I’m saying when you make people who are wrong find community based on beoling wrong they get even more entrenched.

Yeah, definitely. But: It’s a lot easier to answer the disinformation if you know where it’s coming from. Part of the thing that makes my head spin about the GOP news cycle is how even I (a chronically-online, fairly well-informed person) will have absolutely no idea where some people come up with the nonsense they come up with. Is it from their own mind? Is there some fringe community on Facebook doling out steaming dog piles of AI-generated anti-vax nonsense? Is it a legitimate outlet, and they’re just massively misunderstanding it? Knowing where it comes from can really help in combating it; even if you can’t stop the current fake news, you might be able to head the next one off before it takes root. Sometimes just the process of needing to find a source can make people look twice. It works for me, even: if I want to write something I’m pretty sure about, and then go looking for a source, sometimes I’ll find out that that source isn’t reliable, or that it was retracted. Sometimes I’ll even find out that what I remembered was true, but it’s way better or worse. I become more media literate sourcing my facts.

easier to answer You’re still running on the absolute fantasy that people ate rational, and you’re doing worse than nothing to help when you do. look twice Not helpful, with the modern tendency to hitlerian readings of… Everything useful for me Valid, whatever you find helps, but don’t push it on others as if it will somehow safeguard truth.

No. I’m not running on a fantasy. I’m trying to bring into existence a world that doesn’t yet exist. I know that people aren’t rational, but if my mind can be changed by facts, they have to have some value.

Thwy have value operationally, not rhetorically. At least in theory. Obviously I haven’t had a lot of luck deriving benefits from being right about things.

You’re talking about a current reality. I’m talking about normalizing a different future.

And you think this gets us that future how? Why do people behave like this right now? Thats the first question and I don’t think you had even asked it.

People behave like this now for a lot of complicated reasons. For one, changing opinions hurts us (physiologically), so our brain tries to prevent it; that’s something that can be eased with exposure. Also, rich people and foreign interests have a vested interest in keeping people susceptible to misinformation, and greater media literacy is really the only tactic that can combat it. But more importantly, the world we live in now isn’t the only world we ever have to live in. It’s going to change one way or another; why not take steps to make it change into something more like what we want to live in?