My approach is rhetorical in that it focuses on understanding the motives behind people's statements rather than evaluating their truthfulness. We're living in an age often described as "post-truth," where the emphasis is not so much on factual accuracy but on what a statement achieves:

post-truth signifies a state in which language lacks any reference to facts, truths, and realities. When language has no reference to facts, truths, or realities, it becomes a purely strategic medium. In a post-truth communication landscape, people (especially politicians) say whatever might work in a given situation, whatever might generate the desired result, without any regard to the truth value or facticity of statements. If a statement works, results in the desired effect, it is good; if it fails, it is bad (or at least not worth trying again)

In this context, the question is not, "Is this person telling the truth?" Instead, we should be asking, "What is this person trying to persuade me to believe or do, and how are they going about it?"

So, when you find yourself in a debate and you're not well-informed on the topic, consider the true objective of the conversation. Is it genuinely about searching for truth, or is it more about making a spectacle to win points, irrespective of facts or logic? Reflecting on this can help you decide whether the debate is even worth your time and effort.

Addressing your concern about convincing others they're wrong, it's important to remember that in a post-truth world, facts are often secondary. Instead of trying to prove someone wrong, try to understand how their incorrect beliefs serve them. What value or emotional payoff are they getting from holding these views?

Take vaccine skepticism as an example. For some, doubting vaccines aligns with a broader narrative that the government aims to control its citizens. This perspective provides them with a sense of resistance and preserves their individuality against what they perceive as an oppressive force. Their beliefs are deeply tied to their identity, which is a common human trait. Facts against the narrative of which they're convinced is often construed as an attack on who they are as a person. And for that, you can just be a normal caring person.

These “hot-topics” glazed all over American News Media are designed to be just how you describe them to be. Divisive.

The vaccine works, and because it’s a new kind of vaccine it’s not exactly what we were used to. It works as in “there is a really good chance that you will not die gasping for air.”

Once you get into semantics like origin and all that, why does it matter? It happened and we’re here now.

You can’t argue about something that isn’t known, it would be an astronomical feat for humanity to have the ability to track origins of viruses down to the exact organism in its cage. We’re lucky enough to have a geographical reference.

Socialism, Capitalism? It’s not in our control really, I usually tell colleagues or friends that bring this up that “well we’re here now, so all we can do is make the best of it.” Be active within your local government, inform yourself about local politics, inspire change with your community so that they can inspire change elsewhere.

Fighting about the execs on 49th floor won’t do squat for us if we’re all fighting over who gets to sleep on the buildings heat exhausts.

If the other person is arguing in good faith, I'll listen and exchange views until that becomes pointless. If the other person is loaded with an opinion and won't listen to anything different, I basically shut down and leave them hanging.

"Doing research" by looking at YouTube videos and even WHO pages isn't research. It can be informative, you know, to learn some things but it's not research.

Just check out the scientific method, our research is based on this (simple?) set of principles, if you do not know how that works then it's hard to argue about anything scientific.

Learn, learn, but I think it shows what kind of person someone is if they think they can find the thing that changes everything, that everyone else is missing (in 9/11, covid vaccines, ...) just by looking on YouTube videos!

Hilarious if it wasn't that people get so delusional.

Since when are vaccines controversial? I've had tons of them in my life just like everybody else.

If you really want to talk to these people (or better, shut them up), ask why their version of events matters. Often they are just very excited about finding "the truth" about something with no consideration of whether their version of reality will effect anything around you. If they think the Bush administration did 9/11, or if we never landed on the moon, or whatever, why does it matter?

Let's say their internet fu is somehow better than everyone else and they found a smoking gun that says covid was an accidental lab release. So what? Are we going to kill all Chinese people? Does the virus go away? Should we not take a vaccine if the disease came from a lab? Most of their excitement is based on the belief that everything that happens has to have a grand conspiracy make it go that way. And people who believe this have probably never seen how hard it is to pull off a church bake sale. Getting people to coordinate and cooperate on simple things they believe in is already hard. Getting people to go out of their way to do secret, harmful things is rather out there.

Now sometimes the "why does this matter" helps save time in the "should I be around this person" decision, because if their delusion of why this matters involves not taking appropriate steps to protect yourself and loved ones (like taking the vaccine), they are a hazard and a disease spreading vector and you should take caution. The world has gotten relatively safer over time, to the point where people think it must always be safe. These are the people that pet wild bears. You generally don't want to be around during the find out phase of their fucking around, unless you are making a Youtube video.

But we all know your Youtube video is fake, Ted died of Covid but they wrote "bear attack" on his death certificate because they get more money that way.

To me you either 1) have the many years of specialized education required to understand (for real) how vaccines works, or 2) trust the national and international institutions that vouches the work of estimeed scientists, or 3) do your research and perhaps watch your children die of fucking measles.

Trying to convince someone that chose no.3? Your only hope is to make them understand that they cannot understand, a very very hard task.

If you really want to engage with people like this, one good survival tactic is to ask simple questions. "How do you know that?" "Why would they do that?" "How can you be certain?" "Isn't there a more plausible explanation?"

You might even catch them in logical fallacies or just clear contradictions. "But didn't you just say the opposite?" "Wouldn't it make more sense if ...?"

A lot of them believe things without questioning it, so your questions could even help them snap out of it. Of course they could also get tired of your questions and end the conversation.

Think to the root of it.

We're constantly bombarded by information these days, and one way to sort out where to devote your energy is to consider the "next steps" in whatever rational process.

Who would benefit from institutions lying about vaccines? Who would value that, what could their goals be, what methodology could they be following?

You'll find it's going to lead you eventually to old Jewish conspiracy theories, literally nothing else makes any sense. So, if you do want to participate in those conspiracy theory communities and ideas, ask yourself again, "what next?"

Just keep doing this, going step by step through the process. If, at any point, you decide it's a waste of your time, you know where it all began. Where the entrance to that rabbit hole was.

The core issue is ignorance and and poor abilities at investigation. School fails so many people. And, societally, most people seem to feel they're entitled to opinions even if they know nothing or very little about a topic, which helps keep them ignorant and unable to critically investigate topics and sources.

Finally, the "trust in institutions" issue. These institutions should not be trusted, they have been overtaken by capitalism. Healthcare is profit-driven and the tendency is towards poorer science that covers up dangers and inflates benefits. In addition, people have no sense of agency over the state (they're correct about that), so a feeling of understanding can temporarily substitute that.

The question is what to do about it. Well, individually, you can do very little. You can try to convince people through argumentation, like you mentioned, but this is very difficult. The example of vaccines makes it clear that this is someone that bought into these ideas without critically engaging. They probably did so for a number of reasons, including societally-ingrained hubris, peer pressure, personal experience, personality, politics, and the production value of whatever got to them first. Your task is to sow doubt (ask challenging questions) and try to rebuild from shared understanding.

The best way to combat this, more generally, is not as an individual, but as a member of an active organization that combats all of this at once, and with a plan for how to do so adequately. This would best be a socialist org, as the thing you're fighting is actually the discursive mass media and education aspects of capitalism. e.g. on COVID's origins, the common understandings and claims in the West are simplistic and unscientific, and only exist for political reasons, to scapegoat why a given country did so poorly at handling the pandemic, to isolate China in a new cold war. You could become an expert in the science, follow geographic phylogenies and the terminology of epidemiology, but you don't really need to: you really just need media criticism skills, which is all about politics, economics, and being a big nerd.

It's not poorly written. I understand it bc I feel this way, but I've come to a different conclusion.

I'm OK not knowing everything. I'm not ecstatic about it, but I've settled with the idea. Experts exist for a reason and I have to trust in that. I can't research every issue to a college degree level. I gotta make dinner for the kids.

Let your friend have their vaccine research but just don't bother talking about it to them. Accept the fact that you don't need to understand every facet of reality to live thru it.