Ask HN: What is going on?

Bad day and ranting a bit, sorry. Just reached a very strange WTF moment. I'll be submitting my notice at work on Tuesday (it's a holiday on Monday). I'm no rock star programmer, I just hit my tolerance limits for ignoring problems on the purely professional front.

Then, later today I went for a drink with a colleague, only to find he's a holocaust denier, Hitler was only trying to do the right thing etc. I found I couldn't mount any argument against his views - I had been indoctrinated etc, etc.

And then I come home and have a chat with my normally right-on room-mate, and somehow we get onto vaccinations, and she's considering not vaccinations her (future) kids on the basis her cousin hasn't vaccinated here and they're ok. And she is deeply suspicious of vaccinations in the face of decades of evidence supporting them. She left the room. I had tried to explain the basis of vaccinations, herd effect etc but just upset her (though calling her potentially negligent really did not help).

It's a day where no amount of attempts at explanations are sticking. On the professional front, oddly enough, I'm more accepting of that. But facts and history that I hold more dear are just getting eroded. Is there a way to convince and persuade without alienating people?

Yes, sometimes explanations and reasonable arguments can just derail conversations completely. For preventing that, I find David Burns' disarming technique[0] really useful. It is about "finding truth in what the other person is saying, even if it seems blatantly wrong, or illogical, or exaggerated." His podcast is amazing.

Perhaps part of what your room mate is saying is that she is concerned about the well-being of her (future) children? Surely that's truly good. She's also interested in avoiding certain medical treatments that are excessive or unnecessary, which is also good.

Don't know about the Holocaust-denying colleague, but sometimes xenophones have a fear of losing their job to someone else, which could leave them unable to economically support themselves or their family, and maybe they really enjoy the job they have. If your colleague talks about you being indoctrinated, then he must have a high regard of the truth (which is good), and if he's interested in how indoctrination works, he may even be interested in reading about Chomsky's propaganda model[1].

Of course, this disarming stuff is only useful if you actually want to prevent conflict with other people, and it's totally legitimate to have a conflict with anti-vaxers and Holocaust deniers. But also, you live and work together, and constant conflicts may not get you nor them anywhere but down.

Also, Last Week Tonight has quite a good episode on vaccines[2] (but showing that to your roomie might not calm things down).

WTF indeed, though.

[0]: https://feelinggood.com/2017/12/11/066-five-secrets-training...

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VG_s2PCH_c

[2]: https://chomsky.info/consent01/

Thank you. I'll check out those links.

Long day, so will sleep on it before doing so.

Quite saddened by the day though.

Could have created another problem though. Plenty of flat-eathers[0] out there.

[0]: https://theflatearthsociety.org/home/index.php/about-the-soc...

True indeed. I was now trying to create an even more implausible conspiracy theory, but then I run the risk of actually starting it. Maybe that's how all conspiracies were born? :P