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by estearum 89 days ago
Conspiratorial thinking can't be fixed with additional facts. There is no set of facts that conclusively establish any claim to someone who is already committed not to believing the claim.
1 comments

Additional facts can slow the rate at which conspiracy theorists can convert others. It helps if the additional facts are visibly obvious.
A common property of conspiracies is that any evidence is evidence of the conspiracy. Not enough data produces "what are they hiding" stuff. More data produces deliberate misunderstandings of the data to justify the conspiracy. We saw this very clearly with covid. When public health agencies were less transparant it was evidence of an evil coverup. When public agencies were more transparant about limitations or things they didn't fully understand it was evidence that public health efforts didn't work.