[jjeaff]

I agree, for my own piece of mind. But I am also certain that it would have made no difference in our current predicament with a third of the country thinking the election was stolen.

It has been shown to us time and time again that no actual evidence is required to get people to believe what they want to believe.

And the more technical the evidence (i.e. source code), the less helpful.

[bargl]

>But I am also certain that it would have made no difference in our current predicament with a third of the country thinking the election was stolen.

It would have changed some peoples minds I don't know if the change would have been a few thousand or 10s of millions. I can't say if it would have a dent in the 1/3 of people or not. I can't predict that. It would have helped me with my own peace of mind. And frank I think it's overall the right thing for us to do.

>And the more technical the evidence (i.e. source code), the less helpful.

Disinformation is powerful, I'm not suggesting this alone would fix that. I disagree that more technical evidence is harmful. Global warming is benefiting from transparency and evidence. It takes generations to change political will not years. The evidence there has shifted our whole economy, just maybe not fast enough.

There will always, always be deniers. Global warming, flat earth, vaccinations, etc. Evidence _helps_ battle deniers in these areas, but it takes generations for these ideas to become mainstream and the deniers to go from 99% of people to 2% of people.

Also, 2% of people think the earth is flat? Holy crap. https://www.sciencealert.com/one-third-millennials-believe-f...

[michaelmrose]

Why would people who weren't convinced by reputable evidence in the first place be convinced by slightly better evidence that is only better in a technical hard to express and prove fashion. This is especially true when the people doubting are the least educated and least intelligent.

It's like saying that better proof of evolution would convince some portion of creationists. That's just not how misinformation works.

Misinformation works by targeting vulnerable parties with misinformation that aligns with their existing vulnerabilities and beliefs in order to power relevant action with long stored and fruitful sources of hate, bias, and scorn in a fashion that bypasses the brain and goes right for the gut.

Like 30% in America believe in a young earth that is thousands not billions of years old.

If Bob is a scientist of some sort and presenting interesting scientific work to the community and incidentally advising the government on environmental policy that will harm some business and you want to crush support for this by playing on existing biases with this group you advertise to the young earth crowd about how bob is anti God and see if you can tie bob to as many negative things they already dislike as you can.

You aren't fighting an intellectual battle to set their ideas on bob let alone deeper ideas you are fighting an emotional battle to galvanize existing deeply held beliefs to obtain useful action like calling up and yelling at their congressman or voting.

In that context asking Bob to present a better case is laughable. The relevant parties never engaged their brain in the first place.