Reply #74: How about trying to get them to accept evidence when they don't

[politicat]

want to do something that is scientifically sound? (Like... oh... vaccination.) Evidence is only useful over there when it confirms their beliefs; when there is evidence that fails to prop up their belief systems, then they revert to anecdote and accuse the evidence of being tampered with.

On the larger point, I think one of our cultural issues is that we apply democracy to ideas, possibly because in the pursuit of tolerance, we bend over backwards not to step on anyone's emotional needs. When people conflate their emotional needs with things that are not emotional (such as conflating the emotional need for a Deux ex Machina to cure or explain a child's illness with the real need to find treatment for the condition) it becomes impossible to change the concrete needs with changing evidence because the emotional investment is so high. A lot of people can't break their emotions completely away from their intellectual abilities, and so culturally, we leave emotional areas alone. Now that people are mixing emotion and medicine, or bringing the visceral detestation of X to lay at science's doorstep, that emotional space is growing while the rational space is shrinking.

I should not try to write such sentences at midnight. I do so much better writing Buffy articles about monism and dualism at midnight....