Skeptic Project

The internet is totally coated with slime and feces if you look around, it is easy to get sucked deep into the stench of it without trying too hard. Everywhere you look there are conspiracy theories and outright fabrications made up by ill informed members of society. These members of society are the kind of people who otherwise would be silent and tucked away on their own, the internet has allowed these anti social vigilantes to have a voice. This voice sadly for you and I reading this is filtering into the mainstream and into your own household. The belief or partial belief in conspiratorial world views is now something most of us have to deal with on a daily basis, not only online but it can be heard in the work day with people discussing all kinds of odd shit.

Some people have taken it upon themselves to counter this nonsense with facts and reason to show how unintelligent and irrational the beliefs are, and have successfully chopped off th legs of every conspiracy theory out there. The problem is that the believers, much like religious fanatics, maintain that this is not true and that their worldview has never been dented. This may appear like a valid claim if you are not well read on the topic but the problem here is the following.

Conspiracy theorists simply do not read counter evidence without using a filter system that cherry picks information that agrees with their existing beliefs, in fact conspiracy theorists rarely even read fully the counter information they are presented. The usual behaviour of them is they take pre made claims from someone like Alex Jones or David Icke and they re post them out to their websites and friends to read. Rarely do they ever double check the information is valid and true and instead they trust the original source implicitly and believe the information whole hearted. This creates a one sided untested claim that is passed along the line of mouthpieces in various iterations like a Chinese whisper, often you will even encounter variations of the claim as it goes over time.

The lack of checking the sources and verifying the information is a major trait in this world view and not a minor problem. The intellectual dishonesty and downright blinkered belief does not allow for the individual to expand their knowledge on subjects that require a lot of thought and patience to understand. For instance 911 and chemtrails, these subjects require an extremely thorough understanding of engineering, physics, weather behaviour, mathematics and various other scientific skills. Now approach your next believer in these topics and present them with a scientific bod of evidence that disputes the claims they make, then ask them to explain the science to you, 99% if not more than that will probably lack the scientific skill to even dissect the material let alone understand its implications. The reactions you will encounter are the following:
They will roll out a set of negatively charged memes directed at you [call you a shill, a sheep, blind to the truth, cointelpro, and mostly a troll].
They will attempt to muddy the water by adding in seperate unrelated claims
They will attempt to confuse the original claim by changing the topic.
They will present you with another series of you tube and google videos.

You see the majority of conspiracy theorists are actually extremely uneducated in their chosen beliefs, they claim to have researched the topics, but what they actually mean is they have read David Ickes recent mail out or watched the latest 9 hour series of you tube videos on the topic. This is what they offer you as research into the topic and If you were to present them with the scientific analysis or essential requisite skills to actually thoroughly understand the topic, they would likely be uninterested in learning and doing that kind of research. The reason being is it is simply too difficult for them to do this and it is easier for them to believe something without actually studying it completely and fact checking things one fact at a time, this type of research [the real kind] requires a lot of patience and hard thinking.The chances that they will actually fully study anything you present is minimal and it is rare for a conspiracy theorist to read or study anything you present to them, and if they do chances are they are actually only doing it with a filter that checks for anything that agrees with them. They will always come back with claims the evidence you present agrees with them in some manner, because they have a warped perspective of the information instilled and are cherry picking only.

The reaction to this as said above is multi-faceted and I will explain some things here. After you have shown them to be uneducated by presenting the necessary complex information they need to understand to explain their beliefs, they will always be offended that you are pointing out how uneducated they are on the subject, and that their claim is belief based rather than fact based. This creates a knee jerk reaction where the conspiracy theorist must attack you back, and the best way for them to do this is literally to ignore what you said and make the focus you. You will now find yourself being questioned on motive, perhaps you will be accused of being a sheep who loves the government and does as he is told, perhaps you will find yourself the target of of being labelled a government agent or a paid disinformation agent, but I guarantee you one thing on the internet, you will absolutely be labelled a troll and possibly be told you are someone else they have banned from talking to them previously. As you can see these reactions are somewhat odd behaviour considering you have been proficient in showing their lack of understanding already, and they are literally going into bunker mode and retracting away from the evidence and instead defending their fragile worldview like a wounded animal. They have to fabricate anything thy can about you as a person to maintain a dominant position, otherwise they would actually have to question their belief system which they have a vested interest in maintaining. Essentially this is what is termed denialism or suspicious thinking and it is this type of paranoid worldview that is actually the base function of their belief.

When you attack their claims, the origination of the claim rears its head to show itself in public, ie the psychology of the person is exposed and it violently tries to hide itself whilst unintentionally exposing itself to all with eyes. Often if you persist you will become the target of the attack and will become part of the conspiracy if you persist in showing their faulty thinking and lack of knowledge. In other words they will silence your views byt blocking you, deleting your words, and then will publicly announce that you are a government agent or are intentionally using an agenda to keep the status quo because you don't care about the planet like they do.

Essentially you end up getting nowhere and much like religions, cults and wounded animals they will run off to lick their wounds and target you as an enemy from that point forward. The shortfall is you will have achieved nothing other than to reinforce to the ill informed conspiracist that there is indeed an agenda against him/her and you are a part of it.

So what can you do if you are not wanting to annihilate them as a person?

Provide information that absolutely counter acts everything they believe, let the information speak for you.
Do not get into debates with them as they will always use faulty arguments.
Do not get into trading information with them as they will keep it going forever and will always cherry pick and bias the data to their worldview.
Observe the mental stability and emotional level of the persons reactions to your information, the less stable and more emotional the response the less you should interact.
Know when to withdraw and make sure you are the one who withdraws, otherwise risk achieving nothing and becoming the enemy.
Understand you are talking to a person who views the world and everyone in it with suspicion.
Understand you are talking with someone likely less educated than yourself, and someone who has some problems differentiating fact from fiction.