[glenstein]

>Rational, evidence-based skeptics like Mick are doomed to Sisyphean toil because even after they've resoundingly explained a hundred vague claims, UFO (and Chem-Trail, Flat Earth, etc) true believers will always find a new one to hitch their belief to.

Right. And I do think that meticulous effort is invaluable because it heightens the cost of cognitive dissonance which can be important to reaching people on the sidelines.

But it makes you wonder if the debunking community should be a bit more intentional about intercepting whatever these psychological processes are that make people immune to evidence-based correction, and target those mechanisms the same meticulousness in patients of a debunk.

Although obviously I think the trouble with that is such a task would amount to helping steer such people into a fabric of social and cultural connectedness that's more valuable to them than the conspiracies are. Which seems a tall order. But maybe engineering an alternative psychological virus that crowds out the conspiracies in favor of something else is a more efficient option.

[rmunn]

> But it makes you wonder if the debunking community should be a bit more intentional about intercepting whatever these psychological processes are that make people immune to evidence-based correction, and target those mechanisms the same meticulousness in patients of a debunk.

You haven't spent much time arguing with people who refuse to listen to any evidence at all, have you? The "psychological processes" you describe are, in many cases, that people will simply stick their (metaphorical) fingers in their ears and say "La la la, I'm not listening!" In other words, a willful, determined refusal to listen.

It's not a matter of psychological processes, at least not for the people I've interacted with in the past. It's plain and simple refusal. They've decided that they're right, they know it, and nobody is going to tell them otherwise, darn it!

As the old quote goes (which is apparently very difficult to pin down to its origin): "My mind is made up. Don't confuse me with the facts!" (https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/02/13/confuse-me/)

P.S. Edited to add this, because I meant to write it earlier and forgot: It's just stubbornness. You can't cure stubbornness with psychoanalysis. Some people just don't want to believe in what you're trying to tell them. As the even older quote goes, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." You can lead a stubborn person to all the evidence in the world, but you can't make him think.

[mrandish]

> nobody is going to tell them otherwise

Indeed. As an example, there was a one-line response far down-thread from my GP which basically said only "Mick West is not credible" (which the poster has since deleted). I found this remarkable because Mick West, more than any skeptic I've seen, meticulously cites all his sources and doggedly sticks to only well-evidenced, fully supported facts. No broad claims, blanket dismissals, appeals to authority or consensus. He just does the work of collating relevant evidence and practical experiments which anyone can confirm and replicate for themselves. Because he's not asking us to trust anything we can't verify ourselves, his credibility is irrelevant.

Which made me want to reply, "If Mick West isn't credible, name one source of evidence which counters UFO true belief who IS credible in your opinion?" The obvious point being, there are none, because their belief is unfalsifiable. But then I remembered why engaging with those holding unfalsifiable beliefs is futile... the main point of your post. :-)