(03-08-2019, 11:54 PM)redchartreuse Wrote: So, in bringing the analogy back to the topic of the thread, sure, we could continue to fight an endless battle between the rabid vaxxers and the rabid anti-vaxxers, and squander even more of our resources in the process, or we could all collectively turn our focus to dealing with the more fundamental problem: rabidness.
It's the rabidness... overzealousness... fanaticism... hysteria... extremism... fervor... that is at the root of so many of our societal problems. Transmute that, and there might be some hope for humanity yet.
Interesting, I take a different approach. I believe you can't change people, change comes from within, and that even crazy people can end up having valid positions. There are a lot of crazy people out there, and I think it's very useful to be able to filter out the good arguments from the crazy ones, if you want to end up with the truth (or something close to it).
I think people have come to terms with using the internet for self-empowerment when it comes to food and nutrition and doing their own research and trusting their own research; ie most people I talk to no longer believe what was mainstream about nutrition even 10 years ago (lots of people would eyeroll you when you talked about organic food a decade ago, now its a serious business and issue now that verdicts against Monsanto's roundup have been given and more are in the pipeline.)
Remember, when online on both sides there is mass disinformation. I actually worked with a person who had a side job of creating random profiles and posting pro-democratic party information, sometimes by creating a rabid/fake republican profile and posting crazy stuff, back in 2009. So I think that much of the online rabidness is often energized by disinformation campaigns on both sides, and its tough as an everyday person to avoid that rabidity. At the end of the day, I think focusing the rabid person memes makes it way, way, way easier for any corporate or russian trolls to manipulate the discussion (remember the FCC comments on restoring internet freedom which gutted net neutrality - something like 95% where botting anti-net neutrality trolls presumable telecom corporate trolls) and its best to address the underlying situation that creates interest for the issue for people, crazy or not.