"How to pull a friend out of the conspiracy theory rabbit hole"

william.scherk

Entry posted by william.scherk

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Mick West at Metabunk.org has published a book!  It's called "Escaping the Rabbit Hole: How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect."  The early reviews at Amazon.com are brutal.

I publish a fair-use excerpt from the introduction to the book published last month at Salon: How to pull a friend out of the conspiracy theory rabbit hole | It’s not a blue pill or a red pill, but a poison pill

I've added highlights to parts of the excerpt that might be helpful to OLers struggling with the entailments of conspiracy-ideation --in friends, family, and perhaps in themselves ... as those of us who have read the Rob Brotherton classic understand ... "Its not THEM, it's US" ... no one wing of political or social groups is more vulnerable to the harms of conspiracy ideation than another.

Quote

False conspiracy theories—child actors, 9/11 as an inside job, global warming as a hoax, Flat Earth—are becoming more mainstream as they increasingly pervade our political landscape and public consciousness. Mick West, a leading debunker and the author of the upcoming book "Escaping the Rabbit Hole," draws from years of experience in telling us exactly how to help the conspiracy theorist in your life escape that rabbit hole.

* * *

Pulling Your Friend from the Rabbit Hole


Conspiracies are very real, of course. The fact that powerful people make secret plans at the expense of the general public should come as no surprise to anyone. Nixon conspired to cover up Watergate. The CIA staged “false flag” operations in 1953 to bring down the Iranian government. Powerful men in the Reagan administration conspired to illegally trade arms to Iran to finance the Nicaraguan Contras. Enron conspired to shut down power stations to raise the price of electricity. Executives from Archer Daniels Midland conspired to fix the price of animal feed. People within the second Bush administration conspired to present sketchy evidence as conclusive proof of WMDs to justify the invasion of Iraq. Politicians tacitly (and sometimes overtly) conspire with wealthy individuals and corporations, helping pass favorable legislation in exchange for campaign contributions, or sometimes just bribes. The prison industry conspires to get those politicians to incarcerate more people simply to maximize their profits.


Nobody is denying that conspiracies happen. These are well documented and undisputed facts. Conspiracies very clearly have happened, and they will continue to happen. Nobody is asking you to trust that the people in power always have your best interests at heart, because they clearly do not. Nobody is asking you to blindly trust the government, or big pharma, or any large entity with a gross amount of power, wealth and influence. A key aspect of a well-functioning democracy is that the government should be subject to scrutiny.

 
Conspiracies are real, but with every one of these very real conspiracies and plausible potential conspiracy there are a slew of false conspiracy theories. These theories are efforts to explain some event or situation by invoking a conspiracy. They are theories that are either very likely false because they lack the significant evidence needed to improve over the conventional explanation, or are simply demonstrably false.

There are conspiracy theories like the idea that the World Trade Center towers were destroyed with pre-planted explosive, or that the moon landings in the 1960s were faked, or that planes are spraying toxic chemicals to deliberately modify the climate. There’s less extreme but still false conspiracy theories, like the pharmaceutical industry covering up how well homeopathy works (it doesn’t), or the car industry covering up motors that can run on water (they can’t). At the far end of the conspiracy spectrum there’s the claim that the Earth is flat (it’s not) and the government is covering this up (how would that even work?). There are old conspiracy theories, like the idea that Jewish bankers rule the world, and new conspiracy theories, like the idea that the government stages shootings of children in schools to promote gun control.


My premise is very simple. These false conspiracy theories are a problem. They hurt individuals by affecting their life choices, like money, health, and social interactions. They hurt society by distracting from the very real problems of corruption and decreasing genuine participation in democracy. False conspiracy theories are real problems and we can and should do something about them. My work discusses the nature of the problem, why people get sucked in, how they get out and what pragmatic things can be done to help individuals escape the conspiracy theory rabbit hole.

Maybe someone you know—we’ll call them your friend for the sake of this exercise—is a conspiracy theorist, or at least believes one of these false conspiracy theories. The fundamental technique in helping them is maintaining effective communication and presenting your friend, the conspiracy theorist, with information that they are lacking, and doing it all in a manner that will encourage them to look at what you are presenting without rejecting you as an idiot or a government shill. Given time, this additional information will help them gain enough genuine perspective to begin to question what they thought they knew and to start their journey out of the rabbit hole. [...]

Your Friend

My book, "Escaping the Rabbit Hole," is written mostly assuming that you, the reader, are trying to better understand or help someone who is down the rabbit hole. Perhaps it’s a relative, maybe your spouse, a child, a parent, a sibling. Perhaps it’s a friend, a close friend or a casual acquaintance, or someone you sit next to at work, or even just someone you know online. With this in mind I’m going to refer to this person — the target of your concerns and your attention — as “your friend.”

Of course, they might not currently be your friend. Especially in family situations, a strong belief in something that another person finds preposterous can lead to frustration, anger, and possibly even to deep-seated animosity or disgust. Your friend might find it ridiculous that you think people landed on the moon. He might consider you borderline insane for entertaining the notion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. He might grow angry when you refuse to watch all four hours of “9/11 — A New Pearl Harbor.” He might turn his back on you when you refuse to be concerned about the white lines crisscrossing the skies.

But if you wanted a book for dealing with an enemy, a list of tricks you can use to annihilate someone in a debate, something that will make him look like an idiot, then I suggest you look elsewhere. I want to help people, not mock or belittle them. If you think you can only help them by beating them in every argument and making them look stupid, then I respectfully disagree. Showing your friend their faults is only a small part of helping them out of the rabbit hole, and if you apply such a blunt tool to someone you consider your enemy, then you will probably achieve the opposite of your goal, only hammering them deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole as they harden their heart against you and their mind against your facts.

So even if they are actually in some sense your enemy I will still refer to them as your friend. Try to think of them as such, a good person who means well, someone who is simply mistaken about certain things, and rather set in their ways. As we will shortly see the first stage of helping someone out of the rabbit hole is to understand them, and then to gain their trust. You cannot do that by waging a war of words against them.

[...]

There is a significant danger that I will reiterate throughout my work and my book. The danger is that advice like “treat them like a friend” and “gain their trust” might be viewed as advice from a manual on brainwashing. Conspiracists are obviously suspicious of people like myself who spend time investigating and refuting their theories. I get accused of being a paid government agent, someone trained in “disinformation,” someone skilled in implanting false ideas in people’s heads. They may look at this book, and my body of work on Metabunk, and decide I’m lying, trying to gaslight them away from the truth.

The best defense is to be as open and honest as possible. Yes, I think treating someone like a friend makes it easier to convince them of their errors. But the only reason they are acting like an enemy towards me is because they are mistaken in their beliefs. If I’m engaging with someone it is because I think they are a good person who is just stuck down a rabbit hole. If they think I’m the enemy, and they act as my enemy, then it’s only because they are a friend who has lost their way.

Finally, “your friend” might in fact be you. Perhaps you are reading this because you recognize you are a little lost down a rabbit hole and you want a little help out, or at least a look outside. Perhaps you don’t think you are down the rabbit hole, or you think that your beliefs show you are wide awake to the truth. Perhaps you are reading this because you think I’m a government shill, and you want to get the lowdown on this new government shill handbook, so you can help your friends not get tricked. Or maybe someone asked you to read this book as a favor, and you begrudgingly agreed, because they are your friend.

If you are actually a conspiracy theorist, then you can think of “your friend” in one of two ways. Firstly, you should be your own friend. You might start out reading this to try to figure out my mind games, but I hope you end up with some better perspective on both where I am coming from, and on your own view of how the world works. Maybe you’ll find you’ve got something wrong somewhere. Maybe you will at least find this perspective helps you better communicate your own ideas. Maybe this will confirm what you already knew. Whatever the outcome, I hope you find it useful.

The second way a conspiracy theorist might use this piece and my book comes about because conspiracy theories exist on a spectrum. If you are a conspiracy theorist (and we all are to some degree), you consider yourself a reasonable person, and you believe only in conspiracy theories that you think are well founded, backed up by evidence and common sense. While you might disagree with my attempt to debunk your theories at wherever level you are at on the conspiracy theory spectrum, you might find common ground in trying to help those who are further along. I’ve had several 9/11 Truthers thank me for helping debunk chemtrails, and I’ve had chemtrail believers thank me for explaining to their friend why the Earth is not flat. Read this book to figure out how to help your friend who’s down a deeper darker rabbit hole. If it seems reasonable then maybe at some point you can see if anything in here applies to your personal beliefs.

Or, if you like, go ahead read this as a brainwashing manual for government shills. Try to figure out my tricks. I’m not trying to brainwash you, but if it will get you to read the book then go ahead and assume it for a while, check back again later.

"Try to figure out my tricks."  What good advice ...

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william.scherk

From the Front Porch topic thread Donald Trump:

5 hours ago, Jon Letendre said:

Billyboy shit-for-brains has closed comments in his safe space, Arab Tyrants blog, so I’ll post this here,.

Wow, Jon actually believes fires can be started, can you imagine the stupidity? And he actually believes in “lasers” and directed “electromagnetic radiation..” Go back to your Buck Rogers programmming, Jon. Tee, hee, hee!

See also:

 

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Jon Letendre

“My premise is very simple. These false conspiracy theories are a problem. They hurt individuals by affecting their life choices, like money, health, and social interactions. They hurt society by distracting from the very real problems of corruption and decreasing genuine participation in democracy. False conspiracy theories are real problems and we can and should do something about them.”

Oh my, oh dear, I certainly hope Google and social media continue to censor those scary and dangerous “conspiracy theories.” They’re 100% NOT TRUE, but oh so very hurtful. Oh, dear me, I need my safe space now,

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KorbenDallas
3 hours ago, Jon Letendre said:

“My premise is very simple. These false conspiracy theories are a problem. They hurt individuals by affecting their life choices, like money, health, and social interactions. They hurt society by distracting from the very real problems of corruption and decreasing genuine participation in democracy. False conspiracy theories are real problems and we can and should do something about them.”

Oh my, oh dear, I certainly hope Google and social media continue to censor those scary and dangerous “conspiracy theories.” They’re 100% NOT TRUE, but oh so very hurtful. Oh, dear me, I need my space now,

Interesting how you took that so personally....

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Jon Letendre

Making fun of the author and his concerns about how deeply hurtful this all can be... is taking it personally?

God, you’re so fucking weak and dumb and impotent.

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KorbenDallas
47 minutes ago, Jon Letendre said:

Making fun of the author and his concerns about how deeply hurtful this all can be... is taking it personally?

God, you’re so fucking weak and dumb and impotent.

 

tumblr_m0xk0yzsyX1rn9f8ro1_500.jpg

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Michael Stuart Kelly

yawn...

False conspiracy theories are the real problem say the elitists. Unending war for profit, mass surveillance, screwing the middle class with bogus crony corporatist schemes, using slave labor and calling it globalism, and so on don't really count to these folks, do they?

Well, here's a fact for those who care about facts. Talking about false conspiracies have not caused even 0.1% or the enormous damage and loss of innocent life the elitist boneheads in the ruling class have caused.

It's all the fault of the false conspiracies... So say the elitist boneheads on the way to the bank, their power centers and their occupations of unearned privilege.

False conspiracies do one thing in reality, though. They make it hard has hell for the elitists to make people agree with them. They need the common people to SIT DOWN  AND SHUT UP GODDAMMIT. How else can they perpetrate their garbage and crony scams in peace?

So now they are writing books asking nicely and with kindness for people to sit down and shut up goddammit. Fuck them.

We don't need fewer false conspiracy theories. We need more.

We need robust debate, always, not goddam gatekeepers who think they are better than others to the extent they get to tell all people what they can look at and consider.

Most people are good. They are not cattle. They'll figure things out over time. They always have. And they sure as hell don't need idiots from the ruling class to tell them what to think. 

Here's a far better book by Tucker Carlson that looks at precisely the kind of person who wants such unearned power. It's No. 1 on Amazon right now. I've read it and it's one of the best books on current politics I have ever read.

Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution

And there's this. Tucker doesn't mean "selfish" in a Randian sense. He means it in a childish and thuggish sense. Hurting people on purpose and taking their things.

My favorite observation by Tucker is the sheer incompetence of the current ruling class. He said there has never been a more incompetent ruling class in human history. This batch is just plain stupid. I agree. The've turned science into a religion, are now working on getting rid of due process and believing this is good, and so on. And not one of them can do a goddam thing of value.

One video I saw elsewhere asked an interesting question. If you were stranded on a desert island, who would you want to be stranded with? People who wag their finger at you over gender identity crises, who call you racist every time you disagree with them, and so on? Or plumbers, carpenters, fishermen, and so on?

Give me a conspiracy theorist any day of the week over an asshole elitist who wants to rule me because he thinks he's a superior life form.

He's not a superior life form. He's a goddam fool who's time of cultural relevance is--thankfully--coming to an end...

Michael

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Jon Letendre
39 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

yawn...

False conspiracy theories are the real problem say the elitists. Unending war for profit, mass surveillance, screwing the middle class with bogus crony corporatist schemes, using slave labor and calling it globalism, and so on don't really count to these folks, do they?

Well, here's a fact for those who care about facts. Talking about false conspiracies have not caused even 0.1% or the enormous damage and loss of innocent life the elitist boneheads in the ruling class have caused.

It's all the fault of the false conspiracies... So say the elitist boneheads on the way to the bank, their power centers and their occupations of unearned privilege.

False conspiracies do one thing in reality, though. They make it hard has hell for the elitists to make people agree with them. They need the common people to SIT DOWN  AND SHUT UP GODDAMMIT. How else can they perpetrate their garbage and crony scams in peace?

So now they are writing books asking nicely and with kindness for people to sit down and shut up goddammit. Fuck them.

We don't need fewer false conspiracy theories. We need more.

We need robust debate, always, not goddam gatekeepers who think they are better than others to the extent they get to tell all people what they can look at and consider.

Most people are good. They are not cattle. They'll figure things out over time. They always have. And they sure as hell don't need idiots from the ruling class to tell them what to think. 

Here's a far better book by Tucker Carlson that looks at precisely the kind of person who wants such unearned power. It's No. 1 on Amazon right now. I've read it and it's one of the best books on current politics I have ever read.

Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution

And there's this. Tucker doesn't mean "selfish" in a Randian sense. He means it in a childish and thuggish sense. Hurting people on purpose and taking their things.

My favorite observation by Tucker is the sheer incompetence of the current ruling class. He said there has never been a more incompetent ruling class in human history. This batch is just plain stupid. I agree. The've turned science into a religion, are now working on getting rid of due process and believing this is good, and so on. And not one of them can do a goddam thing of value.

One video I saw elsewhere asked an interesting question. If you were stranded on a desert island, who would you want to be stranded with? People who wag their finger at you over gender identity crises, who call you racist every time you disagree with them, and so on? Or plumbers, carpenters, fishermen, and so on?

Give me a conspiracy theorist any day of the week over an asshole elitist who wants to rule me because he thinks he's a superior life form.

He's not a superior life form. He's a goddam fool who's time of cultural relevance is--thankfully--coming to an end...

Michael

Fuck them is right. You’re right, we do need more conspiracy theories. Plenty more are coming. And more confirmations. The nasty shit the elites have been up to has only just barely started to be exposed.

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Michael Stuart Kelly
5 hours ago, Jon Letendre said:

You’re right, we do need more conspiracy theories. Plenty more are coming. And more confirmations.

Jon,

What's more, it's OK to be wrong on some.

What's important is for the elitists to know there are many people--many, many people--now watching their asses and digging.

There's enough malfeasance among the ruling class (including gross pedophile stuff) to justify efforts that go nowhere. So the more the merrier, I say. 

And even more important, enough publicity dust (through accusations if necessary) needs to be raised so that any existing evidence that can appear does appear.

Wait...

I just thought of that last one. 

Where the hell did I get that idea?

Hmmmmmm...

Suppose I wanted to prove that a nerdy looking introverted guy with a lifetime of stellar legal work was in reality a serial gang rapist going back to his high-school days and I didn't have any evidence.

How to do that?

Oh...

I've got it.

Raise enough media dust--including grandstanding by politicians and public accusations--so that any existing evidence that can appear does appear. Don't forget the millionaires willing to part with big bucks to fabricate stuff when none actually exists.

That'll do the trick.

I wonder if this is the superior Objectivist epistemology I keep hearing about around here when conspiracy theories come up...

:evil: 

I also wonder if that's the kinder gentler friendly way William's author is referring to for reprogramming conspiracy theorists, huh? After all, for that author, people like you and me need to be reeducated--I mean he wrote a whole fucking book about it--and it's not yet time for the left to implement reeducation camps. They need more political power first.

:evil:  :) 

Michael

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william.scherk

From Chemtrails to CSICon: An Interview with Mick West.

Quote

Susan Gerbic: So, Mick. It’s nice to catch up with you. This website you run, Metabunk, sounds right up the skeptic alley. Tell me about that site.

Mick West: Metabunk is a skeptical forum, where we do investigations into a wide range of phenomena from conspiracy theories to UFOs. We also discuss best practices for communicating the results of an investigation (the debunking) and how to help people get out of the “rabbit hole” of conspiratorial thinking. It grew out of my old blog Contrail Science, which was about chemtrails. Metabunk still has a strong focus on the chemtrail theory.

Gerbic: Chemtrails? Doesn’t everyone know they don’t exist and what they see in the sky are contrails? And the few people who still believe that the government is poisoning us aren’t likely to listen to reason, right? Note: I just looked at the pageview stats for the Chemtrails conspiracy theories Wikipedia page, and 99,560 people visited it in the last thirty days. I suppose I’m living in a bubble.

West: Chemtrails is a surprisingly popular theory; it’s right up there with things like the 9/11 conspiracy theories. It all stems from a fundamental distrust of science and authority. You are always going to get a percentage of people who are true believers. My goal is to minimize that as much as possible, stop people falling for it, and help them get out as easily as possible.

Gerbic: I understand that you are also a pilot. Do you know pilots who believe in this conspiracy theory?

West: I only flew small, single engine planes, which isn’t that hard. I’d not be surprised if some single-engine pilots fell for it. But I’d be very surprised if there were any commercial pilots who believe in it. Most of them have heard of it and find the idea ridiculous and sad. Some of them even get harassed about it, as people think they are part of the plot because their planes leave contrails.

Gerbic: Tell readers more about your talk at CSICon.

West: It’s about a paper I coauthored with three climate scientists. They were tired of chemtrail believers harassing them and disrupting their conferences, and they basically wanted to demonstrate what real scientists thought about the chemtrail theory. We gathered some of the typical evidence used by chemtrail believers (photos of contrails and chemical element tests of water and air) and asked a large group of experts what they thought of the evidence. Basically, the answer was “these are just photos of normal contrails” and “the tests show normal background variations.” We wrote it up and published it, and it was very well received by the media. I hope it is helpful in getting the message across. It’s slow progress though.

Gerbic: You are a regular skeptic conference attendee. What do you get from attending? Surely you already know all this information, or at least where to find it online so you can stay home and watch from your computer.

West: Firstly, the experience of listening to a talk first hand is an order of magnitude better than watching it on YouTube. There’s no distraction, and you can’t help but be focused on the lecture. I remember more; I learn more new things; and I get to almost immediately discuss the talk with other people who have likewise been engaged—in some cases with the person who just gave the talk!

Secondly, it’s a large gathering of like-minded people, many of whom have become friends over the years. It’s great to both chat with skeptic friends and meet new skeptic people from all around the world. Every conference I’ve been to I’ve met new people and had many interesting conversations. [...]

The item in Environmental Research Letters:

mickWestArticleERL01.png

mickWestArticleERL02.png

Full text PDF: Quantifying expert consensus against the existence of a secret, large-scale atmospheric spraying program

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Jon Letendre

Now Rand Paul is spreading hurtful conspiracy theories, too ...

 

 
Soros paid protester arrested. Same group operates inside congressional office buildings. Are democrats paying to incite violence?
 
 
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william.scherk

Suddenly, Soros.

Quote

share.png New York Times:

At George Soros's Home in N.Y. Suburb, Explosive Device Is Found in Mailbox  —  The explosive device found in a mailbox at the home of George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist, on Monday afternoon was relatively small, a senior law enforcement official said on Tuesday.
Link Search: IceRocket, Google, and Ask
Discussion:

Over in the Qniverse, some confusion:

Spoiler

 

Cabal asset!

 

R U Ready for the Mass Arrests, Jan?

Edited by william.scherk
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Jon Letendre
19 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

On Reddit, a British person details a route out from 'the rabbit-hole.'

 

 

Hallelujah, I think he has posted more advice, Jonathan!

 

On another thread, on 6/9/2019 at 10:07 PM,  Jon Letendre said: 

Now, about you updating us on the epistemological status of the assertion that Trump colluded with Russia to defeat Hillary in 2016.

You pushed that for over two years but have gone silent for a while now.

Why?

Jonathan responded:

Helping Billy to escape his cultish beliefs is difficult. When I try to use the methods that he himself has advised, he resists. His primary tactic is to clam up, to simply not acknowledge the uncomfortable bits of reality that have been presented to him. Perhaps he'll post some new advice on how to reach people with his mindset, and we can then try out that method too.

J

 
 
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Jon Letendre
33 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

"Fuck off, pedophile."

Indeed!

It was you who believed the stupidest conspiracy theory ever and supported a coup against my President.

So take all of your “saving those with [precisely your] mindset” advice and go fuck yourself.

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Peter

Well said William. I have never had a blog or a web site but you seem to be doing prittie good.

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