Finding Common Ground

Any argument an individual makes is built upon a huge and complex web of personal knowledge and beliefs, both true and false. You have one huge and complex web, and your friend has a different one. You cannot have a useful discussion with your friend if there’s no area in which your web of knowledge overlaps their web of knowledge.

Perhaps the most common mistake that people make when trying to debunk something in a person-to-person setting is assuming there is common ground where there is not. You are automatically forming a set of mental assumptions about what your friend thinks. This is a mixture of both overestimating their knowledge (for example, assuming your friend knows what a chemical compound is), and underestimating it (for example, assuming they do not know that homeopathic remedies are heavily diluted). This leads to ineffective communication, and in the case of underestimating it could lead to a feeling of being insulted and belittled that will cause your friend to grow defensive and suspicious.

It’s vitally important to establish true common ground and a shared understanding of where the differences actually begin. In his book Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, Daniel Dennett gives a three-step process designed to narrow in on this ideal state.

• Re-express their position better than they do themselves

• List points of agreement, especially uncommon points

• Mention anything that you have learned from them

Step one is to re-express your friend’s position better than they did themselves. This will do two things. Firstly, it will show your friend that you understand what they are trying to say and are taking a genuine interest in it. Secondly, it will show them that you are not trying to belittle their argument by making it seem silly. By presenting an even better version of their argument it raises the bar for you, and if you go on to refute their argument then the refutation will have much more validity—both because you’ve shown you understood it, and because you actually improved it before you analyzed it.

This discussion technique is known as the “principle of charity.” On Wikipedia (a forum beset with differences of opinion) a related concept is “assume good faith.” By giving your friend’s argument the best possible interpretation, you strip away your own bias to simply reject it or even laugh at it. You do your best to try to make their argument and their evidence actually work. This guarantees that when the flaws in their argument are revealed, they will be much closer to the bone, and based far more on a shared framework, and hence it will be far more likely your friend will take them seriously.

Step two is to list the points of agreement. This can be a gradual exploratory process, as it is not always going to be immediately apparent what the points of agreement are. You might need to do a little hunting to find out where the boundaries of disagreement are. You might want to start with something that’s very uncontroversial but is directly related to the topic at hand. For example, with Chemtrails, you could ask them if they are concerned about pollution around airports. If they are, then you can share your own level of concern (if any). I used to live ten miles from Los Angeles International Airport, and just a mile from Santa Monica Airport. The noise from both bothered me, and I did have some concern about exhaust emissions contributing to air pollution.

If the topic of discussion is highly contentious, then it might be better to discuss an unrelated topic first, just to feel out the general parameters of the discussion, and to allow you both to get to know each other’s mind a little. For example, when I met with a well-known Chemtrail promoter, we first talked about the pharmaceutical industry, and how we both felt there were areas where it was putting profits too far above the well-being of people—particularly when it came to marketing of drugs for what seemed almost like invented conditions, like chronic social anxiety. Talking about this topic, and not agreeing on everything, helped break the ice, and to show both of us that the other was willing listen, and to disagree without malice.

Step three is to mention anything you might have learned from your friend. This serves multiple purposes. It increases rapport, as your friend will feel they are actually communicating with you. It also creates in your friend’s mind a better overall picture of what you know and understand. Fundamentally, though, it will cement the common ground. You learning things from them lays the foundation for them learning things from you.

Validate Their Genuine Concerns

It may seem counterintuitive to suggest that conspiracy theorists have genuine concerns. Indeed, the ridiculous nature of many of the more extreme conspiracy theories makes it tempting to dismiss the theorist off the bat. But when we talk about the “genuine concerns” of your friend, we do not mean the extreme claims in their theory. Instead we are referring to real-world concerns that are related to the domain of the theory.

Consider “Chemtrails,” a seemingly ridiculous theory about a secret decades-old plot to alter the climate by spraying things out of planes without anyone noticing or complaining. There are actually genuine concerns in this area. Planes (like most vehicles) are sources of pollution. The contrails that planes leave behind are just composed of water, but they are a stark reminder that the plane’s exhaust is spewing things out into the upper atmosphere. Planes contribute to atmospheric pollution in the form of small amounts of toxic compounds, and large amounts of carbon dioxide. Contrail clouds can turn an otherwise blue sky milky white, a form of visual pollution. They can even contribute somewhat to climate change by (inadvertently) trapping heat at night.

The topic of geoengineering itself contains many genuine concerns. There’s the uncertainty of the potential side effects on the climate, on human health, and what will happen if we do it and then stop. Rose Cairns, a science policy researcher, notes that the Chemtrail believers who think that Chemtrails are a covert way of implementing geoengineering actually are quite right to be concerned about geoengineering, even if they mistakenly think that it has already started.

If a Truther tells you that 9/11 was used as a pretext for war with Iraq, or a Chemtrailer tells you they think geoengineering is too risky to rush into, or a Flat Earther tells you that we put too much blind faith in the authority of science, then tell them that yes, you can see their point, and you might even be able to find some areas of agreement.

This validation need not even be something you personally agree is a problem. Perhaps they dislike how contrails sometimes cover the sky. This might not bother you, but you can still see how someone might be bothered by it. It might be something that you’ve never even thought about. Either way, you can tell them at least that you see their point. While it is not common ground in the sense of both agreeing with the same concern, it’s still common ground if you mutually get to understand the point of view of the other.

On a broader level, something underlying most conspiracy theories is a profound distrust of people in power. It’s very important to explain to them just how much you yourself share in that distrust. Be perfectly honest here, tell them who you do or do not trust, how much you trust them, and why. Distrust, or at least suspicion, of authority is a healthy quality to have.

To the extent that you share their concerns, then validate those concerns. Where you don’t share the same degree of concern, then try to understand why they are so concerned and explain your understanding to them. If you fundamentally disagree with their distrust, then at least acknowledge and discuss that distrust and your disagreement, and then use that shared understanding of the situation to build a constructive exploration of the actual evidence.

Illuminating the Rabbit Hole

For people to escape from the rabbit hole they need to be able to see where they are, where they might get to, and how to get from one place to another. Carl Sagan famously described science as “A Candle in the Darkness,” in the subtitle of his book, The Demon-Haunted World.

Candles are great, but we need more than candles. We need flashlights, we need spotlights, we need floodlights. We need emergency exit row lighting, night vision goggles, flares, flash-bangs, and flaming torches. There’s a lot of people down a lot of rabbit holes, and lighting a few candles isn’t going to cut it.

We’ve seen how some people, like Willie, can identify a pivotal point, a key piece of information they were shown that led them to start questioning other things that they thought were true. Other people, such as Abby Martin, had a more gradual emergence as they slowly learned more about the real world. I refer to these two variations of illuminating the rabbit hole as the spotlight and the floodlight.

Spotlight Debunking

The spotlight technique is to shine the light on one single claim of evidence, or one particular claim. There are certain core beliefs that most people in a particular conspiracy share. In the case of Chemtrails, the most common core belief is that contrails cannot persist more than a few minutes. This belief is false, and in this case we have a very powerful spotlight in the form of many old books on clouds, each of which mentions contrails and each of which says that contrails can persist for a long time if conditions are right.

I have a personal collection of about twenty different such books. Using them I posted a four-minute video to YouTube back in 2014. I very simply explained what people were saying about contrails being short and Chemtrails being long, then I just went through seventy years’ worth of books on clouds, said what date each was from, and read the section on how long contrails should last.

This shone a bright spotlight on that one core claim. It’s possible for the believer to double down and say that Chemtrails have been sprayed for decades, but most people who think that contrails can’t persist will combine this belief with their own personal memories of not really remembering seeing contrails before hearing about the Chemtrail theory. But at the very least the spotlight has revealed a problem with their theory. If trails can persist then why do the Chemtrail promoters say they cannot? And if they cannot persist then why do seventy years of books say they do?

Carey Dunne of the UK newspaper the Guardian used this spotlight with a Chemtrail-believing couple in Northern California.