I've known for a long time that some people who are very close to me are somewhat inclined to believe the pseudoscience world, but it always seemed pretty benign. In their everyday lives they're pretty normal people and don't do any crazy things, so this was a topic I mostly avoided and left it at that. After all - they seemed to find psychological value in it. A sense of control over their own lives, a sense of purpose, etc.
Recently I found out however that at least one of them seriously believes Bruce Lipton, who in essence preaches that happy thoughts cure cancer. Now I'm starting to get worried...
Thus I'm wondering - what can I do about it? This is in essence a religious question. They believe this stuff with just anecdotal proof. How do I disprove it without sounding like "Your religion is wrong, convert to my religion, it's right"? Pseudoscientists are pretty good at weaving a web of lies that sound quite logical and true.
The one thing I've come up with is to somehow introduce them to classical logical fallacies. That at least doesn't directly conflict with their beliefs. But beyond that I have no idea.
And perhaps more important is the question - should I do anything about it? The pseudoscientific world is a rosy one. You're in control of your life and your body, you control random events, and most importantly - if you do everything right, it'll all be OK. Even if I succeed in crushing that illusion, I have nothing to put in its place. I'm worried that revealing just how truly bleak the reality is might devastate them. They seem to be drawing a lot of their happiness from these pseudoscientific beliefs, either directly or indirectly.
And anyway, more likely that I won't succeed but just ruin my (healthy) relationship with them. Maybe it's best just not to interfere at all? Even if they end up hurting themselves, well... it was their choice. Of course, that also means that I'll be standing idly by and allowing bullshit to propagate, which is kinda not a very good thing. However right now they are not very pushy about their beliefs, and only talk about them if the topic comes up naturally, so I guess it's not that bad.
Any thoughts?
Perhaps I focused too much on 'mainstream' when I really meant 'outside view'. Obviously, outside view can take both of these into account to different degrees, but essentially, the point is that I think teaching the person to use outside view is better, and outside view is heavily biased (arguably justifiably so) in favor of the mainstream.
But that's my point: a lot of different contrarian groups have what the OP calls "a web of lies that sound quite logical and true". Do you really think you can teach them how to identify such a web of lies while they are stuck in one?
Instead, I think you need to get them unstuck using outside view, and then you can teach them how to identify truth correctly.
Yes. The masses try to justify their ingroup, they don't try to seek truth.
The way is see it is this: if I got into a debate with a conspiracy theorist, I'm sure they would have much better object-level arguments than I do; I bet they would be able to consistently win when debating me. The reason for this is that I'm not an expert on their specific conspiracy, while they know every single shred of evidence in favor of their theory. This means that I need to rely on meta-level indicators like nobody respecting holocaust deniers in order to determine the truth of their theories, unless I want to spend huge amounts of time researching them.
Sure, there are cases where I think I can do better than most people (computer science, math, physics, philosophy, gender, generally whatever I decide is interesting and start learning a lot about) and in those case I'm willing to look at the object level, but otherwise I really don't trust my own ability to figure out the truth - and I shouldn't, because it's necessary to know a lot of the facts before you can even start formulating sensible ideas on your own.
If we take this to the extreme where someone doesn't understand truth, logic, what constitutes evidence or anything like that, I really would start out by teaching them how to deal with stuff when you don't understand it in detail, not how to deal with it when you do.
Let's sort out the terminology. I think we mean different things by "outside view".
As far as I understand you, for you the "outside view" means not trying to come to any conclusions on your own, but rather accept what the authorities (mainstream, experts, etc.) tell you. Essentially, when you recommend "outside view" to people you tell them not to think for themselves but rather accept what others are telling them (see e.g. here).
I understand "outside view" a bit more traditionall... (read more)