Fuck

This is capitalism

Yeah, it's really hard to get lay people to understand infosec issues. I had to create a separate VLAN for my wife because she couldn't tolerate being behind a VPN or pihole because she wants to click on sponsored ads on Google.

And don't get me started on how she feels about the fact that I password protect all. She knows my password, but still thinks I'm hiding something.

But I work in InfoSec, so of course I'm hiding everything. Just not from her.

Just put a bunch of asterisks everywhere.

Or cannot see it due to the Dunning Kruger Effect. It is very strong in some.

Yeah. They don’t want to be fixed?

You and the guy you're arguing with feel the same way.

One or both of you is wrong.

You know, I appreciate that perspective because I do believe it's important overall if we're ever going to recover as a society, but I'm also concerned that perhaps as a society we're just too far gone. Some people will never get it, and you have to be prepared for that, but I do think it's a good thing to leave that door open for people who eventually come around. If that door isn't open, they'll just go back to their same old echo chambers.

At the same time, be aware that there's a certain combination of narcissism and dunning-kruger which will lead some people to believe you're validating them by listening and asking questions, and they may double down or even go on to be even more confidently outlandish, because someone who seemed smart decided to listen to them and ask them questions, so clearly they must be even more smarter!

Like, you know that technique they teach you in basic interpersonal communication and conflict resolution classes? The one where you're supposed to listen to a person and repeat back what they said before laying out why you disagree with it?

Yeah, that doesn't work when as soon as you finish summarizing their point to them they go "Yeah, exactly, I'm glad you agree," and then change the topic into something even more batshit crazy...

Knowing how to plant the seed is crucial too.

The best way I've found is to just ask questions like you don't understand the topic but are interested in learning more. Their logic is going to have holes, and you want to guide them into stumbling into one.

The hard part is asking probing questions without sounding like you're trying to pull a "gotcha".

At work, the team isn't very good at python. They're mostly SQL people. Which is fine. I'm happy to mentor and guide.

The product lady said to me "can you write a guide on confluence about how to do python good?"

I'm like, people write whole published books about that you gotta pay money for. I'm not going to bang out a couple paragraphs and code blocks and suddenly people are heavy weights.

I wrote something anyway because I don't want to further irritate the product lady.

The entirety of .ml in a nutshell. They even proudly label themselves tankies but if you ask them if they support killing civilians in the Hungarian and Czechoslovakian uprisings, they have no idea what you're talking about. Genocide denying bootlickers the lot.

When I was quite a bit younger I used to argue against young Earth creationists online. Eventually I came to mostly the same conclusion: there's just so much wrong with everything they believe, there's nowhere to even begin taking it all apart. No amount of reason will cut through their faith.

The best thing you can do in these situations is to ask a critically reflective question for them to sit with. You can and never have been able to change someone’s mind just like that. What you can is be part of the web of critical thoughts that help them towards thinking critically about their idea.

The entirety of .ml in a nutshell. They even proudly label themselves tankies but if you ask them if they support killing civilians in the Hungarian and Czechoslovakian uprisings, they have no idea what you're talking about. Genocide denying bootlickers the lot.