It's definitely complex and may never be completely solved. The biggest thing in my mind is learning how to talk to these people; if someone is trying to make sense of competing opinions with no good standard to judge them by, going up to them and saying "Fuck you idiot, clearly we're right and you're stupid for thinking otherwise" is not productive (granted, this is a straw-man, but some of the vitriol I've seen comes pretty close). You run the risk of creating a serious blowback effect, where your condescension drives them further away from accepting what you're trying to tell them.
It's like a Chinese finger trap: if you want to convince an anti-vaxer, you can't treat them like they're crazy, even if you have an impulse to judge. You have to be able to meet them halfway, and from that point get them to understand the safety profile of vaccines. You don't have to throw numbers in their face, but there has to be some way of speaking to them as a fellow human being: "I know you're scared and you don't know if this is safe, but we don't want your child being hurt either. We've done an incredible amount of testing to make sure vaccines are safe, and we firmly believe they will keep your child as healthy as possible, as well as improving the overall health of the community."
Of course, this is just my opinion. But I really think that empathy will make it much easier to mend these kinds of fissures in our beliefs.
> if you want to convince an anti-vaxer, you can't treat them like they're crazy, even if you have an impulse to judge.
> You run the risk of creating a serious blowback effect, where your condescension drives them further away from accepting what you're trying to tell them.
This is exactly what I am coming from too. In my few years in the programming community, one thing I have noticed is a large population of people who pursue science as a religion. (I mentally tag them the r/atheism crowd.) When you treat something as canon and go up on people's faces as to why they are stupid and wrong, you are not creating a productive discussion.
It's like a Chinese finger trap: if you want to convince an anti-vaxer, you can't treat them like they're crazy, even if you have an impulse to judge. You have to be able to meet them halfway, and from that point get them to understand the safety profile of vaccines. You don't have to throw numbers in their face, but there has to be some way of speaking to them as a fellow human being: "I know you're scared and you don't know if this is safe, but we don't want your child being hurt either. We've done an incredible amount of testing to make sure vaccines are safe, and we firmly believe they will keep your child as healthy as possible, as well as improving the overall health of the community."
Of course, this is just my opinion. But I really think that empathy will make it much easier to mend these kinds of fissures in our beliefs.