
How to talk to conspiracy theorists and still be kind - WillDaSilva
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/07/15/1004950/how-to-talk-to-conspiracy-theorists-and-still-be-kind/
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AndrewBissell
In roughly five years, I went from reading _Skeptic_ magazine to believing the
CIA killed JFK and traffics drugs into the U.S. to support its black
operations, MKULTRA is an ongoing program and had a hand in creating the
Manson Family and the Jonestown cult, (rogue elements in) the U.S. government
at the very least had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks, and pedophile sex
trafficking networks are commonplace and widely known among the ultra-wealthy
and powerful elite strata of world society.

This happened because of a consistent, observable and undeniable pattern of
elite impunity and abuse of power, most blatantly exhibited by Epstein's death
in prison (via murder or facilitated suicide), which led me to take a closer
look at the holes in many official narratives we're told to accept in place of
explanations which imply that the ultra wealthy & powerful exist beyond all
law and morality and use whatever means necessary to maintain their grip on
power.

When it comes to these matters people are guessing at the truth with the
limited picture of the facts available to them, and conspirators are actively
poisoning the well by associating good theories with bad ones, so of course
the conspiracy theory world is full of disinfo, misinfo, and just plain
mistaken takes. But until the bluepilled crowd represented by this article
accepts that at the very least _some_ conspiracy theories are true (hell, just
look at the history of things which were dismissed in those terms until
incontrovertible documentary evidence emerged), they'll be fighting a losing
battle.

> It’s a defense mechanism: we’re primed to be suspicious and afraid of things
> that can’t be explained.

That's funny. I see the public's need to dismiss conspiracies with mundane
explanations as a defense mechanism -- especially the really obvious and
undeniable ones like JFK's assassination or Epstein's death. The idea that
conspiracy theories represent some source of psychological comfort is just 180
degrees opposite the truth. It's not easy to admit to oneself that your vote
is in meaningless in an important sense, that the media you've consumed your
whole life is mostly controlled propaganda, and that the avenues to fix these
things are risky and uncertain at best.

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onecommentman
I much prefer MIT’s earlier article "How to dismiss that ridiculous plate
tectonic theory while smoking a pipe in your office". I think it was published
in the 1940s or 1950s. Popular at the time, as I recall.

