So, for instance, I could say “you are wrong in not breaking your screed into paragraphs, or I might have read it all the way through.”
“Reasoning” and “emotional investment” do not necessarily have the same strength metric. Yes, if somebody who’s not well-informed on a particular subject genuinely wants to formulate and hold an informed opinion about it, and you are able to discuss the subject with them in a reasonable and informative way, you may be able to help them change their mind.
But many people who are emotionally invested in some idiotic notion are impervious to reason on the subject, no matter how respectfully and helpfully you attempt to discuss it.
I appreciate the goodness of your intentions, but I have no way of knowing how many of your interlocutors genuinely came around to your way of thinking and how many of them just eventually pretended to agree with you in order to get you to leave them alone.
“Educating and informing” random strangers by disagreeing with them on social media does not have a terribly impressive success rate. AFAICT it is mostly a way for us better-informed types to enjoy ourselves by showing off our superior knowledge and forensic determination, and I think that sort of thing is more appropriate in venues specifically designed for such activities, such as the SDMB.
I think the best way to approach our civic duty of fighting ignorance on important social issues is not to buttonhole randos on the internet in order to contradict them, but to work on making better information more readily available to people who honestly want to know the facts.
For example, if your local supermarket or other store distributes one of those free “natural” antivax quack newsletters, have a discussion with the store manager asking them to reconsider carrying this publication, as it’s bad for public health. Encourage people you know to get flu shots and to vaccinate their kids. Support local medical and civic programs in favor of good science policy. All of which is way more responsible and productive than just butting heads with anti-science fanatics on the internet.
Maybe what is at play here is the loose use of the term crazy. My father more than once has said Kim Jong-un is crazy. I asked him point blank once, and he said yes he is. Ok, then I said the rational response to a crazy person with nuclear capability is to turn North Korea into a parking lot. He then said that action was crazy.
Donald Trump is not a man I admire, but he is not crazy. Michele Bachman, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, whoever, the same.
People who see what you see and yet attempt to capitalize on the situation in a way you may find is unethical is still not crazy. So what they say is also not crazy.
It’s foolish to dismiss them with that term, both because it is inaccurate and because then you absolve them of the need to explain themselves.
It’s like how serial killers are often dismissed as crazy or deranged. Society finds it deeply disturbing that a sane and rational person could do evil like that, and hence tries to comfort itself by claiming that it isn’t the product of sane behavior.
Are you making the claim that most serial murderers are not mentally deranged? Because of those who have been captured and examined, most clearly display symptoms of one or more recognized personality or psychotic disorders including compulsive, obsessive, and antisocial behaviors. Outside of warfare, “sane and rational” people don’t go around killing people because aside from whether it is “evil” to do so or not, there are serious ramifications for doing so and getting caught.
Stranger
Agreed.
There is one benefit to following and occasionally responding to hardcore loons online - you get exposed to memes you might otherwise never hear about. If your neighbor or relative (assuming they are otherwise sane) comes out with such a meme (or trope, if you prefer), you’ve already had practice debunking it.
I just don’t see it as being my responsibility to “educate” everyone I run across, either in person or on-line, when I think they are wrong. I think it was P. J. O’Rourke who said that America [USA] wasn’t founded so that we could all be better…it was founded so that we could be whatever the heck we wanted to be.
Besides, it’s fruitless. It’s a binomial distribution and there will always be extremists in the tails, no matter what the topic or issue. It’s the middle 90% that counts.
OTOH, I expect the same from them. And I’m going to draw a line in the sand when their beliefs trod on my freedoms and general welfare.
I promote “compassionate paternalism”. When it is cases of not accepting science on important matters like climate change, believing that tax cuts increase revenues or that Mexicans are all rapists, to name a few, we have to acknowledge that we will likely never, never, ever get facts and reasons through to these people. The only thing to do is gently prevent them from making public policy, and instead keep things on the rails in as non-offensive a way as possible, a way that prevents their country from collapsing in debt, their children from suffering in an apocalyptic climate nightmare, the snarlers from going all Nazi on minority groups and making this a shitty country to live in.
So, help them, but focus your convincing efforts of the educational system. People attached to crazy bullshit will generally waste your effort in trying to set them straight. Be a pluralist! But only let actually rational differences make it through the gate into real public deliberation.
The evidence that climate change is happening is getting so great that deniers can’t even deny it anymore. So they have switched from “it is not happening so we don’t have to do anything” to “humans are not responsible, so we don’t have to do anything.” Not much of a difference.
Because life is not a debate club or a salon where gentlemen with brandy and cigars sit in leather chairs chuckle and say, “excellent point, old chum.”
There’s nothing I like better than learning something and telling people about it. And if people say, “No, that’s not right,” I’m happy to tell them, in great detail with exhaustive source material, exactly why they’re wrong and I’m right. After a long and rich life, I have concluded this is not the best way to win friends and influence people.
For those who think there’s a role for education on social media, a project called Shots Heard Round The World is gearing up.
Its stated goal is to alert pro-immunization advocates to defend against coordinated attacks by antivaxers, like the blitzes against medical practices’ Facebook pages described in this article.
The idea is that when antivaxers descend en masse to do things like trash medical practices’ online ratings for daring to support vaccination, the project will “light the signal fires of Gondor” to rapidly get pro-immunization forces to mobilize in defense.
Sounds like fun. 
The media’s lack of explanation for things like the Green New Deal and the UN’s 12 year time frame to prevent a 2 degree increase, has contributed to peoples misconception that A) this is a partisan issue, B) Green New Deal is about killing cows and removing planes, and C) people wanting to do something about climate change are religious zealots spouting on about the world ending.
If Tucker Carlson did a segment on the ramifications of not doing anything to combat cc, I guarantee you a bunch of rednecks and white evangelicals would start to give a shit and maybe be concerned about it. All Fox News would have to do is frame this in a way that the right loves. Tell them CC is going to result in refugees and immigrants. The right would be fired up and ready to rejoin the Paris agreement instantly if you told them that.
I just saw an online posting that declared “vaccines AREN’T TESTED!”.
I passed along a few links demonstrating that indeed, vaccines are tested extensively before approval and monitored after they come into use. The odds that person will now say “gee, I was wrong, thanks!” are approximately zero.
You didn’t convince them of much. They are every bit as happy with humans leading us down the path of a warmer planet as they were before you spoke with them.
It’s like convincing a Fundamentalist that homosexuality isn’t a choice, and they come out of it believing that homosexuals aren’t choosing their preferences, but should remain celibate since homosexual acts are an affront to God. Yay?
As MrDibble pointed out, you can’t reason them out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.
Your CC friends didn’t reason themselves into the position, it’s a political position. An anti-liberal anti-hippie/treehugger position because they’re not going to let those ivory tower book lernin nerds tell them they have to stop doing this or start doing that. They don’t really care about climate change, and were willing to concede your point because they get to keep what they ACTUALLY care about, stigginit.
I’ve talked to plenty of the really religious who think that homosexuals will become heterosexual if they just realize that’s how God made them and wants them to be.
IN NO WAY DO I SUPPORTED THIS RAH-RAH IDEA.
In the context of this thread, this is not appropriate for this forum as it seems too much like threadshitting. If you think it’s a topic not worthy of discussion, it’s not required to participate.
[/moderating]
I’d say that a woman being forced to bear a child that she can’t afford and dreads having would have a much more hostile womb.
Hiya Barack.
I’m going to do my part to try to educate right now! There is a thing called paragraphs. You can wiki it.
QFT.
I used to feel like it was my duty to “educate” folks that believe crazy shit… after years of bashing my head against the brick wall of willful ignorance, I just don’t have the energy to continue it. If somebody is of the type of mindset that can buy into Alex Jones or Hillary-is-a-murderer, there is nothing I will be able to do to change that. No amount of evidence seems to sway the peddlers or consumers of cure-all essential oils, reiki, or any other woo treatments.
So, I just let them wallow in it, now… and keep my distance.