I have 2 friends at the moment. I won't mention names of course.
But they have pretty stupid beliefs and it almost demoralizes me.

1 Believed within a year of the vaccine being created 100 million people
would die from it. And was crazy adamant about it.
Also said trump would be re instated into office by Christmas last year
& bet me on it. Again super adamant about it.

My other friend says Telsa created free energy. And that the oil comps etc
I guess buried the technology or whatever conspiracy to cover it up.
Also believes Telsa invented a perpetual motion machine.

I just can't understand how these people think. More so the first one. Like
this person keeps spewing crazy ideas. I don't get how they can be so wrong about
something and keep spewing more & more stuff. Like they have no accountability
to themselves. I just don't understand this psychology at all.

Like if I made a bunch of claims that didn't come true, I think i would have the sense
to at least stuff screaming my ideas to other people after being wrong.
But this people are like just whatever, and just keep claiming to be geniuses who know
everything, and there news feeds are 100% accurate, and whatever news I read is
all incorrect and corrupt. While the get there information of the net.

How is it these people believe so strongly they know everything. Even when being
so wrong. I suppose I should confront them more when being wrong? I duno
I just not sure how to argue with someone who believes in a perpetual motion machine.

Like if Einstein, Newton, and Hawking exlain the science why this is impossible, would
that get through to them. I'm not so sure. Is the eigo this bad !

Unless you think there is some intelligence there, or some hope of reality making it through to them, just bail.

On the other hand, you could always post stories to redit "stories about Kevin".

If you've never heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect, you can start with that. (Basically, stupid people are incapable of recognizing just how stupid they are.) Also, "do your own research" means that if you search the internet hard enough, you can always find someone who agrees with whatever wacko idea you have.

hey thanks for that.

Only problem with that read, it says how to fix the problem with yourself, not how
to fix others lol

Does this type of stuff bother anyone else.
Especially poker players, who really tried to eliminate the eigo and play with a high
level of emotional intilligence.

I lost sleep over the last conversation I had with 1 of these people. Like I just don't
see how the world survives with so many people believing such stupid crap, and
then on top of that, believing they are the smartest people out there, and so arrogant.

1 of these guys is short too. Sometimes I wonder if some sort of little man complex is at
play with small guys too.

I would be careful trying to "fix" someone, as it can backfire. However, if you're determined, I would start with simple logic puzzles, perhaps the wooden puzzles that have been around forever and go from there, according to your best judgment.

For at least some people, the reason they think this way is because it's easier and lowers their cognitive load. Despite being wrong, they often still function fine within society and it may not be worth the effort for them to think better.

I don't believe there is any fixing the majority of these people.

Hopefully they're not that close of friends and it isn't too hard where you're at too go out and make or find new friends. On the bright side you can always charge them a friendship tax as they often make the stupidest bets . Also commonly know as a stupid tax. Worse case they don't pay up and you never see them again. That right there can be considered a win.


Cheers!!!

There are people dumb enough to believe voting by mail does not enable fraud. That Ivermectin despite working in India does not work in the US rather than the EUA required it not work so those forbidding its use knowingly killed thousands to be allowed to get the EUA. That vaccine mandates on workers but not on welfare recipients or illegals made medical sense. That gatherings for church or shopping spread COVID but gatherings for BLM protests did not. Seems strange that you missed those forms of stupid.

It certainly is an interesting subject and will catch you off guard sometimes as to who exhibits such wild beliefs. It's kind of a combination of lack of respect for reality, a magical thinking abra cadabra "I speak it into truth" orientation, sometimes even disdain for reality in preference for this one I'm making up, self-blind emotional investment, big time ego involvement of "being the one" on in the group that understands how things really are, infantile narcissistic grandiosity, of course lack of critical thinking, and the blowhard need to be right set on autopilot and never challenged because of weak ego strength that cannot allow this weakness to be admitted and thus is compensated for in false, exaggerated sureness. For starters.

So conspiracy theories are anti-anxiety pipe dreams clung too tenaciously as preferred-to-reality alternative truths.

I don't know what to believe. On the rare occasion that I've encountered the type, they seem like powerless people, even over their own lives. Perhaps, just perhaps, it's an effort to gain some control and therefore a modicum of power.

On the other hand, maybe they're just lazy as f.

Your Tesla friend is just a based Chad. Tesla was the GOAT


This is a conspiracy theory that I can get behind. Especially how it ties into conspiracy theories about how human civilization is much older than traditional history says and that there may have been an advanced global civilization before comets hit the ice caps ~13000 years ago and caused massive floods across the world.

The Pyramids weren't tombs, they were power stations.

That just proves how stupid you really are! The pyramids are made of stone and can't generate power. I feel sorry for you. The pyramids were clearly built as landing pads for alien spaceships.

Powerless over one's own life = ego strength deficiency = existential anxiety. It fits. And the clinging to some non-reality based "other" alternate reality as a result makes sense from there.

One of the best things you can do for your own mental health is to use the experience to improve yourself, not them.

Those who said that you can't change your friends' minds are probably right. If they aren't actively asking for your opinion on the subjects, your objections are more likely to cause them to double down than to learn.

The way you can help is to improve your own mind. How do you know what you know? Do you rely on the authority of friends, relatives, random content creators? Are you more likely to accept evidence if it matches your existing beliefs? Do you actively seek out views that agree with you? These are mental bugs that affect us all if we don't actively combat them.

We all have a responsibility to actively question our own opinions and viewpoints, and to rely on evidence from sources that are the most likely to be accurate. In the process of evaluating your own beliefs, you may encounter a greater understanding of the reasons your friends believe what they believe. When you do, you may be able to approach them with empathy instead of combat.

While I understand this point of view and agree with it somewhat, I just feel that it's too harsh overall.

If you are really one of the smarter ones, then you have an obligation to give others an opportunity to learn. A healthy, functioning society isn't just about you, it's about the majority. Now, if someone doesn't want to listen now, it doesn't mean they didn't hear you. Perhaps someone else will say something similar another time and they'll remember and listen to the next guy - with your contribution as history.

Besides, your life is enriched when you enrich those people around you.

These people don't listen though lol

Like with certain people, I feel giving them advice, telling them what to do, has
the opposite effect. They are so smart they hate being told what to do. Even if
I have good advice for them that would benefit them, they won't listen. I have
pretty good examples of this.

Yup, I get it. A couple of things though. There is a difference between giving advice and telling someone what to do. The former being viewed more positively than the latter. The only times you really get to tell someone what to do, as opposed to when you can advise them, is when you are responsible for them, such as parent/child, or boss/subordinate.

The other thing about advice is that when it's freely given, it's also free to be taken - or not taken. There is no obligation, nor should any be expected - that part is on the giver. Also, just because they didn't listen, or take the advice, doesn't mean they didn't hear you and may apply it at some time in the future.

Then, there is always the matter of a follow-up. Rather than scolding them for a bad result, or repeating the advice after a failure, ask them: "So, how is that working out for you?"

I have a buddy who believes in writing the correct way

With normal paragraphs and


Normal spacing etc. isnt.

He


Crazy?

Can the debris left on the Moon from the alleged U.S. moon landing(s) be seen through a powerful telescope?

https://www.livescience.com/61911-trash-on-moon.html

I don't know about that, but I do know they left a laser reflector on the moon that, with the proper equipment, you can reflect a beam and prove to yourself that it's there. Like many high schools, just about any college science department can do it.

Unfortunately there are a lot of such people, i have a couple of friends who believe in world government and all of these masson/templars staff. Maybe people just don't want to think that world is simplier than they could think

I think we need to be aware that as humans we are all capable of being irrational. Smarter people often just come up with more elaborate rationalizations for their irrational beliefs. We're all susceptible to fallacious reasoning, groupthink, confirmation bias, etc.

It can be especially difficult to rationally examine our beliefs when they become part of our identity, as with politics and religion. Once a belief becomes part of our identity, we perceive any challenge to it as an attack on our (sense of) self. It triggers primitive pathways in our brain related to self-preservation, and pretty much makes it impossible to objectively examine our own ideas.

While, strictly speaking, what you are saying is true (lookup "Piltdown man"), I would hardly compare the people that believe the EM fields from power lines cause cancer and that the moon landing was faked to the cream of the scientific community.

True. I guess the main reason I posted what I did is that "conspiracy theory" has kind of become synonymous with crazy, meaning we don't have to even consider the merits of whatever argument is being made. It's used as a way to dismiss an argument. Anytime someone powerful is accused of something shady the "conspiracy theory" label seems to immediately get applied.

But yeah, I understand the frustration when people have completely ridiculous views. I once got into an argument with an otherwise intelligent person from a fundamentalist religious group who claimed that the sun rotated around the Earth. It went as far as me offering to test the hypothesis by using the shadow cast from a stick to measure the changing position of the sun to see if reality aligned with their perception. I gave up when they tried to explain away data posted online from a similar experiment.

Anyway, I still think it's important that we think critically about even the most widely-accepted ideas, especially in an age where powerful interests have so much control over the narrative.