Shadow1980 said:
JWeinCom said:
It is completely pointless to argue with conspiracy theorists. Their position was never based on evidence, so virtually no amount of evidence will persuade them. |
Evidence against the conspiracy is viewed as evidence for the conspiracy in the minds of the conspiracy theorists. They intentionally structure their claims to be unfalsifiable. We've all seen it. "Oh, that's just what they want you to think." "You must be on it as well, you shill!" They dismiss everything out of hand that doesn't reinforce their beliefs. It reminds me of Sagan's "dragon in my garage" thought experiment in his book "The Demon-Haunted World" where he imagines a scenario where he claims to have a dragon in his garage, and his friend, surprised to find no dragon, is told that it's invisible, but every other test his friend suggests to confirm the dragon's existence in other ways is met with some sort of special excuse saying why that test won't work. As Sagan said towards the end of it:
“Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.”
Unfortunately, we now have an entire political party that operates largely on the basis of conspiracy theories. The GOP base has long been primed to accept stuff like this thanks to decades of sensationalist, scaremongering, red-baiting propaganda from right-wing talk radio and Fox News. I mean, look at how many of them have long thought that global warming is a literal communist hoax designed to take away their freedom. But it really hit critical mass in the Trump era and especially once the pandemic hit. It's going to be really hard to recover from this, as the conspiracy theories have become so integral to American conservatives' worldview that there's little hope of dissuading any substantial portion of them. If Trump or Tucker or OAN or whoever says it, they believe it, end of discussion.
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