[lumberjack]

The "anti-science" crowds are all about trust. They aren't anti-science per se. Education as it is currently done won't really help much because it is not focused on what are actually persuasive arguments to these people. The fundamental problem is that "science" in practice means trusting in scientific institutions. To tackle anti-science you need to make the argument for why trust in universities and other scientific institutions is justified.

I don't understand how such big heads cannot understand such a simply basic human situation, and instead they produce videos talking about the scientific method, as if Mr. average Joe is going to go download some papers and datasets and spend thousands of hours reproducing the results.

It's a bit like free software. Why use it? Do you personally go through every source code of every application you use or do you just trust in the community? Now what if I spread a conspiracy theory that actually some big maintainer is injecting malware and other free software developers are in cahoots with him? You might think such a conspiracy theory is ridiculous but others might find it compelling.

[pm90]

> I don't understand how such big heads cannot understand such a simply basic human situation, and instead they produce videos talking about the scientific method, as if Mr. average Joe is going to go download some papers and datasets and spend thousands of hours reproducing the results.

What specifically are you referencing here?

I completely agree with you that we need a lot more science explainers. There are already a lot of good content on eg YT, but no doubt it’s not something that gets surfaced to most viewers.

In school, nobody really taught me what the scientific method was. I was never told that Science isn’t just “gospel truths” like scriptures but instead (essentially) this growing body of peer reviewed papers that are used to form a shared understanding of the principles by which we believe the world works.

Meanwhile YT is swarmed with conspiracy theories almost daily, because it’s so fucking easy to make a stupid shocking conspiracy video.

The depressing thing is that people really do genuinely believe this nonsense, and it is the source of much despair in their lives.

Not being a religious person, I classify religious beliefs on the same level as conspiracy theories. Except that, most of the older ones have been refined by religious scholars over centuries to at least be interpreted in socially advantageous ways.

[lumberjack]

I see scientists who put themselves in the public sphere behaving like this mostly. They double down on the science, when people are questioning the whole institution rather than whether or not some particular science is correct.

[Rury]

The thing is though... there is no way around the "trust" problem, whether it comes to science or anything else. Plato's allegory of the cave makes this quite evident IMO. In the end, we're all ignorant, all have our set of beliefs, and all must willfully choose for ourselves what's persuasive. Science just sees pointing to evidence as the most practical way of testing beliefs. And quite honestly... what else is there for testing beliefs? Making a different argument for the nature of something that could also be reasonably plausible (e.g. a conspiracy theory)? Well that's a hypothesis, which is also a belief, and so we're back to square one... which is everything is ultimately a stack of willfully chosen beliefs that we deem trustworthy.

[lumberjack]

You can make persuasive arguments that might not appeal to the scientifically literate rationalist, but will appeal to the somebody who is just using very crude heuristics and might have ended up believing in a conspiracy theory.

For example regarding climate change: you can construct an argument around the ridiculous idea that scientists are somehow taking on the worldwide fossil fuel industries, and the most powerful and ruthless countries on earth, including the US, Russia, China and Saudi Arabia, and they are doing this because by inventing a lie about the earth warming up. The very lopsided power dynamics in this scenario expose the conspiracy theory for the farce that it is.

[Rury]

Yes, you can make different arguments. The point I'm making is that it's ultimately upon them to decide what to believe in. They may or may not accept your alternative argument as convincing. Everyone ultimately chooses what they believe and trust in as evidence. There is no way around this, so you cannot force anyone to accept something. But yes, you can keep trying by presenting different arguments/evidence...

[germinalphrase]

The problem, of course, is that it is much easier to destroy trust than create it.