"Debunking" in the modern sense mostly just means calling someone an idiot for having a different opinion than you, with an added dose of self-assured smugness because obviously "science" and "the experts" and "everybody knows" are on your side. Debunking is bad enough when it actually comes from a place of real science, because even then the self-congratulatory nature of it makes people want to punch you rather than engage in a conversation. But when "the science" is really just a bunch of anecdotes, propaganda and Just-So Stories people in certain social circles keep repeating to each other ad nauseam, it becomes a complete joke.
I'm not ashamed to admit that I've dismissed plenty of people in my life.
I don't have time to argue with and debunk Holocaust deniers and Neo-Nazis, nor do I think it would be productive, because in my experience almost all such people are way beyond reasoning with.
Also, when such people "debate", they're often just trying to spread their propaganda to bystanders, and not engaging in any kind of good-faith argument with you.
Finally, I recognize that if these people ever get power they will crush, in a very literal way, using violence, anyone who doesn't agree with them, who is not "pure" enough for them, or who stands in their way.
Yeah, at this point I can't tell trolls from idiots. Like it's a lifestyle.
You're at a restaurant on the ocean and some fairly educated dude wants to go all flat earth. I'm like, "let me go get some binoculars and you can tell me why the bottom of the container ship falls below the horizon first. We can even estimate the distance based on size of ship and magnification factor to get a radius for the earth".... "No, it doesn't work that way".
Huh? Why are all the other planets round? Why does the earth cast a round shadow on the moon (vice versa for eclipse)? Why can you fly to India in either direction in the same amount of time? It's conspiracy theories all the way down.
Stupid, angry, or willfully ignorant, they're painful to talk to.
> What do they gain from causing such discomfort to others?
Most people play some kinds of irrational games to generate emotions they are addicted to. The difference is what kind of emotions they want, and what kind of scenarios they use to obtain it. There is a popular book on this topic called "Games People Play", strongly recommended.
From the psychoanalytical perspective, all these games ultimately are sick attempts to indirectly extract symbols of love, when people are too afraid of a more direct approach (aren't we all sometimes?).
The recipe for this specific game is that I cause you discomfort, and if you continue interacting with me anyway, it means that you have forgiven me (for causing you the discomfort), which means that you care about me (otherwise why would you keep interacting with me). So I frustrate you in order to extract a costly signal of caring from you, so that I can feel loved for a moment.
Why not a more direct approach? First, I am afraid to ask whether you care about me, because you might say no. Even worse, if you said yes, I would still be suspect that you are lying; maybe you are just being polite. But when I cleverly extract forgiveness from you, if you stay with me regardless of the discomfort I cause, then I can be sure that you genuinely care.
Of course, the damage caused to both sides by this approach is obvious. But sometimes people just don't know how to do it better, and any symbol of love is better than nothing.
If you will enjoy the book, I would recommend reading also the sequel "What Do You Say After You Say Hello?". It is much less famous, probably because it was published posthumously, but I liked it even more. It needs to be read later, though, because it heavily references the "Games People Play".
trolling can be a lot of fun. especially ideological adversaries. people will get incredibly twisted around their own axles And literally enraged over the opinion of some anonymous joker who they will never meet or have another interaction with. these feelings can follow you around for days vexing you and bringing you back to that negative state of mind. and that is hilarious to people who have learned to not give a shit about what some stranger thinks of them on the internet.
You have a lot of control over your own mind and emotions, so don't relinquish it to malevolent tricksters. And if you can't do that quit social media. but really everyone should quit social media probably.
It is an exercise in power, a pale imitation of O'Brian in 1984:
>Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in shapes of your own choosing.
> Why are all the other planets round? Why does the earth cast a round shadow on the moon (vice versa for eclipse)? Why can you fly to India in either direction in the same amount of time?
Well, “round” can be an attribute of a plane; its typically referred to as a circle. A more descriptive term is “spheroid” but outside of a small set of long-distance navigation tasks the flat earth mental model is perfectly sufficient and computationally less expensive.
Not a Flat Earther, but its not beyond the realm of possibility reality might be a two dimensional projection. Despite our sensory perceptions. Look into "Holographic Universe".
> Not a Flat Earther, but its not beyond the realm of possibility reality might be a two dimensional projection. Despite our sensory perceptions. Look into "Holographic Universe".
Flat Earthers are never talking about a "holographic universe," though. They're always talking about the Earth being like a board whose edges you could fall off from.
I find that's a vital realization to have. It's also more than a bit sad: anybody from ANY political angle who's desperate enough will sink to this level. That said, there's some political angles that I see a lot of this from.
Nazis lie, is the way I frame it to myself. I try to recognize the tells, the techniques that are being used, the pivoting and debating attitude, the historical precedents, if possible the escalation as masks are dropped and the ideological payload is hinted at or delivered. There's always a payload. Everything else is the game.
Nazis lie. I'm interested in identifying them, not debating them. If I can identify them, I can identify their payload and odds are it's something I'm going to want to walk away from, and I'll do just that.
> Nazis lie, is the way I frame it to myself. I try to recognize the tells, the techniques that are being used, the pivoting and debating attitude, the historical precedents, if possible the escalation as masks are dropped and the ideological payload is hinted at or delivered. There's always a payload. Everything else is the game.
I've actually experienced something like that. I once found myself peripheral to some internet controversy where there was this guy who seemed like he was on "my side" but prolifically posting in a really counterproductive way. In good faith, I spend a lot of time trying to get him to realize that, only for him to eventually to throw random slurs at me. I'm pretty sure he was just an alt-right type who didn't actually care much about the specific controversy, but was just trying to exploit the drama.
True. Nazis are ready to use violence to gain dominion over others. Lying is a form of violence, so it just makes sense for them to use it. It is easier for them to lie than use physical violence and preferably they don't get caught. Just use their power to influence.
But I wonder if the paper perhaps did not consider this:: Even though correcting someone can make them defensive, the correction might be very helpful to all the other readers of the same discussion, so they don't get mislead.
Have you ever met a Nazi, a flat earther or a white supremacist? I never have, not online either. People throw these terms around like they are on every corner.
Maybe a "nazi sympathizer" would be a better term.
It is interesting you bring in Flat Earthers. What do they have in common with Nazis? Anything? I think there is something. It is the message "Don't use your brain to come up with answers just adopt our doctrine as faith".
I think the OP's point is that a lot of people who think they are debunking aren't very good at it, and end up dismissing instead.
I realized just how low quality most debunkings are last year when I started wondering what happens if an uncertain person specifically searches for [$idea debunking] on Google. I chose "5G causes Coronavirus" as the idea in question. Sure enough, a whole pile of articles claiming to be debunkings came up in the results. The problems became apparent when reading them. Some of these debunkings were barely more coherent than the idea they were trying to debunk and would be very unconvincing. Almost always these were written by professional journalists. I did eventually find one that actually took the reader seriously and was free of obvious contradictions and errors but it was written by a physicist.
Common problems are:
- A belief that simply repeating the words of the journalist's chosen academic or corporate spokesperson is the same thing as a debunking. If someone is finding your article in the first place, it means they already have doubt about the establishment's view of something so simply repeating it can't convince them. This tactic is especially useless because basically any idea no matter how crazy it sounds will have academics and credentialed people who openly support it and campaign for it, so it turns into "my experts are more expert than your experts", which is less convincing still.
- An extremely off-putting and arrogant tone of the form "I can't believe I have to write about this, but ..."
- Articles that contain internal contradictions or are written in a manner implying the debunker doesn't understand the topic themselves. One debunking I read started by asserting that although 5G uses millimeter waves, such waves are completely harmless and only crazy deluded people could possibly think they were dangerous. Half way through the article it started talking about military experiments that beamed mm wave at enemy soldiers to cripple them with pain. No mention of strength or energy consumption was made anywhere, apparently without noticing that "used in weapons" and "harmless" are mutually exclusive without much more detailed information about why some are harmless and others aren't.
- Debunkings that aren't actually debunkings but rather, explanations of why $idea is true but good. One example of this is the (no longer available) section of the EU Commission website that claimed to be a database of debunkings of "myths" about the EU in the British press. When I spot checked some one day it turned out a large chunk were like this, maybe the majority, i.e. "Newspaper X reported Y. This is true but is justified by our policy goals". Well, that's a retort in a debate but not a debunking of a myth, and when that happens it makes people lower the perceived weight of the word "debunk".
These kinds of problem are so common it left me with a much greater understanding of why even some ideas seem to grow faster and further than you would intuitively expect.
At best there are some studies that show patterns, but that doesn't stop people from believing it and spreading the gospel on forums - before long, it's an axiom and no proof is needed.
Omniscience has become extremely popular in the last few years as well, and I'm pretty sure there's no evidence for that at all (but I'm speculating about that, perhaps there is something out there).
