2 ms·

The defeatist in me wonders if education is possible. It seems a lot of people just refuse to accept things that disgree with their world view and dismiss the s

The defeatist in me wonders if education is possible. It seems a lot of people just refuse to accept things that disgree with their world view and dismiss the source as part of the conspiracy. I wondered if it'd be possible to make a honeypot website that would pretend to be some internal Pfizer website, or the Gates foundation, or the DNC, but fill it with content that would actually educate the conspiracy theorists, for example about how mRNA vaccine works, or how a Biden administration won't be forcing "fascism" down their throats. At least they'd be hopefully diligently reading stuff and learning while looking for smoking guns.

scotty79 6y ago
> It seems a lot of people just refuse to accept things that disgree with their world view and dismiss the source as part of the conspiracy. More educated people are less likely to do that. Also people who have no financial incentives to propagate such falsehoods are less likely to propagate it. Flat earther movement is a good example. Some members made a business out of it to advance their personal goals. Like the guy that launched himself in a rocket to "check if earth is flat", but actually just liked lunching himself in rockets and similar things (had history of that), and claimed to believe in flat earth so that gullible people pay his bill. We can't resign ourselves to defeatism and think that nothing can be done because people are stupid and ideas are toxic. Yes, some people are stupider and some ideas are more toxic then others but we shouldn't let that cloud the simple fact that we allow to exist the multitude of positive force feedbacks that promote more toxic ideas and more stupid people. We should work on those things first. > I wondered if it'd be possible to make a honeypot website ... Yes. We should forcibly mix those dumb ideas with solid education on the subject. Confront the two. Debunk one with the other in-place. At many different levels of complexity to reach as many people as possible. You want to post you antivaxxer theories on facebook? Sure but your readers will get solid science next to it by courtesy of Facebook algorithm instead of ads and crap similar to yours.

scotty79 6y ago

> It seems a lot of people just refuse to accept things that disgree with their world view and dismiss the source as part of the conspiracy. More educated people are less likely to do that. Also people who have no financial incentives to propagate such falsehoods are less likely to propagate it. Flat earther movement is a good example. Some members made a business out of it to advance their personal goals. Like the guy that launched himself in a rocket to "check if earth is flat", but actually just liked lunching himself in rockets and similar things (had history of that), and claimed to believe in flat earth so that gullible people pay his bill. We can't resign ourselves to defeatism and think that nothing can be done because people are stupid and ideas are toxic. Yes, some people are stupider and some ideas are more toxic then others but we shouldn't let that cloud the simple fact that we allow to exist the multitude of positive force feedbacks that promote more toxic ideas and more stupid people. We should work on those things first. > I wondered if it'd be possible to make a honeypot website ... Yes. We should forcibly mix those dumb ideas with solid education on the subject. Confront the two. Debunk one with the other in-place. At many different levels of complexity to reach as many people as possible. You want to post you antivaxxer theories on facebook? Sure but your readers will get solid science next to it by courtesy of Facebook algorithm instead of ads and crap similar to yours.