re: #125 Anymouse 🌹🏡😷

From Respectful Insolence:

On “reasonable” apologists for the antivaccine movement

(more, particularly on the antivaccine movement looking for their “marketing moment,” and finding it in Covid-19, conservatives, and libertarians)

i wrote a long letter to the Skeptical Inquirer when I cancelled my 40 year old subscription. here it is clipped

i think the skeptical community made a tactical error back then:

Over the last 40 years or so, we have legitimized anything that can be framed as logical and rational. We’ve given every idea the benefit of the doubt, a priori. No matter how zany, we’ve gently explained, argued, debated. This approach has paved, and now lights a path for anyone with a new agenda who wants an *immediate* seat at the discussion table.

The reason there is, and we are in, a war on science is not because of whether we do skepticism right. It’s because we do anti-science wrong.
,,,
After all this time, my evaluation is that the approach taken since the 70’s - to engage, argue, debate, explain, etc. is a loser. Pseudoscience is bigger than ever. UFOs, cryptids, quack medicine, have not gone away. They are now more complex. There are still flat earthers.
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If there’s any point in confronting crackpots with evidence it’s that it would act as a vaccine to ‘inoculate’ others who may not have heard the crackpot’s arguments, from becoming crackpots themselves. And sadly, the 70’s astrologer, palm reader, psychic goer is today’s climate science denier and anti-vaxxer. I am not saying it was the wrong approach to take back then. I am saying that is how we got here and it didn’t work. It didn’t change the historical arc of critical thinking and evaluative skills of the masses.
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The charlatans are not trafficking in “mis” information. They are deliberately lying, twisting, contorting, spinning, saying things they know are not true as a weapon to get what they want. And what they want is something else entirely from what they are even saying. That they are afraid to actually say because it wouldn’t sell if out in the open. (followers, $, a private jet, persuadable voters).
They are deliberate and calculating or they are in fact deluded. Because this is not about “opinion” or “tactics” - they are “mis” representing reality - and yes, there *is* a reality.

Racism is a crackpot idea. Pseudoscience is a crackpot idea. Conspiracies are crackpot. Political-cult behavior is crackpot. Yes they are. People who invest in them and traffic in them may be crackpots or PT Barnums. In either case, leave them to themselves and do not engage crackpots.

Anti-vaxxers are afraid of something that’s not in vaccines. You don’t sit down and calmly, rationally “discuss” and explain this to someone, or the world, that they’re afraid of something that has never existed in reality. You say clearly and loudly “that’s crackpot fantasy (dangerous) thinking ” and move on.