How I talk to the victims of conspiracy theories

There's an old quote that I'm probably butchering, and I don't know who said it, but it goes along the lines of "you can't use logic to get someone out of something they didn't use logic to get themselves into."

I used to be someone who would perpetually argue with friends and family members who believed in all this conspiracy crap, usually devolving to me sending links to Snopes and Politifact and whatnot, but I later realized that it was completely irrelevant, and probably just made them feel stronger in their beliefs, since they could always just dismiss me as "in on it" whenever I said something they didn't like.

Nowadays, I honestly just don't talk to family members and (former) friends who believe in really problematic nonsense, since by the time that they've fallen into the QAnon rabbit hole, it's not like a beautiful and logical argument from me to going to have any effect.

I'm not sure what the best strategy for fighting this kind of weird mass idiotic groupthink is. There's a part of me that thinks that the best thing to do is to make fun of them and mock them, but of course that's a lot easier to do when it's not your friend of family-member on the other end.

What do you do when there are no concrete examples or relevant scientific facts at the time?

How do you counter a conspiracy theorist when they then also point out very real conspiracies that have definitely happened and are well-known and well-documented?

Conspiracies definitely do happen and have been perpetrated by institutions that are supposed to be regarded with the highest trust, such as the people tasked with protecting us with their intelligence. How do you restore faith in those institutions?

Would you have argued against MK-ultra before having known it was real?

In the article, the mother was attempting to indoctrinate her son with “lizard people” conspiracy theories from a young age, among other things.

At the extremes, these conspiracy theories are clearly false. The problem is that it’s not simply harmless to believe something so wrong at large scale. The believers aren’t just holding an opinion, they’re making decisions, taking action, voting, and even at times encouraging violence based on beliefs that are clearly wrong.

My personal experience has always been that fact checking fails with the more extreme cases -- in that it wins the argument but fails to win over the person. In fact, that kind of win often seems to "inoculate" the person against anything you have to say in the future.

When facts and logic fail, I usually fall back on the other two of the good old Greek trio: ethos, pathos and logos.

First you need to understand what feelings are driving these individuals. Usually it's fear and uncertainty. Until you address the root cause of those feelings (which usually differ from person to person), no amount of fact checking is going to have a permanent effect.

The other thing is to build mutual respect, even if you don't agree with the person. Branding someone an idiot is generally not considered a winning strategy when it comes to persuasion.

It is kind of interesting to think about how we got here. If you question anything mainstream these days, or try to discuss an alternative viewpoint, the conversation almost always turns vitriol. It's unfortunate, because there have been a lot of "conspiracy theories" that have been shown fully- or partially-true with time, but people seem to be very cult-like in their beliefs, even if they don't truly understand their beliefs. It's odd to me, and I wish we weren't like this. I've lost a lot of friends in harsh ways because of things I have become more outspoken about recently, yet we had been friends for years beforehand even when I knew they had the opposing view -- I was simply too afraid to share my view for fear of losing friends. But alas...

Edit: it's kind of crazy that I'm getting downvoted for sharing something that I would've hoped people would agree with. I guess not, and this proves my point. Man, we live in crazy times.