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Comment on Anon's coworker is a flat-earther

sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

You can surely at least understand the mindset there. Basically, when party A is obviously lying, a party B that calls them out appears more trustworthy, and it’s easier to overlook the obvious flaws in party B’s alternative. Here’s the logic, specific to vaccines:

group A claims vaccines are effective against contracting a given disease
group B points to evidence of actual effectiveness, which vastly falls short of what the public thinks
group B proposes an alternative to the vaccine, implying it’s effective and that group A doesn’t want others to know about it
group A attacks group B’s alternative

This creates an us vs them situation, so if you already distrust group A somewhat, it’s easy to side w/ group B, assuming you have no actual knowledge to parse the available information. The same logic works with anything, you just need a little bit of distrust w/ some authority, evidence of false/misleading statements, and a seemingly credible alternative.

The trick is to not lie/be misleading in the first place so you don’t break the trust. Trust takes years to build and a moment to break, so you need a very good reason to break the trust.

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rainynight65@feddit.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
No, I really can’t understand the mindset. Especially not in the face of the constant undermining of trust by certain elements of society, including when they’re in government. We didn’t just arrive here for no reason. The same people who have eroded the trustworthiness of government and authority (on purpose, see Reagan) over decades are the ones who now exploit the results of their actions, for their own gain.

If, in your scenario, group B was on the level, it would be a different story. But they aren’t. If A oversold their claim, B would have massively oversold theirs. And that was easy to prove and has been proven. B also just didn’t oversell their own claim, they also exaggerated the claim that they refuted to something that, in this form, was never said - standard MO.

There is no trick to this. Being factual and getting people to believe you is much harder than telling an easy but good-sounding lie and getting people to believ you.

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- sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  If A oversold their claim, B would have massively oversold theirs. And that was easy to prove and has been proven
  
  Right. But if A is supposed to be the trusted authority and B proves they aren’t trustworthy, you’re more likely to not believe criticisms of B because “the establishment” has already been proven untrustworthy. That’s how conspiracies gain traction, and any amount of hiding of information gives fuel to detractors.
  
  So people are going to ignore criticism of B because they’ll feel that B is the “underdog” being attacked by “the establishment.” That’s how these things work.
  
  There is no trick to this. Being factual and getting people to believe you is much harder than telling an easy but good-sounding lie and getting people to believ you.
  
  Sure, but trust is earned. You can’t lie 5% of the time and expect people to believe everything you say, if they find out about that 5%, the other 95% will be called into question. So you need to reserve the lies for when they really count.
  
  Lying will work in the short-term, but it has big consequences in the long-term, so if you’re a long-term entity (e.g. the CDC, FBI, etc), you need to be very careful about how people interpret your message.
  
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  - rainynight65@feddit.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    So how come people trust Donald Trump? How is it that he can get away with lying whenever he opens his mouth, how is it that people buy it when he pretends he’s the underdog and not part of the establishment? How is it his followers, who are so ready to believe that the government lies to them all the time, don’t call anything of what he says into question?
    
    If we go by what you say then we’re basically fucked. Government and authorities can never regain trust because thanks to people like Trump, thanks to parties like the Republicans, who have spent decades undermining that trust, thanks to the mass media who are highly complicit, we live in a post-truth world, and it’s enough that a government wasn’t 100% truthful that one time, we can never trust them again.
    
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    sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Because they’re convinced he’s fighting against the establishment, so since he’s fighting against people they “know” to be liars, he must therefore be more trustworthy. Add to that the “star power” of being a “successful businessman” and people will think he’s fit for the job. That said, that’s a pretty small, but very vocal subset of his base. A much large subset of his base will vote Republican regardless of who the candidate is, so a candidate just needs a large enough, rebid fanbase to get the nomination and they’ll automatically get ~40% of the vote.
    
    The same exists on the other end of the spectrum (vote blue no matter who). You’ll have a very vocal subset for each popular candidate, and a large group who will vote for their party’s nominee regardless.
    
    Those aren’t the people you need to convince, you should be focusing on those in the middle. There are lots of cohorts, such as:
    
    libertarians - anti-war, pro-civil liberties and pro-fiscal responsibility
    
    greens - anti-war and wants fixes for climate change
    
    single issue voters - abortion, health care, national debt, immigration, etc
    
    Those are the groups that care more about whether a candidate lies on issues they care about than party affiliation. So a candidate needs to be careful about what lies they tell.
    
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