I am of approximately the same view as
@Xorkoth. I don’t hate, condemn, judge, or diminish anyone because of their beliefs in this regard. In entering any community of people I was not a member of, I would always be sensitive to the fact that they have beliefs and experiences that do not correspond to mine and therefore view the world differently.
However, although these words are rapidly losing any stable meaning, there is a difference in what people from different communities may believe and may be understood as a truth based on fact. At the same time different communities have different standards for what makes a fact and to get anywhere, people from communities with different standards about what is a fact have to both put in a bit of effort to understand the way the other comes to know and believe things are true.
If one wants to give the benefit of the doubt here, then you could say that in conversations such as these there seems to be a huge gulf between both sides and each is speaking a language almost unintelligible to the other.
From my perspective, it seems a lot like
@OpiateKiller is espousing religious-like views based on faith. I don’t mean that as any kind of insult or criticism. But he has an unshakeable belief that certain things have happened in the world and will happen in the future as a consequence of forces for which he has no credible (to me) data. I have no doubt that he totally believes Bill Gates is deeply involved in monstrous conspiracies. But he cannot prove that (to my satisfaction) Therefore in his evangelical-like fervour (as it appears to me) to convince other people that he is right, he can only get them to agree if they are prepared to make a similar act of faith. Many people view the world through faith-like belief, so it is possible he could convince many people and within that community of believers the Gates=Monstrosity doctrine will attain the status of dogma.
This seems to me to be no different than the way Christians came to believe in the Virgin Birth of Jesus. Or the way Buddhist’s believe one’s actions in this life influence how one is re-created in the next life. I wouldn’t shit on someone’s religious views and many people believing in conspiracies and also many people who are woke seem to think and behave exactly like they are members of a secular religion. The behaviour, way of communicating and defending their beliefs, and attitude to disbelievers is frequently exactly the same.
There is a difference though when people, such as was the case with
@Foreigner in this thread, appear to be communicating within in my objective fact-based paradigm using provably false statements. In this case, it is not a statement of belief that should be respected. Rather, it is at best a shoddy and poorly researched argument using poor quality or biased data and at worst a conscious attempt to pervert the narrative by selectively using data to misrepresent reality in a way designed to incite fear or anger in people. As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m perfectly happy to give
@Foreigner the benefit of the doubt here and assume he’s just gotten hold of bad information and is not intentionally trying to spread misinformation.
However, the longer he refuses to engage in a polite discussion of his data versus data offered as a counter argument to his claims and continues to reproduce the same argument seemingly in denial of any facts but his own then the less I’d be able to keep up the benefit of the doubt.
In a very general way, it seems that people attempting to mould the discourse in that way are in large part responsible for the growing number of people demonstrating the emotions ranging from anxiety to anger shown by
@OpiateKiller.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
