#CovidIsNotOver: Why are so many so committed to poor quality arguments?
The knots into which a person will tie themselves, who wants nothing more than for SARS-CoV-2 to be a thing of the past.
The ol' gishgallop
If it's not one convenient, specious argument, it's another. In my experience at least, it's exceedingly rare to find a denier who understands much less can expound upon the various theories they regurgitate. How could they? Peel back a layer or two and it's all obvious nonsense, even to them. They just don't look. It doesn't matter, as long as anyone who inflames their cognitive dissonance remains distracted or deranged.
Decision-based evidence-making
It's not like you [or me or so many others] aren't doing/saying 'enough' or 'the right thing'. Deniers frame it as a lack of proof and put the onus on anyone but themselves – yet another illegitimate form of downloading 'pErSoNaL rEsPoNSiBiLiTy' – when really it's a choice they made and continue to make. Some may even double-down in the face of opposition, their resolve strengthened as they encounter contradictory information. But, until each of them is willing to make a different choice, we'll continue to be confronted with Decision-Based Evidence-Making in EBDM clothing.
Manufactured consent
Why is anyone making this choice? Why don't they 'want' to believe so many things that seem all too clear to so many others? I infer a good chunk of it is manufactured consent. Of course it would come to pass in this era, wherein we've made it easier than ever to tell people what they want, that doing so is the wrecking ball destroying our civilization. The very thing that's enabled, nay prompted deniers to deny is what would need to be reversed or overwhelmed, like for like... like+1, really.
Planck's Principle
Short of wresting control over all avenues of messaging+media away from the oligarchs and plutocrats – the feudal lords who no longer fear being found out – the only thing I can think of that has ever overcome this much lying is results-over-time: people who live according to the 'new' reality and who don't suffer the same consequences. Humanity has always found a way to reject this kind of “proof” though, until most if not all of the holders-on have gone to their graves; aka Planck's Principle. Pity, then that the lords are all too keenly aware of this vulnerability and have laid siege to every one of us who's refusing to comply, in hopes of outwaiting/outlasting any and all who remain part of the control group.
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