[What's a healthy way of engaging someone who's in a Conspiracy Theory rabbit hole?]

15 hours ago, Consept said:

@DocWatts Im sorry bro but you havent really had your question answered in this thread. Same thing has happened to me ive had a few friends that have gone down this rabbit hole, what tends to happen is that peoples barrier for asserting something is true or not completely goes out the window once they allow a speculation to be true, then you get a mix of anchoring bias and confirmation bias. All this is brought about by uncertainty which has obviously been exacerbated by the current world events. It is very frustrating to have people around you believe this stuff so i completely sympathise. 

The best resources ive found include the book 'Escaping the Rabbit Hole' by Mick West, he literally talks you through how to talk to a friend that is lost in the rabbit hole and includes a lot of compassion and understanding so its a really good guide. He also runs the website - https://www.metabunk.org/home/ which actively debunks conspiracy theories and has appeared on Joe Rogan so you can search him out there. 

Rebel Wisdom have also done a few videos on conspiracy theories looking at them from a meta perspective which ive found quite interesting as well - 

Awesome; this was exactly what I was looking for, thank you!

[Should Industrial Society collapse?]

If you're interested in the subject matter, Jared Diamond (author of Guns, Germs, and Steel) has written extensively on this topic. His book 'Collapse' is a systems level examination of a number of different cultures which have collapsed, and attempts to draw out some commonalities between them. He focuses in particular on societies whose collapse was due at least in part on environmental and sustainability factors.


 

[What's a healthy way of engaging someone who's in a Conspiracy Theory rabbit hole?]

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I respect your background. I'm not favoring 'subjective' experience over 'objective' experience. I'm saying there is no difference between the two, it's all One.

@Parththakkar12  Thanks for clearing up this misconception then. Would characterizing this viewpoint as the "compatibilist"  (akin to the how that terms is used in free will discussion) , or perhaps the "integrated" view of reality be a fair way to put it?

[What's a healthy way of engaging someone who's in a Conspiracy Theory rabbit hole?]

 

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Your mind creates your reality. The way it does this is through energetic frequencies, also known as emotions. Emotions are 'Energy in motion'. So, 'the external world' is a mirror of your internal world.

@Parththakkar12 So I suppose my resistance to this would be seeing this as a bit reductionist, as it seems to me that both internal subjective experiences and an external objective world are both important facets of reality. Or to to put it another way, if something like logical positivism is reductionist by discounting the subjective world in favor of what can be objectively measured, this perhaps to seem to me reductionist in favoring subjective experience and discounting the possibility of an external reality. I'll admit upfront that it's possible I may be misunderstanding this perspective, and alot of my thinking in this area is influenced by philosophers such as Thomas Nagel,  who talks about ways of integrating subjective experience into an external reality.

[What's a healthy way of engaging someone who's in a Conspiracy Theory rabbit hole?]

2 minutes ago, Parththakkar12 said:

Your intuition is the ultimate arbiter of the truth. Rely only on that. The way you access your intuition is, ironically, through emotional awareness. I'm not saying that being irrational/emotionally carried away is more objective than being rational, rather I'm saying that it's only through sorting through your emotional attachments can you really find the voice of your intuition.

I guess then I would ask, on an epistemological level, what makes intuition a better arbiter of truth than other modes of being, since intuition has its own limitations and can be misleading at times. I would think that you what you would want is some sort of integration between intuition, emotional awareness, and study of the external world, informing each other in some sort of feedback loop.

...wow, guess we've strayed a bit from the topic at hand, eh? In an interesting way of course.

[What's a healthy way of engaging someone who's in a Conspiracy Theory rabbit hole?]

59 minutes ago, DrewNows said:

Good stuff and just to add something here: if we want to prove a “conspiracy theory” wrong we can and will find the information to support that. When exploring conspiracy theory content, we have to completely detach, let go of the beliefs, be prepared to actually seek to disprove what was originally believed to be true. Also do not trust Google, use DuckDuckGo search engine to avoid the information created to pull you back or throw you off track...help someone help you step into their shoes, drop all games/models, like politics and spiral dynamics, so they don’t cause influence on your ability to explore 

I would define a conspiracy theory as simply misunderstood information. Whether it’s labeled or pushed with an agenda, it’s always misunderstood no matter where you stand. The trick is to stop standing still, get off the ground 

Not disagreeing with you, but as far as setting aside models and whatnot, isn't having some sort of context for the subject matter you're studying quite important? Aren't fields of study such as systems thinking and epistemology models in a sense as well?  Of course I do realize that I am viewing it from my own particular lens that I need to take into account, but if you're interested enough in a subject to spend time and energy researching it, I imagine that you're going to have some sort of emotional attachment going in, that you can try to account for as best as you can.

[What's a healthy way of engaging someone who's in a Conspiracy Theory rabbit hole?]

2 minutes ago, Parththakkar12 said:

@DocWatts David Icke is the most obvious resource on conspiracy theories. You can find him on bitchute. There's a lot more, I don't feel comfortable naming too many names actually. I don't want to break forum guidelines.

A lot of conspiracy theories are about 'elites' lying to the masses about a whole bunch of stuff. This seems impossible to someone who has never considered conspiracy theories, because most people lack an understanding of systems. I'd highly recommend studying how systems work, what high leverage points are there, who controls information, who controls the definition of 'truth' vs 'falsehood', 'fact' vs 'fiction', 'reality' vs 'delusion'. The question I want you to ask yourself is - Given the way our systems work, is it possible for the elites to get away with as much as the conspiracy theorists claim? Is it a valid possibility, or is it just logically impossible? That's where I'd start my investigation if I were in your position.

Awesome, thanks for the suggestion.

[What's a healthy way of engaging someone who's in a Conspiracy Theory rabbit hole?]

@Parththakkar12   You're right, I didn't like that answer .  I don't look at people who buy into conspiracy theories as bad people, but I do see the obvious harm that comes from believing in baseless conspiracy theories; I've also seen how toxic and isolating they can be for the person who stitches a worldview together out of them (again, this post was born out of concern for a friend of mine who's manifesting his conspiracy theory beliefs in an unhealthy and isolating way).

 As far as your suggestion, are there any resources in particular you would recommend to understand this subject matter on a deeper level, and perhaps help me to empathize more fully with people who hold these beliefs? 

[What's a healthy way of engaging someone who's in a Conspiracy Theory rabbit hole?]

I have a friend of mine who's fallen down a right wing conspiracy theory rabbit hole: everything from Plandemic, to Black Lives Matter being a conspiracy funded by George Soros to install a Bolshevik style government in America. This is someone who wasn't really overtly political a few years ago, and who I consider to be a decent guy overall. I guess my question is has anyone found a healthy way of engaging with someone who's fallen into a Conspiracy Theory rabbit hole, in a way where they won't get immediately defensive when the subject is broached? I realize there are healthy and unhealthy manifestations of different political views, and I see what my friend has fallen into as very toxic (and not to mention really off putting to other people).

I'm very well aware of Spiral Dynamics, but there's a difference between understanding a model on an intellectual level, and actualizing it in a way where you can employ it successfully in day to day interactions. I know the answer here is probably that he needs to move from an unhealthy and toxic version of Red to stage Blue, but what would that look like on a practical level? Has anyone found successful examples of what that would look like in their own lives?