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?
Anecdotally I am intelligent and reasonable, but when I was younger around when 9/11 happened I couldn’t wrap my head around why someone would do what they did, it was to me incomprehensible, irrational, my world view couldn’t account for what happened. In that null space conspiracy theories created plausible explanations for my young and impressionable mind to latch onto.
I soon began questioning authority in general, the nationalized narratives provided were clearly propagandized, and in that wake of dissonance real conspiracies, like the war on drugs, started to add credibility to other outlandish ones. It is intelligent to question, and even entertain that which is irrational from time to time, if not just to test the waters, so to speak.