carrotwax t1_ivyyb0j wrote on November 11, 2022 at 5:31 PM

One thought originally from Mark Manson is that for every "crazy idea" called a consipiracy theory there is some part that could very well be true. E.g.,

It's now considered a strong possibility that Covid originated in a lab, though we don't know intent.
There are actual papers questioning 5g health effects. It could be possible. That doesn't mean it 'causes' Covid, but it could theoretically affect the immune system for some people. No strong evidence yet, but also no negative proof.
It is well known the pharmaceutical industry, being profit focused, is often not as interested in a cure rather than a perpeputal medication.
Media profits off fear, so there's been a lack of perspective on Covid, which some Governments have used to negative effect such as decreasing liberties.

Those ideas are often under "conspiracy theories". That's why it's more useful to find common ground and ask for foundations of ideas rather than othering and dehumanizing because someone doesn't have perfect thought.

iiioiia t1_iw3ic2l wrote on November 12, 2022 at 5:59 PM

> Those ideas are often under "conspiracy theories".

The mechanism by which certain ideas "fall under" the conspiracy theory category is interesting, because "fall under" is a cognitive function that occurs within the minds of individual humans. How do tens to hundreds of millions of minds come to believe the same things despite no proof existing? Is it purely coincidental?

carrotwax t1_iw4rak7 wrote on November 12, 2022 at 11:19 PM

A lot of known cognitive distortions can converge. It's well known that for most people what they think of as truth comes essentially from who they trust. When a sufficient number of friends firmly believe something, it's fairly automatic to think it must be true. We evolved in a village and that's still how our minds work.

I think social media is essentially a vast psychological experiment. I wish there was more oversight and transparency there. I have some knowledge in both computer science and psychology and the power to influence in computer algorithms is quite frankly scary. One experiment showed a huge change in opinion created by just slightly lowering rankings of search results. It's only relatively few people that understand that their search results are tailored for them and other people may get completely different results - including in youtube.

I think it was close to criminal that the Great Barrington Declaration was shadow banned (removed from search results), and so not many people know that 60,000 scientists and health care professionals signed it. They thought there was scientific consensus based on their media feeds. On the other side, it was also easy for those disagreeing with general policies to find imbalanced "conspiracy" ideas like 5g harms or that Covid doesn't exist according to their own search results. We completely lacked good faith public discussion by disagreeing experts - most people had their information silos and so "othered" disagreeing views.

It's made me more cynical about the future and that good faith dialogue is possible. I hope I'm wrong.

iiioiia t1_iw59meb wrote on November 13, 2022 at 1:43 AM

Agree...this, and many other things. It is a complete shitshow. But, I think there's hope... This shitshow has so many holes in it, it's becoming increasingly difficult to keep the story straight, and a lot of young people seem to find the whole thing hilarious. Maybe some day a big meme war will break out!

carrotwax t1_iw5a8u7 wrote on November 13, 2022 at 1:48 AM

Thank you, you've increased my hope metric.

iiioiia t1_iw5sdm8 wrote on November 13, 2022 at 4:19 AM

There are many unseen opportunities I reckon.

yamouchi t1_ixqf8j1 wrote on November 25, 2022 at 2:31 PM

For the record, there is nothing credible that questions 5g health effects.

carrotwax t1_ixr49lj wrote on November 25, 2022 at 5:46 PM

The word "credible" is a loaded, toxic term when it comes to evidence, kind of liked proof by intimidation. If you mean there's no high quality evidence showing harm yet I agree. That doesn't imply safety, as much as industry likes to insinuate. I thought it was all conspiracy too, until I saw enough decent scientists questioning possible mechanisms and asking for more research. The problem is that like pharmaceuticals, it's very hard to get funding for high quality research that would drastically affect an industry. So we're still at a "maybe", but definitely not at the levels conspiracy theorists say. Important not to succumb to black and white thinking.