Constants and variables 113
An article on the rapidly growing anti-vax movement in France shows a good contrast between one or two officials who sort of halfway GET IT and the vast majority who DON'T GET IT.

If you want to increase belief, you MUST do two things consistently and loudly and HUMBLY. And when I say HUMBLY, I mean literally ON YOUR FUCKING KNEES begging for forgiveness and mercy which you DO NOT DESERVE because you've spent your entire career spitting and shitting and kicking ordinary people in the face and then stomping on them over and over and over after they're down.

First, acknowledge ALL ALL ALL ALL ALL of your own biases. You work for the government, which means you agree 100.00000000000000% with a standard set of biases and beliefs, constant across all Sorosian lands. A few of these biases accidentally and trivially agree with reality. For example, "water is wet" agrees with reality. All of your non-trivial biases are virulently lethally omnicidally false and crazy beyond crazy beyond crazy. As long as you are claiming to be "objective", nobody will believe you. (See Demon Roberts claiming that Supreme Demons are not political.)

Second, drop the condescending attitude. You are NOT the authority, and you do NOT have a monopoly on truth. Your "truth" changes and flips constantly. Sometimes fat is good, sometimes bad. Sometimes eggs are good, sometimes bad. Sometimes alcohol is good, sometimes bad.

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Officials who sort of halfway get it:

“We are not going to convince the conspiracists,” the official said. “When you are the government, people are already skeptical to begin with, since they think you’re political.”

Correction. They OBSERVE THE FACT that you're political. Unless you acknowledge this OBSERVED FACT, you can't possibly win.

“Our objective is to reassure parents on the subject of vaccination,” Mulder said. “If a parent is going to worry, if he falls on these [anti-vaccine] groups, he is going to confront information that is not necessarily reliable. Our job is to bring a discourse that is more nuanced.”

If you're actually more nuanced, you might be starting to do some good.

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Officials who don't get it:

"As the internet allows readers and viewers to sidestep traditional media, micro-communities have sprung up on social media, where fellow travelers can click their way to self-affirmation."

The anti side is growing rapidly, which means it's NOT just confirmation bias. It's gaining NEW followers who hadn't previously thought about the issue.

"The grand majority of fake news concerns health, with politics second,” said Jocelyn Raude, a professor at the EHESP School of Public Health.

You lost it all when you called the other side fake news.

"And if online activity in the U.S. is any indication, some of the vaccine skepticism in Europe could be driven by Russian bots."

Russian bots, if they exist, don't drive anything. You lost it all when you treated a genocidal NSA lie as received truth.

Labels: Constants and Variables

  ¶ 10:09 AM