the original comment, the epistemology can be interesting. In practice though, the sociology is often meta to epistemology
> Do you have any data on the form their mind is creating to hold these theories "true"
I can't address the rest of the comment, but I can address this
True and truth are what the collective believes it is true, you can see this from the Desert Storm invasion based on the "truth" that the Iraqi army was taking babies out of incubators, to the modern idea of Genders being exclusively binary when we have literal Roman emperors writing how much they love their teenage male lovers or South East Asian transexual and cross dressing.
Truth is what the group "deludes" itself to be, which will always be clashing with materialism and material reality
"When people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." -- Isaac Asimov
No - we cannot give up on the idea that objective truths exist. The idea of truth represents an objective reality. We can disagree on what we believe or feel, but a truth can exist even if zero people believe it.
I can vouch for it, it is very very effective, I discussed with a friend whom believed that a cabal of jews control the world and other one whom believed that the earth is flat
It should be noted that it is not easy to do, you need to have foundational knowledge of these topics and quick historical references to people/historical characters whom also made the "mistake" of believing what your interlocutor did, that way you can both set a reference for your interlocutor so he/she doesn't feel alone and as an outcast, and thread a narrative needle through history itself showing how people used to think that but now don't because of x, y, z evidence, think it like James Burkes idea of linking different topics through history, if anybody is interested I'd very much recommend listening to the Dan Carlin James Burke podcast episode and then checking James Burke books on it
But as OP said, I very, very much have enjoyed the conversations with "them" as I see them basically as adversarial journalists of sorts, asking some very tricky epistemological questions to which the foundations of modern science, history and modernity itself are built
And lastly a key, "There are no Good Great Men", everyone whom got to power in history is basically by definition Not A Good Person, and that is because just to get power at all one must play dirty most often than not. There are are just a very few select people whom we might look as being "Good"
We know our educational systems fail people, conspiracy thinking is what happens when critically thinking people lack the foundation to see the world around them and therefore start questioning the foundations of it, because again they are critical in thinking, after that first layer then you have socialization, ego, collective identities and other things that reinforce their loss aversion to changing their world view, but the core is critical thinking
Imagine this as if you were talking to a classical Babylonian, or to Plato itself and through foundational analogies such as the Anarchic Pirates of Plato you explain the world and logic
I've tried a few times and comprehensively failed. Now if topics like this come up in social settings (not that those happen anymore) I simply state my disagreement with their views and change the subject to something less confrontational.
Go in friendly. Make an effort to assume and embody good will and rationality. The premise of most conspiratorial thinking is very dichotomous. They see themselves as the open minded against dismissive, closed minded opposition. Don't play into this by being dismissive. Be generous instead and assume that they are truth seeking just like you.
Don't be too defensive. If you don't know the "proof" for Gm1m2/r^2, don't pretend you do. Spend time. Be proactive instead. What's the proposed alternative to Gm1m2/r^2 and why do they think that one is true. Instead of seeking out logical holes and dunking, seek out points you can concede. This creates a common ground and gives them permission to concede points too. Intellectual honest is a reciprocal game.
Make it an interesting conversation, not a game you're trying to win. Almost all of their exposure to the topic(s) is either monologue (probably youtube), or ridiculing/dismissive debate. Good faith dialogue will be a rarity. Be that. It often gets epistemological, and that actually is interesting.
Last, remember that almost no conversation ends with a change of mind. That happens later, if at all. What you can "prove" within the conversation is that not all spherists are closed minded, dismissive arseholes.
I'd also recommend doing it. There's a lot to learn here that transposes onto less fringy stuff... especially politics. You likely can't convince Democrat to be a Republican, but you can convince them that some Republicans have reached their conclusions with an open mind, good faith and good intentions. That's the myth which needs to be busted. Other myths are secondary.
Conspiracy theories are about people and their perceptions of other people, primarily. The object of the conspiracy is secondary.