Dear lemmy, someone very close to my heart is starting to fall into conspiracy theories. It’s heartbreaking. Among other things, he has now told me that soy beans are not supposed to be consumed by human beings and is convinced that despite the literal centuries of human soy bean cultivation and consumption, we shouldn’t eat it or anything derived from it for this reason (ie tofu, soy sauce, etc…evidence that soy is present in other common foods doesn’t seem to register with him).
I don’t even know where he got this information from and can’t find a single source to back it up (even disingenuously). I’ve tried explaining to him that sure, in its original state it’s not edible, but undergoes processing (LIKE MANY OTHER FOODS) to become edible. And that this has gone on since at least the 11th century, so it’s not like Big Soy is trying to poison the little people.
He’s normally a very reasonable and intelligent person, and I don’t know how to reach him. I thought it might be helpful to show him where these myths have come from with hard data sources to prove it. He seems open to the possibility, so I don’t think he’s a lost cause yet!
Help?
Three factors that can lead people to believe misinformation are: seeing patterns where none exist, people who strongly trust their intuition/gut reaction, and being ostracized. My advice would be to not belittle their beliefs, try to engage with them and ask how theyve come to believe such things and if there is an opening to tactfully direct them to other information or interpretations of the same information do that.
Yes! This is actually a discussion I had with him recently. The subject of men’s “empowerment” leaders had come up (Andrew Tate, etc, who thankfully he hasn’t heard of yet), and we talked about how a lot of men who have been/feel ostracized or marginalized are drawn to these “leaders” who prey on their need for guidance. He seemed genuinely surprised when he realized that a lot of men (humans as a whole, really) want to feel like they’re in control of their own lives, and although many of these kinds of influencers start with reasonable takes, they all kind of redirect to the same kind of messaging: “someone or something is trying to take your power from you”. It’s an irresistible message that people are drawn to without realizing it because they can, in some way, see this “loss of power” happening in some form in their own lives.
We talked about what it would benefit these influencers to spread this kind of talk, and he initially didn’t believe it was about money. He argued that if it was about money, why are they offering this information for free? Which led to the engagement = $$$ Adsense dollars talk.
Overall, it was a great discussion but he’s still really adamant on this soybean thing. I don’t know why or where it came from.
I believe that there’s a key factor present alongside those three: lack of critical thinking. It’s what prevent someone from: