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I saw a guy in a Denver coffee shop try to explain the moon landing to a skeptic
He had a whole notebook of diagrams and old newspaper clippings. They argued for over an hour about the flag waving and the shadows in the photos. It made me think about how people pick their facts to fit a story they already believe. Has anyone else seen a public debate like that change how they listen to these arguments?
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nora_barnes1mo ago
My uncle spent three years trying to convince his neighbor the Earth was round, which reminds me of what abby836 said.
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What gets me is the social cost of these debates. That skeptic probably left feeling more sure of himself, not less. The guy with the notebook gave him a full hour of focused attention, which just made his wrong ideas feel important and worth discussing. Public arguments like that can actually make bad beliefs stronger by treating them as serious options. It turns a false idea into a conversation between two "sides" instead of just a mistake. I've started to see these talks as a kind of performance that rarely changes minds.
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