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Chasing the Elephant
(mander.xyz)
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
A lot of them been so indoctrinated into mistrusting authorities and instutions, that they basically disbelieve anything they say on principle.
And al the evidence, all the scientists telling them they're wrong just ends up reinforcing their belief in some giant conspiracy.
It's sadly been shown in more than one study that changing the mind of conspiracy theorists with reason, argumens or evidence is basically impossible. It's almost a self preservation instict against cognitive dissonance. They were so sure they were right, and now so one is telling them they're not. That feels shit, and it feels shit to accept you were wrong about something you so fervently insisted was true. So their brains basically go into self defense mode, and just reject and attack anything that threatens the shaky fundamentals of their entire belief system. The best thing you can attmept to do is to distract them. Get them to talk and think about other things. When they mention the conspiracy, don't engage, don't argue how they're wrong, they'll just dig their heels in deeper, just change the topic to something else. Force them to spend less time in their delusions. Eventually, if you're lucky, they might gain enough distance to the topic, and stop caring about it enough that they're ready to start accepting how batshit insane those conspiracies are.
It is called “dismantling the foundation” and is first step in creating an army of human robots.
If you are able to change people to believe based on emotions rather than logic, you have a tool to change beliefs at your will. Because emotions can be controlled, pure logic can not.
And all this works, because thinking logically takes more power than thinking emotionally, and many people never start to do harden their foundation by logically test it regularly but just accept it as given to them, making it more easy to dismantle this foundation by pointing out things that seem fishy on first thought.
Then the foundation is rebuilt and hardened by repeating and repeating, until it is hard enough to withstand logic.
Society works like that, it works because we have shared foundations, and the more the foundations drift apart in a community the more conflict appear
Therefore, it is critical for a society to keep foundation in sync. This is why a working society needs spirituality, culture, rituals. For many communities, this is achieved through religion.
Sadly, most religions are designed so that you have masters deciding on how this foundation should look like, rather than have it evolve democratically.
I experienced a community design based democratic values while I was in boyscout (which is gendermixed in my country). There we had rituals, cultures and even spirituality. But we as well were teached that while rituals and rules are important, it is very important to still go with the flow of time and make it possible to adjust them. They don’t work well, if they are forced upon next generation the way the oldies did, what is important is, that the older generation can teach the next generation the why, not the how.
Knowing the why makes it possible for the next generation to adjust the how to work in the new times to still achieve the why.
That is my problem I have with religion, they mostly teach the how but not the why, or better said replace the why with some good/bad shit like hell and heaven, while people should just learn that we all profit if we care for each other, if we talk to each other, if we mention different opinions, if we try to understand other opinions rather than protecting our own without questioning.
😊🙏🏻
I wish humanity had more spirituality just because it is nice, because some fantasy god demands it.
Haha
Damn got that far
Also, for many of these people, do not underestimate the underlying religous issue. In the case of vaccines, its becomes some sort of "mark of the beast" nonsense. See also the dumb "microchips in the vaccines" stupidity.