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I’m pretty sure that anyone who is willing to swallow massively implausible theories like qanon is not the kind of person who will be amenable to logical argume

I’m pretty sure that anyone who is willing to swallow massively implausible theories like qanon is not the kind of person who will be amenable to logical arguments and fact checking. You can’t just argue those people out if their positions because it’s not about truth for them, it’s about feeling like one is a member of the elect. Denying reality is not a bug, it’s a feature of every millenarian belief system. Facts are ineffective, you just have to shut them down.

fallingfrog 6y ago
Downvoted! Look: we here on hacker news are used to thinking about the world in a logical way. We test our ideas against reality and reject what doesn’t fit. We have rational enlightenment ideals about democracy and reason. Well some people don’t! They really don’t. They have a prescientific, premodern understanding of the world. I know this is hard to accept but it’s clearly true. And every time they turn on the tv and see gay people and atheists, they get furious and they want all those people to shut up and be silent, so the world can go back to being the comfortable, familiar place that they think it is without all the complexity and uncertainty that the real world contains. So if you don’t understand the world, and it’s scary, you’re going to latch on to some belief system that says that some cabal of devil worshippers is responsible for everything you don’t like. Logic has nothing to do with it.
- theplague42 6y ago
  HackerNews is just as vulnerable to confirmation bias and reactionary behavior as any other group of people. Being an engineer does not make one magically immune to cognitive bias.
  - aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 6y ago
    As the recently-departed James Randi pointed out repeatedly, scientists are among the easiest people to fool with magic tricks for this very reason.
  - reducesuffering 6y ago
    Vulnerable, but resoundingly not "just as vulnerable." Just this year, this community is where I learned that COVID-19 was going to be huge and devastating to the world as early as mid February, with lockdowns, financial devastation, masks and social distancing are required, etc. Meanwhile people like us had to argue with relatives and friends for a whole 'nother month as they thought we're overreacting, masks are useless, "just wash your hands, nothing to be too concerned about." For all its faults, HN is better informed on reality than most groups of people.
ibejoeb 6y ago
I've been able to avoid it entirely. Can you point to a good primer on qanon? Not an opinion piece or a takedown or anything, just an explainer. The only thing I know is what I've heard from MSM, and that has been that there is a secret cabal of pedophiles, and many members occupy powerful positions.
- fallingfrog 6y ago
  Yeah it has this millenarian aspect too from what I can gather where Donald trump is a savior figure who will purge the cabal and issue in a new golden age of some kind. The basic structure is that everything about the world that q followers don’t like us the fault of this cabal of Bad People and once they are removed then everything will be great. Very fascistic. Q made predictions of certain people being arrested, such as Hillary Clinton; when this didn’t happen the explanation became that they had been replaced with clones. Google can probably find you better summaries of you dig more but heres one: https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a22646546/q-anon-trump-conspiracy-theory-explained/ https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a22646546/q-anon-trump...
- nitrohorse 6y ago
  I’d recommend this podcast episode on the origins of QAnon from Media Roots Radio. https://mediaroots.org/media-roots-radio-the-origins-of-qanon-follow-the-white-rabbit-into-a-deeper-layer-of-the-maga-cult-pt-1-of-2/ https://mediaroots.org/media-roots-radio-the-origins-of-qano...
- anoraca 6y ago
  https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/qanon-nothing-can-stop-what-is-coming/610567/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/qanon-n... https://www.nytimes.com/article/what-is-qanon.html https://www.nytimes.com/article/what-is-qanon.html https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2020/10/qanon-trump-town-hall/616770/ https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2020/10/qano...
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  You can read what the person or people who write as Q post (http://qposts.online/ http://qposts.online/), then you can read the is written about Qanon (https://www.google.com/search?q=Qanon https://www.google.com/search?q=Qanon). Warning, they live in different universes.

fallingfrog 6y ago

Downvoted! Look: we here on hacker news are used to thinking about the world in a logical way. We test our ideas against reality and reject what doesn’t fit. We have rational enlightenment ideals about democracy and reason. Well some people don’t! They really don’t. They have a prescientific, premodern understanding of the world. I know this is hard to accept but it’s clearly true. And every time they turn on the tv and see gay people and atheists, they get furious and they want all those people to shut up and be silent, so the world can go back to being the comfortable, familiar place that they think it is without all the complexity and uncertainty that the real world contains. So if you don’t understand the world, and it’s scary, you’re going to latch on to some belief system that says that some cabal of devil worshippers is responsible for everything you don’t like. Logic has nothing to do with it.

theplague42 6y ago
HackerNews is just as vulnerable to confirmation bias and reactionary behavior as any other group of people. Being an engineer does not make one magically immune to cognitive bias.
- aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 6y ago
  As the recently-departed James Randi pointed out repeatedly, scientists are among the easiest people to fool with magic tricks for this very reason.
- reducesuffering 6y ago
  Vulnerable, but resoundingly not "just as vulnerable." Just this year, this community is where I learned that COVID-19 was going to be huge and devastating to the world as early as mid February, with lockdowns, financial devastation, masks and social distancing are required, etc. Meanwhile people like us had to argue with relatives and friends for a whole 'nother month as they thought we're overreacting, masks are useless, "just wash your hands, nothing to be too concerned about." For all its faults, HN is better informed on reality than most groups of people.

ibejoeb 6y ago

I've been able to avoid it entirely. Can you point to a good primer on qanon? Not an opinion piece or a takedown or anything, just an explainer. The only thing I know is what I've heard from MSM, and that has been that there is a secret cabal of pedophiles, and many members occupy powerful positions.

fallingfrog 6y ago
Yeah it has this millenarian aspect too from what I can gather where Donald trump is a savior figure who will purge the cabal and issue in a new golden age of some kind. The basic structure is that everything about the world that q followers don’t like us the fault of this cabal of Bad People and once they are removed then everything will be great. Very fascistic. Q made predictions of certain people being arrested, such as Hillary Clinton; when this didn’t happen the explanation became that they had been replaced with clones. Google can probably find you better summaries of you dig more but heres one: https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a22646546/q-anon-trump-conspiracy-theory-explained/ https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a22646546/q-anon-trump...
nitrohorse 6y ago
I’d recommend this podcast episode on the origins of QAnon from Media Roots Radio. https://mediaroots.org/media-roots-radio-the-origins-of-qanon-follow-the-white-rabbit-into-a-deeper-layer-of-the-maga-cult-pt-1-of-2/ https://mediaroots.org/media-roots-radio-the-origins-of-qano...
anoraca 6y ago
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/qanon-nothing-can-stop-what-is-coming/610567/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/qanon-n... https://www.nytimes.com/article/what-is-qanon.html https://www.nytimes.com/article/what-is-qanon.html https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2020/10/qanon-trump-town-hall/616770/ https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2020/10/qano...
ed25519FUUU 6y ago
You can read what the person or people who write as Q post (http://qposts.online/ http://qposts.online/), then you can read the is written about Qanon (https://www.google.com/search?q=Qanon https://www.google.com/search?q=Qanon). Warning, they live in different universes.