I've received a lot of comments on this post, in various locations, to the effect of "don't bother, you're never going to convince these people anyway." So this is a copy-and-paste reply. My apologies for the impersonality, and please don't take this as a lack of interest in discussing the finer points of the issue.

Absolutely, there are many people who will never be convinced. I think there are, more or less, three types of people who hold #antivax / #creationist / etc. positions, and two of them are hopeless cases. But the third is a different story.

1. Hardcore believers. For #creationism, this usually boils down to "God said it, I believe it, that settles it." The others are more complicated, although there's often a religious element there too: e.g. "we're made in the image of God so #vaccines are blasphemy" (they never seem to object to wearing glasses, though) or "the Earth is a divine creation and we mere humans could never change the #climate." Once they make their beliefs clear, the best thing to do is walk away. No one in that debate is going to change anyone else's mind.

2. Propagandists. They may or may not believe what they're claiming, but they think they can gain some political advantage by doing so. "If you don't want #woke #liberals telling your kids they come from #monkeys, elect me to the school board!" That kind of thing. You're not going to change their minds either—especially since the #propaganda is often horrible effective—but it may be worth countering it to try to persuade the people they're trying to recruit.

3. People who just don't know any better. Members of the first two groups, particularly #2, are much more sophisticated than they used to be, and a lot of their propaganda is very slick and superficially convincing. So a lot of people with little #scientific #education (or *bad* science education: that's a separate post or ten) fall for it. The longer they believe it, the more resistant they get to alternatives—they can slide into #1 very easily. But if you can catch them at a critical moment, you can *sometimes* bring them around.

I know this is possible, because I've done it. Not often, and less often lately, with the hardening of political identities and the ever-stronger association of profoundly anti-scientific views with one political identity in particular. But it still happens now and then.

Of course if you assume everyone is in group #3, you'll waste a *lot* of time and energy on 1s and 2s. It's really dispiriting to put effort into a clear, simple explanation presented with tolerance and good humor, only to be met with dismissal or mockery or baffled rage. Telling the difference is a survival skill, and a tough one to learn.

No one should feel obligated to tackle every case they encounter, or even most cases. That's a game for the very young, and if you play too much of it you'll get old before your time. (Trust me on this.) But *when you can* ... well, sometimes you win. Those small victories feel pretty good. I have to believe they still matter.

@medigoth I believe scientists, but I also lack a sense of scale. Numbers are too abstract. Until I made a scale model of our solar system out of butcher paper. One half of the sun was the entire width of the 5 or 6ft wide butcher paper, and the earth was the size of a nickel. It was only then that I realized I lack a sense of scale and benefit from visualization.

@medigoth I think related is that we humans seem to think in terms of linear growth, not exponential. We just don't instinctively get exponential growth

@medigoth Math and statistics can be hard. You are probably more knowledgeable than me in statistics. I have been struggling to find faults in the analysis of this data. Can you spot anything in the data or analysis that weakens or invalidates the conclusions? https://kirschsubstack.com/p/data-from-us-medicare-and-the-new

@medigoth I'd be more sympathetic if the adherents of various anti-science factions cared to learn at all. Their delusion - especially among the more politically inclined of them - seems willful, rather than mere ignorance which might be mitigated by exposure to the right information.

@medigoth There's a related issue that too many people don't understand probability. I feel like it's one of the most important things that should be taught in schools.

The lack of understanding of probability was painfully clear at the start of the permademic, and has continued following the introduction of COVID vaccines.

@medigoth so the future of the planet is determined by how well my monkey brothers do math? Fuck.

@medigoth do you know this book? Is a great source of why this happens: https://www.amazon.es/Innumeracy-Mathematical-Illiteracy-Consequences-2001-08-18/dp/B0160EP20W

@medigoth Moon conspiracy people have absolutely no concept of how most of the space numbers work out, either (which, to be fair, is -very- strange and counter-intuitive, when you start trying to grasp the distances between things).

@medigoth @woody So basically, humanity is so huge that humans can’t apprehend it?

@medigoth A couple of years back I had to explain to a cheeky little kid why face masks are still useful even though one can smell a fart through them. I did a quick back-of-an-envelope calculation and worked out that a virus is about a billion times larger than a fart (i.e. hydrogen sulphide) molecule.

@medigoth or even critical thinking

@medigoth The current Powerball Jackpot in the USA is ~$700M. So at least they contribute to the ecoomy.

@medigoth

I believe there is another common feature to these: ideology. To some extent they all start with the idea that either humans are special or protected by god, take your pick. After that confirmation bias is easy when "every day" observations don't easily reveal the numbers you point out.

If you already assume the earth is flat (from the bible?) it is pretty easy to not see the reality given the scales we deal with in everyday life.

@medigoth folks who believe in miracles don't understand statistics.

@medigoth one recurring thing I saw with anti-vaxxers especially is treating all small numbers the same. When comparing the risks of vaccines vs the risk of contracting a disease and dying from it, they would act like .1% is the same thing as .0001% (not the actual numbers obviously but it was something like that).

@medigoth I think if you changed out 'don't understand' and made it 'choose not to understand' it would be as true.

@medigoth .. and modern cosmologists do not understand science https://muratk5n.github.io/thirdwave/en/2022/10/the-big-bang.html