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this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2023
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No Stupid Questions
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No such thing. Ask away!
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Have you considered that there is actually more virtue in containing stupid than trying to rescue it. The audience for such communication is rarely the person afflicted because its almost impossible to convince such folks its the folks at the margins who might be convinced either way.
Consider an imaginary belief say 0.5% of the population believes that flu can be treated by shoving pancakes up your ass. If ridicule keeps the percentage at 0.5% instead of growing to 1% its incredibly virtuous whereas more respectful treatment of the belief might help you convince 0.01% to stop shoving starch in their rectum while allowing the mental virus to spread to far more people.
This theory is applicable everywhere. Every time you engage with a crazy person or a nazi imagine your audience is the other folks reading the discussion not the person you are engaging.
That if is doing a lot of lifting. One of the points of the movie is that people and media was laughing off the flat earthers and they grew in strength to have a national movement.
One of the indications the signals we perceive automatically regarding whether an idea is "truthy" is that something is either prevalent, common, worthy of considerations (2 sides), laughable, stupid, immoral.
Balkanized feed driven experience can help expose people to erroneous signals eg seeing pro flat earth things constantly because it was selected to be like previously engaging content and confusing that with it being commonly believed.
Treating an idea seriously in other venues only makes this signal problem worse not better. If they were capable of reasoned argument they wouldn't be flat earthers to start with the only thing between them metaphorically or perhaps literally shoving pancakes up their ass is the type of social signals they are getting. I believe that ridicule is a net positive in deterring stupid beliefs because it deters SOME folks from believing whereas respectful argument is virtually worthless again when dealing with such folks.
Consider the same flat earther is all over the net speaking the same nonsense hundreds of times per year. Nonsense and ridicule is seen by hundred or thousands of folks whereas everyone is still talking to the one asshole. It's pretty easy to see why it ought to be a net positive.
Hey now, don't kink shame. I'd be fine with people shoving pancakes up their ass. It's better than the bleach some of them drank to try and kill coronavirus.