This sounds weird to me. What is easier than just trusting the official information? This is exactly what conspiracy theorists are complaining about actually. That ordinary people just trust the information they are given by credible sources.
If anything, people who believe the standard information are the laziest, no?
So the “easy answers” part sounds a bit weird. The easy answers are right there on TV and the internet on the first search hit.
It’s more that those answers don’t make sense to conspiracy theorists. I guess you can tell them to get a degree in science and then it will make sense to them, but that won’t happen.
But it’s interesting how others can appearently explain how things work to conspiracy theorists in a way so they feel they understand and don’t doubt the information. Because it makes intuitive sense to them.
Maybe too much of science is hidden behind complicated layers that normal people just don’t understand and can’t understand.
“Easy answers” in that they’re simple, fit into their existing worldview, and don’t require them to change anything. Not easy as in the easiest to find. That’s why it’s a conspiracy, the simple answers that they want to be correct are being hidden from them.
I guess you can tell them to get a degree in science and then it will make sense to them, but that won’t happen.
See, the problem here is that I actually DID do that, and it’s explicitly because I did that, that I know for a fact that the “official” sources are completely (and seemingly deliberately) wrong. Like how the initial imperial college model used to predict a 7% covid death rate was wildly irresponsible, or how “social distancing” and plexiglass barriers and cloth masks do not actually do what the “credible official sources” were insisting they do, or how literally changing the definition of vaccine so they could call a novel genetic therapy a vaccine is simply wildly unethical.
The problem is that official sources can be every bit as corrupt as any other human organization, and our society USED TOO have a sober recognition of that fact, which is why modern western society was founded on the idea that government officials are public servants rather than rulers.
And then random idiots online tell me to go get the education I already have, because they’re simply parroting what people they’ve never even met told them, and they believe it so strongly that they assert the existence of a world they know nothing about.
I thought everyone knew that limited plexiglass barriers and stickers on the floor did nothing.
I do remember arguing with people on the internet that most of the studies about masks were flawed because they tended to include people who didn’t wear them properly in the “mask-wearing” category. Personally, I went with higher-spec masks like KF94, and they’re likely to be something I use regularly during flu season commutes.
The outrage about the vaccines were fascinating though. The goalposts kept getting moved when the conspiracy theories were wrong. I remember people saying that after a year, everyone who took the vaccines will have dropped dead…lmao
I thought everyone knew that limited plexiglass barriers and stickers on the floor did nothing.
Plenty of places still have them.
Masks aren’t even intended to prevent airborne disease spread. They’re designed specifically to prevent spittle and skin flakes/hair from falling on whatever is directly in front of you, which is why they were called “surgical” masks not so very long ago, because it protected the open wounds a surgeon was working on.
Lastly, once again, they literally just changed the official definition of vaccine so they could associate their novel genetic therapy with a completely different established medicine. If there’s a more open example of corruption I’ve never seen it.
The spittle can contain things that cause the spread of disease, which (as you said) masks help with. And masks with higher specs block smaller particles. So if everyone’s wearing properly-fitted good quality masks in a room, there’s far fewer particles being ejected into the air of that room than if nobody were wearing any masks.
Regarding vaccines, the definitions of things change all the time as technology progresses, so even if it were true that the definition changed, it doesn’t concern me. mRNA vaccines were being researched well before the covid vaccines, but there wasn’t a big push until the pandemic. Without the big push, it can be hard to get funding and such…which can be common in science.
I did the same. Covid was the year where the official flu disappeared as a reason for deaths, and everything became covid deaths.
Also if you died for any reason and was found to have covid inside, it was classified as a covid death anyway.
So I saw them drive up the statistics enormously to ridiculous levels. People here on Lemmy don’t agree though and gets upset about this point of view.
To them covid was a global killer, very dangerous, just like the media and the government said. But when I look at statistics, I hardly see any deaths in people younger than 50. This is official statistics for my country at least.
But yeah, the US has/had so many incredibly unhealthy people so of course they got hit hard. Italy also for the same reasons.
Conspiracy theories are easy answers because they lack the nuance of reality and they present an attractive narrative. There’s good guys, bad guys, underdogs, secrets, etc. In contrast reality is full of grey areas, requires a lot of thought, will make you empathize with those you thought you’d blame and vice versa. Facing facts is hard work.
I don’t know if it’s contradicting anything. Bad guys with power get together and plan things all the time.
It really isn’t very hard to keep things under cover either. A lot of coverups goes unnoticed for many years until some whistleblower steps forward and gets punished severely. Specially the US strikes down on whistleblowers very, very hard.
How many are ongoing right now? I’m guessing a lot. Because people are no longer even looking for it. That worries me. I think people are fooling themselves that there are no big plans carried out, and events are just random. Nobody intends to do anything, and things just happen. Makes no sense to me at all.
It’s more that those answers don’t make sense to conspiracy theorists
.
What is easier than just trusting the official information?
It’s easier to say “This doesn’t make sense, so it must be wrong” than it is to say “This doesn’t make sense, so I must learn more to figure out how it could make sense.”
It’s easier to say “I know more than everyone else because I am critical thinker watch YouTube videos that express views that go against mainstream knowledge” than it is to actually have the skills to engage in critical thinking, and to have the knowledge to be able to determine a good source of information from a bad one.
This sounds weird to me. What is easier than just trusting the official information? This is exactly what conspiracy theorists are complaining about actually. That ordinary people just trust the information they are given by credible sources.
If anything, people who believe the standard information are the laziest, no?
So the “easy answers” part sounds a bit weird. The easy answers are right there on TV and the internet on the first search hit.
It’s more that those answers don’t make sense to conspiracy theorists. I guess you can tell them to get a degree in science and then it will make sense to them, but that won’t happen.
But it’s interesting how others can appearently explain how things work to conspiracy theorists in a way so they feel they understand and don’t doubt the information. Because it makes intuitive sense to them.
Maybe too much of science is hidden behind complicated layers that normal people just don’t understand and can’t understand.
“Easy answers” in that they’re simple, fit into their existing worldview, and don’t require them to change anything. Not easy as in the easiest to find. That’s why it’s a conspiracy, the simple answers that they want to be correct are being hidden from them.
See, the problem here is that I actually DID do that, and it’s explicitly because I did that, that I know for a fact that the “official” sources are completely (and seemingly deliberately) wrong. Like how the initial imperial college model used to predict a 7% covid death rate was wildly irresponsible, or how “social distancing” and plexiglass barriers and cloth masks do not actually do what the “credible official sources” were insisting they do, or how literally changing the definition of vaccine so they could call a novel genetic therapy a vaccine is simply wildly unethical.
The problem is that official sources can be every bit as corrupt as any other human organization, and our society USED TOO have a sober recognition of that fact, which is why modern western society was founded on the idea that government officials are public servants rather than rulers.
And then random idiots online tell me to go get the education I already have, because they’re simply parroting what people they’ve never even met told them, and they believe it so strongly that they assert the existence of a world they know nothing about.
I thought everyone knew that limited plexiglass barriers and stickers on the floor did nothing.
I do remember arguing with people on the internet that most of the studies about masks were flawed because they tended to include people who didn’t wear them properly in the “mask-wearing” category. Personally, I went with higher-spec masks like KF94, and they’re likely to be something I use regularly during flu season commutes.
The outrage about the vaccines were fascinating though. The goalposts kept getting moved when the conspiracy theories were wrong. I remember people saying that after a year, everyone who took the vaccines will have dropped dead…lmao
Plenty of places still have them.
Masks aren’t even intended to prevent airborne disease spread. They’re designed specifically to prevent spittle and skin flakes/hair from falling on whatever is directly in front of you, which is why they were called “surgical” masks not so very long ago, because it protected the open wounds a surgeon was working on.
Lastly, once again, they literally just changed the official definition of vaccine so they could associate their novel genetic therapy with a completely different established medicine. If there’s a more open example of corruption I’ve never seen it.
The spittle can contain things that cause the spread of disease, which (as you said) masks help with. And masks with higher specs block smaller particles. So if everyone’s wearing properly-fitted good quality masks in a room, there’s far fewer particles being ejected into the air of that room than if nobody were wearing any masks.
Regarding vaccines, the definitions of things change all the time as technology progresses, so even if it were true that the definition changed, it doesn’t concern me. mRNA vaccines were being researched well before the covid vaccines, but there wasn’t a big push until the pandemic. Without the big push, it can be hard to get funding and such…which can be common in science.
I did the same. Covid was the year where the official flu disappeared as a reason for deaths, and everything became covid deaths.
Also if you died for any reason and was found to have covid inside, it was classified as a covid death anyway.
So I saw them drive up the statistics enormously to ridiculous levels. People here on Lemmy don’t agree though and gets upset about this point of view.
To them covid was a global killer, very dangerous, just like the media and the government said. But when I look at statistics, I hardly see any deaths in people younger than 50. This is official statistics for my country at least.
But yeah, the US has/had so many incredibly unhealthy people so of course they got hit hard. Italy also for the same reasons.
Conspiracy theories are easy answers because they lack the nuance of reality and they present an attractive narrative. There’s good guys, bad guys, underdogs, secrets, etc. In contrast reality is full of grey areas, requires a lot of thought, will make you empathize with those you thought you’d blame and vice versa. Facing facts is hard work.
I don’t know if it’s contradicting anything. Bad guys with power get together and plan things all the time.
It really isn’t very hard to keep things under cover either. A lot of coverups goes unnoticed for many years until some whistleblower steps forward and gets punished severely. Specially the US strikes down on whistleblowers very, very hard.
How many are ongoing right now? I’m guessing a lot. Because people are no longer even looking for it. That worries me. I think people are fooling themselves that there are no big plans carried out, and events are just random. Nobody intends to do anything, and things just happen. Makes no sense to me at all.
.
It’s easier to say “This doesn’t make sense, so it must be wrong” than it is to say “This doesn’t make sense, so I must learn more to figure out how it could make sense.”
It’s easier to say “I know more than everyone else because I
am critical thinkerwatch YouTube videos that express views that go against mainstream knowledge” than it is to actually have the skills to engage in critical thinking, and to have the knowledge to be able to determine a good source of information from a bad one.