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Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is NOT a “vaccine skeptic.” He is antivax. Period.
(sciencebasedmedicine.org)
this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2025
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Wow, fighting conspiracy theories with conspiracy theories?
God. Damn. I'm all but certain I read that post.
I think it normalizes conspiratorial thinking. Better to teach proper critical thinking.
The best option is that which is possible.
How? A correct answer saves the world.
Edit: The most frustrating thing about this entire thread is that I wanted to have a conversation about implementing actual on the ground solutions to countering conspiracy theories and the response was to shut down the conversation.
In an attempt to answer my own question, maybe the solution to getting people to escape conspiracy theories is to avoid personal attacks (you’re Machiavelli) and other rhetorical devices and actually have a conversation divorced from ego about a topic.
If only there was a community for that?
How is conspiratorial thinking helping the world right now?
That’s a non answer. I never said conspiratorial thinking was helping the world. (However, in the example given it appears that it may have.)
What I asked was how do we implement your solution. It’s all well and good to point out problems. But if that problem is unavoidable it becomes the cost of doing business. I take your non answer to mean you don’t have one. That’s fine. I don’t either. In the example given a good result was achieved via a less than ideal way.
While we wait for the way to implement your solution I am willing to accept getting innocent children vaccinated by any means possible.
Machiavelli would be proud.
Can’t tell if you mean that as a good or bad thing.
Generally not a compliment...
Why
"The ends justify the means". Machiavelli justified the use of all manner of ruthless and immoral behavior for a prince to maintain control.
I thought this was a skeptics community. It seems I was mistaken.
So you are characterizing my comment about using any means possible to vaccinate an innocent child that is unable to speak for themselves and is at danger die due to a mentally unstable parent’s belief with ruthless and immoral behavior?
How do you characterize letting that same child die because they are not vaccinated?
Edit: typo
I'm not gonna play this "that's not what I said, no you said that" BS.
A skeptic community should be teaching critical thinking not spreading conspiracy theories. End of.
I’m not playing anything. You can read it. You are responding to statements and arguments I am not making.
If your argument was “your comment is outside the scope of this community” than make that argument.
Be well.
I'm not gonna play this "that's not what I said, no you said that" BS.
A skeptic community should be teaching critical thinking not spreading conspiracy theories. End of.
Honestly, the situation we find ourselves in is because we applied your "solution" for decades while ignoring the long-term consequences of that kind of appeasement of illogical thinking.
What solution? I said I don’t have one.
It sounded to me like you were advocating for Apytele's view to counter conspiratorial thinking by giving them more made up conspiracies that happen to align with whatever short term goal you have at the time, basically to be content with having the wrong thought process reach the correct outcome for that short term goal.
I literally asked how to make people not act that way and said it is what would save the world.
No one that responded had an answer to how to implement the “solution” of getting people to have “the right thought process.” Conspiratorial thinking isn’t new. Simply saying people should be properly educated isn’t proposing an actual solution, it’s stating the obvious.
My point was that, until there is an actionable solution to achieve that result (which we are still struggling with as a species) I don’t have an issue with fighting fire with fire.
It’s fine to propose abstract ideas. The reason we are where we are as a species is that no one is able to put them into practice.
Edit to add example:
In the example the mom is an anti vaxer. The Dr. tricks her into vaxing kid. Kid grows up and can’t reconcile mom’s crazy ideas with her contrary actions. Kids starts questioning mom’s sanity. Kid starts searching for answers. Kid joins this community on lemmy. Kid sees this conversation. Kid says that’s what happened to me. Kid abandons conspiracies.
Or we as a species could simply tell mentally ill people they are mentally ill and expect the mentally ill brain to make a non mentally ill decision.