How do you debunk people that does not believe in experimental facts?

[technix]

Recently I came across a comment under a video about GPS being a giant experiment of relativity. The commentator claims that GR is a hoax, GPS does not need compensation in GR to work, and points to a website timeisabsolute [dot] org (I don't feel like linking to it.) Despite the fact that a few atomic clocks have been flew across the globe on commercial flights to verify this, to an extremely high accuracy. One of the clocks even have been the subject of one of Dave's video.

How do you debunk this?

[CJay]

Baseball bat?

I had an extremely frustrating conversation with a decorator who believes that the pharmaceutical industry cover up all sorts of alternative medicines because they can't make money from them, he's ordered a Rife machine so he doesn't have to rely on 'big pharma'.

The son of a very good friend is absolutely convinced he can make an over unity machine and has thousands of pounds worth of metal working tools and machinery to enable him to build it.

Oddly enough, he's not managed it yet.

Some people just cannot be persuaded or argued with and it's best to smile politely, back away while maintaining eye contact and leave them to their ideas unless you want to lose a friend or it is affecting other people's lives.

[Neilm]

The American military did not believe that they would need to compensate for relativity when they commissioned the GPS constallation. They (reluctantly) encorperated a method of compensation with the assumption that they wouldn't have to turn it on. After finding that the position was wandering by about 10km a day it was turned on and the problem went away.

[cdev]

Teach them the scientific method..

>"who believes that the pharmaceutical industry cover up all sorts of alternative medicines because they can't make money from them"

That is in my experience, quite true.

I could give you a lot of examples of treatments that exist for common health issues which aren't at all well known because they work and are cheap.

Example, resveratrol for joints/disc/back pain and arthritis

It actually helps repair joints.  Basically, the health related media largely ignores cutting edge science. There are huge important facts that are "facts" in the scientific community which have been waiting 20 years to become "facts" in the popular health and science media. Don't hold your breath.

The people who are the most pissed are the scientists. When a scientist has discovered something they know would help a lot of people and has confronted the pharm industry disinformation machine they are not happy campers.

[metrologist]

I wish I could articulate this in a meaningful way...

There was an article of sorts that touched on how we perceive those things that are not really perceivable by us humans, like quantum physics and experiments trying to prove string theory and such (I think it was actually about detecting neutrinos). We build these instrument to make measurements so that we are able to physically perceive our hypothesis. There was suggestion that the instruments we build have our own perceptive bias built into them, so they tend to show us what we want them to show us, because we have built them to do so. We still have no way of knowing if the instrument is showing us what we think it is or if it is responding to something else entirely. We end up making correlations the best we can and that can leave room for interpretation and argument. How could one prove this is not all a figment, that we are all merely beings of thought and all of this a product of our collective imagination?

Oh, tired old argument...

[CJay]

>"who believes that the pharmaceutical industry cover up all sorts of alternative medicines because they can't make money from them"

I could give you a lot of examples of treatments that exist for common health issues which aren't at all well known because they work and are cheap.

Example, resveratrol for joints/disc/back pain and arthritis

It actually helps repair joints. 

With respect, you know about it, Google knows about it, it's dirt cheap and available over the net without a prescription, it's even been talked about on Oprah, it's not exactly the cover up of the century is it...

Anyway, I can see this subject won't go anywhere but downhill so I'm bowing out gracefully.

[lordvader88]

There's a group of people that say (although I really don't know what all they say, so)  basically macroscopic geology is due to electromagnetism like lightning bolts and plasma's from the sun. And not due to gravity and erosion on the macroscopic scale.

I know enough to know these people have gone off track, and that many of the internet promoters of this type of sci-fi don't know near enough physics, math/etc, to see whats lacking in the above mentioned ideas, and thats a real lack of math and equations to go along with the "gravity is actually electromagnetism" folks.

And far from understanding or knowing 1/10 of whats "known" by "experts", I just know its not the more sci-fi stuff like they say

[lordvader88]

And I know some incredibly unpopular and unknown and illegal truths, that the average TV-head has no idea about, or thinks knowing certain things makes them the devil basically.

Science is my ally, and a powerful ally it is.

[Zero999]

Some people just cannot be persuaded or argued with and it's best to smile politely, back away while maintaining eye contact and leave them to their ideas unless you want to lose a friend or it is affecting other people's lives.

I say, it depends on how well you know them. I think you'd be a bad friend if you didn't tell them the truth, but I agree that if they won't accept it, there's no point in pushing the issue.

[hamdi.tn]

the sad part is when engineers , a group of ppl supposedly able of critical thinking, still believe earth is 6000 year old and all the crap that goes by religious crap. i totally respect ppl belief when it come to spirituality but when they try to prouve scientific stuff with their books i totally lose it , and baseball bat can be really useful.

[Electro Detective]

Some people just cannot be persuaded or argued with and it's best to smile politely, back away while maintaining eye contact and leave them to their ideas unless you want to lose a friend or it is affecting other people's lives.

I say, it depends on how well you know them. I think you'd be a bad friend if you didn't tell them the truth, but I agree that if they won't accept it, there's no point in pushing the issue.

Catch 22  ?   

[rstofer]

It's best to just smile and wave...

Never try to teach a pig to sing.  It wastes your time and annoys the pig.

[Electro Detective]

the sad part is when engineers , a group of ppl supposedly able of critical thinking, still believe earth is 6000 year old and all the crap that goes by religious crap. i totally respect ppl belief when it come to spirituality but when they try to prouve scientific stuff with their books i totally lose it , and baseball bat can be really useful.

So what's your take if those  'engineers , a group of ppl supposedly able of critical thinking'   can prove their case without ANY doubt ?

Does the baseball bat get packed away or used on the messengers anyway...     out of habit   

 

[Cerebus]

the sad part is when engineers , a group of ppl supposedly able of critical thinking, still believe earth is 6000 year old and all the crap that goes by religious crap. i totally respect ppl belief when it come to spirituality but when they try to prouve scientific stuff with their books i totally lose it , and baseball bat can be really useful.

A guy I knew at university is one of the leading lights of the British 'young world' creationists despite having a doctorate in biochemistry.

He's a perfectly rational man, can follow a logical argument, and is no stranger to scientific method. I just cannot, for the life of me, understand how he can hold the views he has. I can quite understand that a Christian upbringing, and not just any upbringing, but one in the Plymouth Brethren, can put a lot of pressure on him to want to think a particular way, but not how this otherwise intelligent scientist can ignore the evidence in front of him. Worse still, as he actively publicly argues for young world creationism, he gets faced with the conflicting evidence again and again. I repeat, he's rational and intelligent, and as a biochemist is well equipped to properly understand some of the most compelling evidence for evolution and against young earth creationism, yet continues to honestly believe that the world is a few thousand years old.

As I say, I cannot comprehend how he can still hold to his views in the face of all the evidence.

[Electro Detective]

and if  'all the evidence'  is centuries old rehashed     ??

[james_s]

You don't.

You will never win a religious argument with facts and data because beliefs are not based on facts and data. You can't win, it will just frustrate you to try. By "religious" I don't necessarily mean regarding god and the supernatural or whatnot but it seems to be the same mechanism in the brain that latches onto all sorts of beliefs.

[hamdi.tn]

the sad part is when engineers , a group of ppl supposedly able of critical thinking, still believe earth is 6000 year old and all the crap that goes by religious crap. i totally respect ppl belief when it come to spirituality but when they try to prouve scientific stuff with their books i totally lose it , and baseball bat can be really useful.

So what's your take if those  'engineers , a group of ppl supposedly able of critical thinking'   can prove their case without ANY doubt ?

Does the baseball bat get packed away or used on the messengers anyway...     out of habit?   

 

i will love to see a fact based debate to prove what it's already proved  all i get for now is "it's in the book so it must be true"

[IanB]

yet continues to honestly believe that the world is a few thousand years old

He doesn't honestly believe it.

What has happened is his brain is divided into different compartments, the scientific compartment and the religious compartment. When he argues for a young earth he is voicing the agenda of the religious compartment and suppressing the agenda of the scientific compartment. It has to be understood that most people, most of the time, have an agenda, and what they say is driven by their personal agenda. There is nearly nobody who speaks impartially, based on a purely rational assessment of the situation.

Scientists give the illusion of being rational because their agenda happens to align with what we think is factual, therefore we end up agreeing with what they say.

[Brumby]

I can't say I've delved into the subject too deeply, but on my occasional encounters with the "anti gravity" mindset, I get somewhat bemused when I see apparatus that looks more like electromagnetic levitation than gravity defying.

Here, even so-called experimental results are useless when the underlying principles are wrongly applied.




Or is this just me?

[xrunner]

Q: How do you debunk people that does not believe in experimental facts?

A: You can't.

[cdev]

The scientific process helps us get to the truth by a process of differential diagnosis.

Science is a discipline / process of creation of mental models and challenging them..
that helps us continually adjust to complex fact situations.

The problem these days is there are people who don't understand that process AT ALL, which is something we all are to blame for, who being so clueless, they want "money" (which is an artificial construct) to buy factuality. To buy laws. To buy "right".

But it doesn't. because its an artificial construct. There are some people who just hate that, they hate it so much they want to "get rid of" science, as ludicrous as that sounds.

[DaJMasta]

My usual process is to try to get them to explain why their position is right, find out where in their argument isn't sound, and point that out as a counterpoint.  People are much more open to considering other positions if they realize there is an issue with theirs, and usually when they're not listening to reason or going with a conspiracy theory of some sort, then they're likely pretty closed off to opposing viewpoints.  Usually the people who believe this stuff still do believe in some scientific principals and evidence-based arguments, but they've convinced themselves that their evidence or principals are somehow better than those of the opposing viewpoint.

That said, it's a resource intensive method as you actually have to pay attention to their arguments and research them in some cases.... so for people who I don't really feel connected to, I generally don't bother.  That's when the smile and nod or leaving it with an awkward "I disagree" will do the trick.


For especially elaborate conspiracies or especially simple explanations, Occam's razor could be a good enough argument to be right, but again it's unlikely many who are heavily invested into their version of reality will just accept that their position is flawed.

[Syntax_Error]

My favorite are the flat-earthers. FLAT EARTH. They are real. It's unbelievable.

I've learned so much because of them. Not from them, but indirectly because of them, trying to genuinely humor their argument. I've learned about celestial navigation, astronomy, geometry and trigonometry, land surveying, and even network time protocol servers. All because of them and the idea that I should try to not rely on any authority because...of course it's all LIES!

It really is fascinating and sad all at the same time.

[Halcyon]

People believe what they want to believe and many fail to admit that they could be wrong (either to others or to themselves). This is why you often find the majority of the population with a strong view about a subject exhibit confirmation bias (they cherry-pick information and "facts" which confirms their pre-existing belief).

You'll always find people who:

Consider religious texts as 100% true and interpreted literally
Believe that electrical cables are "directional" and make their audio gear sound better
Have strong, concrete views one way or another with respect to the "Climate Change" debate
Believe that the law of the land doesn't apply to them (e.g.: Sovereign citizens)

... the list goes on forever.

What can you do to change their minds? Absolutely nothing. It takes quite an intelligent and mature person of sound mind to question and challenge their own beliefs, something not particularly common in todays society. Over the years I've learnt to simply listen to their point of view but not attempt to convince them otherwise.

[daqq]

How do you debunk people that does not believe in experimental facts?

You don't.

With stupidity you can deal. With ignorance you can deal.

With willful ignorance you can't do anything. If a person has a mindset that says that anything that is contrary to what he believes in is a hoax/conspiracy/faulty data and is intent on staying in that position than almost nothing will persuade him.

With this type of person you can invest vast quantities of time to expose them to other stuff and after a lot of time and energy has been spent he might start wondering. Sadly, he will generally return to his default state once you stop.

Just look at flat earthers. In the current century.