this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2026
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[–] thebestaquaman@lemmy.world 0 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It will never be about the science, because we already know they’re completely wrong about everything and therefore they need to make science irrelevant.

I think there's an interesting discussion to be had here regarding cause and effect. You seem to be arguing that these people do not believe in science, therefore they end up as conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, etc. I'm not entirely convinced that's the case. I think it's common that people first establish a gut feeling regarding what is true, then begin disbelieving science when science disagrees with them. Basically, I think the casual chain is inverted relative to you. Of course, once people have started disbelieving science, the rabbit hole is open.

the supposed strat of… agreeing them out of their position(?)

That's not really what I'm arguing for. My point is that it never strengthens your position to disagree with things you know are correct, just to try to make a point. If someone says "water is denser than oil, therefore 1 L of water is heavier than 2 L of oil.", it doesn't help you to start by disagreeing with the initial statement. Likewise, when someone says "vaccines cause dangerous side effects, therefore ...", it doesn't help your position to disagree with the initial statement, which is well documented to be true. An immediate example that comes to mind is that the Astra Zeneca (I think) COVID vaccine caused several deaths due to triggering a very rare heart complication (if I remember the details correctly). If your initial counter argument is "vaccines don't cause deadly side effects", you can immediately be brushed off as having no idea what you're talking about, since it's well documented that they do. Any successful counter argument needs to start by acknowledging what is correct in the initial statement, before dialling in on why the conclusion is wrong.

The point of the trolley problem is not to use it to convince the vaccine sceptics, but to use research on it to understand how they think, and thereby understand how they can be convinced. Surveys have consistently shown that not all people agree on what to do in the trolley problem situation (around 10 % choose to do nothing). It's only a false dilemma if you view it from a utilitarian standpoint, but the whole point of the thought experiment is exactly to compare a utilitarian standpoint to other views. There's quite a bit of research regarding the psychology of how we experience the consequences of action vs. inaction, and it appears that humans instinctively prefer inaction over actions with negative consequences, even when inaction carries more negative consequences. The book "Thinking fast and slow" by Daniel Kahneman goes into some detail on this. I think a lot of vaccine scepticism is grounded in this instinctive response, which in turn causes people to disbelieve science due to confirmation bias.

[–] amio@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

I think this level of privileging the antivaxxer rhetoric is just irresponsible - if it would help, maybe. But they are not arguing in good faith, out of good information, or any other good impulse. Similarly to the Flat Earth bullshit and most other CTs you can point at, it's about feeling superior. Moon landing and flat earth CTs are almost lethally cringe but patchouli bullshit instead of vaccines means people literally die in droves, of a solved problem.

My point is that it never strengthens your position to disagree with things you know are correct, just to try to make a point. If your initial counter argument is “vaccines don’t cause deadly side effects”, you can immediately be brushed off as having no idea what you’re talking about, since it’s well documented that they do.

Huh? Typo or false syllogism? You wouldn't get much of an opportunity to disagree with anything correct, they're antivaxxers. Anyway, you wouldn't deny that. You would, even more correctly, point out that the 'rona was still the worse deal if you were actually rationally worried about any outcome. This is the sort of thing I mean when I say jumping through hoops to try and make something reasonable out of a fundamentally unreasonable position. It isn't going to help, because you cannot keep it up. Sooner or later you'll reach the end of where carefully not discussing anything in the discussion can get you.

[–] thebestaquaman@lemmy.world 0 points 3 days ago

I honestly think you're misunderstanding me a bit here. I'm not advocating for privileging anti-vaxxer rhetoric or jumping through hoops to "let them have some wins". I'm trying to underscore that the first step to developing education, informational campaigns, deprogramming regimes, etc. is to understand the thought process behind becoming an anti-vaxxer. There are plenty of comments in this thread alone along the lines of "When presented a choice between a small risk of a mild fever versus getting tuberculosis, obviously the correct choice is to get the vaccine". I think that line of argumentation is counter-productive, since it

  1. Underplays the documented risk of many vaccines
  2. Doesn't address the core issue I think causes vaccine scepticism in the first place.

Firstly, nobody who's afraid of getting a vaccine due to the associated risks will be convinced by "The only risk is a small risk of a light fever", since that's just provably false. Secondly, the line of argumentation anchors on the risk associated with vaccines, rather than anchoring on the risk associated with not getting them. Since I think the root cause of vaccine scepticism is irrational fear of getting them, I think it's more productive to anchor counter arguments, education, information campaigns, etc. on the very real danger associated with not having vaccines. Since fear is the underlying driving force here, we should aim to make fear of the disease outweigh fear of vaccines, not by down-playing the risk of vaccines, but rather by emphasising the risk of the diseases (which many or most vaccine sceptics downplay into absurdity).

Basically, many vaccines do have a very low but non-zero probability of causing severe side effects. We humans are known to place irrationally large weight on these kind of unlikely but severe outcomes. Trying to downplay these outcomes is not likely affect peoples perception of the risk, because we're notoriously bad at this kind of risk assessment.