[toss1]

The generalization has a lot of substance, I'm just trying to be general in order to avoid political flamewars here on HN. I'm referring to the set of right-wingers who are going down the Qanon rathole, and their like in cult-like evangelical groups who are so willfully ignorant as to insist on believing easily disproven conspiracy theories such as flat-earth, chemtrails, antivaxxers, Big Lie, etc.

I am absolutely not expecting any kind of blind faith in science, but an understanding of science. I'm talking about genuine debate, not anti-science aggression with the goal of destroying the notion that truth can be known.

Voltaire got it right long ago: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

Those people who willfully ignore science for conspiracy theory, etc. are the targets of the leaders of that political wing and other media and online manipulators -- they are being happily led to believe absurdities, and will commit atrocities. One example was exactly one year ago today. There is no reason to expect it will be the last or the least.

[raxxorrax]

Understandable that you reject the beliefs of Qanon, that is quite easy actually, but arguing against them is a waste of time and leaves your more elaborate opposition ignored. At some point this opposition will be firmly against you because there is no way for political discourse and no way to hold people representing your political opinion to account.

There will only be fronts that become more and more polarized. That is also true for yourself, at some point you start to believe that any objection to your position is a flat earther. Of course they are not, these beliefs aren't relevant to the tiniest degree. Same would be true for QAnon if people didn't get themselves riled up.

Again, that flat earthers or QAnon are relevant or indicative of everyone of your political opposition is indeed an absurd belief. If you look hard enough, you will find them, even in high places, out of the question. Even wackos can have success. But I am sure you would also agree that it isn't right to leverage intelligence agencies against your opposition with slanderous dossiers. I think it is understandable that this can be more concerning than someone running around asserting the earth were flat.

[toss1]

I am not fomenting polarization, I am recognizing that it exists, and why.

You overlook several key factors

1) the polarization has already been created and is being deliberately magnified

2) this is being done by a set of RW leaders, authoritarians, and some media, each for their own reasons

3) A primary tool that is being used is amplifying perceived grievances & racism and spreading desinformatsyia and distrust (where the goal isn't necessarily to get people to believe the BS, which is a nice bonus, but to get ppl to think the truth is unknowable because you can't trust anything).

>>at some point this opposition will be firmly against you because there is no way for political discourse

Have you bothered to look around? Coming from the right wing movements in US, Hiungary, France, GB, etc, is nothing but firm opposition. If you are not with them, you are the enemy. Just look at what comes out of Fox News in the US - who is the biggest enemy? Liberals. Not totalitarian states who murder their own citizens at home and abroad -- liberals, and independents who are not with them, even in The Big Lie that the loser of the election was the winner.

>>at some point you start to believe that any objection to your position is a flat earther. No, that is an utterly false and reprehensible accusation. I'm happy to openly discuss anything, and have even done so with flat earthers.

The fact is that if a party to a discussion rejects facts, or is aggressively anti-science, i.e., anti-facts and anti-reality, there is no real basis for discussion.

More importantly, this is NOT some kind of balanced failure of both parties, but specifically the fault of party rejecting reality who is making real discussion impossible.

Merely recognizing a fact such as that does not make me or anyone else the cause of the problem. In fact, your failure to recognize the problem contributes to enabling it.

I am happy to attempt to talk to even the most extreme on any side. I have in fact repeatedly attempted to do so, including with people in my own family. But when the fact is that they refuse to accept objective reality — not that they don't have the intelligence to know, but they actively remain willfully ignorant — it fits a good definition of insanity to not recognize that fact.

>>at some point you start to believe that any objection to your position is a flat earther. Of course they are not, these beliefs aren't relevant to the tiniest degree.

Again the first sentence is false. And more importantly, the beliefs like "flat-earther", "NASA is a hoax", "chemtrails", "antivaxxer", etc. are anything but irrelevant.

The spreading of these beliefs is the exact tool used to breed distrust and polarization. It leads the followers to believe that truth cannot be known, so to blindly follow their leaders, and to believe that anyone not "in" on the beliefs is an enemy.

With this group and its leaders, ordinary political discourse is not possible, as there is not even a shared reality, and no argument is ever made in good faith.

Recognizing that this is already a fact is not furthering the polarization, it is recognizing reality, and is the first step to finding a remedy.

Anything less is simply enabling authoritarians.

[raxxorrax]

Sure, they pray on the emotional need of their audience to "own the libs". Little use to deny that. But it is not a position you can engage with and win anything.

> Again the first sentence is false. And more importantly, the beliefs like "flat-earther", "NASA is a hoax", "chemtrails", "antivaxxer", etc. are anything but irrelevant.

They are irrelevant aside from being a boogeyman. Even combined you are probably talking about a very small group, although I would explicitly exclude antivaxxer here because it is another quality. I am vaccinated but against mandates and have been called antivaxxer, so you have only grown opposition. I see the opposition not holding people to account because their eyes are focused on a group that does not have the tiniest inch of political influence and therefore cannot be responsible for much in society anyway. Antivaxxer are also no authoritarians, they argue for the opposite.

I don't think they cause the distrust, the distrust is caused in how you engage with them. While the play of politics usually suggest that you should not engage with unhappy people (inhuman, I know), you conduct with them is relevant. I don't believe people blaming anitvaxxers are capable of holding leadership to account because they waste their energy in criticising people that don't have influence on policy. It would be foolish to align myself here, I don't need and image of an enemy.

I am not from the US and mostly align with the democrat party, which is still very conservative from my point of view. But a few years ago I understood the objection many US conservatives harbor. And they are just as guilty of the same thing. In the Obama years many of his initiatives were blocked out of pure spite, no factual discussion could have changed that. I disliked them doing that only to learn that this is the usual conduct between political camps. But you are just making yourself a tool of the other political side. Perhaps better than other blind followers they have, but not by much for constructive dialogue.

[toss1]

Also,just a historical note, if you look into WWII, you'll find similar riling up of anti-intellectual sentiments, exploitation of bigotry, and conspiracy theories in the Axis powers.

Neville Chamberlain attempted the kind of constructive dialog with the leaders,and came back proclaiming "Peace for our time!". It was September 1938.

The Axis' people's and leaders' distrust was not caused by the failure of any non-Axis person to engage on friendly terms. It was caused by their leaders.

It took a war of scale and scope unprecedented in history, and death by the millions, to convince them that they were wrong. And their heirs are now on the march again.

I hope it does not take that much again, but understanding that the facts are not as pretty or amenable to friendly means as we hoped is no help.

[toss1]

I love your faith in constructive dialog — I wish it were all we needed. In more ordinary situations, it can be very effective. But it is an effect that works mainly on the margins.

We are in the situation where major global forces are actively working to destroy even the ability to communicate, literally attacking the idea that truth is knowable. The conspiracy theories don't come from nowhere to become widespread, they are specifically and relentlessly pushed - the specific goal isn't so much to gain adherents as to push so much noise that people abandon the concept that they can find any truth, and also to promote the concept that everything happens not because of knowable forces in the universe but because of a secret evil cabal, whose members can be identified by the conspiracy pushers (handy to leverage bigotry and claim the other party is the ultimate enemy).

This literally destroys the opportunity for factual discussion.

The result is to open the doors for authoritarians like Putin, Xi, Orban, and wannabes like Trump (who are all agents promoting this).

The problem is these specific efforts to promote distrust in humans, leadership (other than the chosen "strongmen"), and truth.

The fact that I have come, through direct experience and attempts starting with trust, to no longer trust them is now irrelevant. I neither caused nor amplify the distrust. Whether I (or you) trust them or not is irrelevant. They will continue to distrust unless I actively join their cult lunacy.

Can you provide a single example where your trust and conversation actually changed the mind of one of them? If so, how did that work? Did it "stick"?