How to kookify

You can make someone completely immune to an argument before they’ve ever heard it. All you have to do is show them a weak, stupid version of it first, and their brain will refuse the real one for the rest of their life. It’s called inoculation, and it works exactly like a vaccine. A vaccine gives your body a weakened version of a virus, weak enough that you beat it easily. And your immune system builds a defense that fires the next time it sees anything similar. Do the same thing with an idea, and you get the same result.Show someone the dumbest possible version of an argument, from the least credible person available, framed so it collapses immediately. They watch it fall apart. And their brain files it away. Now when the strong version comes, with better evidence and a better messenger, they ignore it completely. The mechanism doesn’t care whether the argument was true.It works exactly as well on a lie as on something true because it targets the shape of an argument, not its content. And that’s why governments, health authorities, and platforms have all adopted it openly over the past years. Whoever decides which arguments get inoculated against, decides which ideas will reach people at all.This is exactly what Alex Jones and Candace Owens do. They take real issues and saturate them with crazy and stupid until the issue has a stigma created around it. This is what the 911 kook movement did to 911. Intelligent people stopped looking into it because the dumbest alternatives possible were presented to them first, loudly and dogmatically. If you have not yet seen the Empire Unmasked do so here. It is everything about 911. International terrorists to do not operate with out covert state support. They do not now and did not then. Ryan Dawson's Anti-neocon Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.ryandawson.org/subscribe