Criticizing is easy and pleasant, especially when a person is wrong. Angry condemnation, public ridicule, and debunking propaganda, conspiracy theories, incorrect treatment methods, and misconceptions seem important and useful.
But is that really so? Real facts and observations suggest the opposite. By ridiculing and criticizing, we spread harmful ideas and memes and make their supporters even more convinced of them.
1. Reinforcing misconceptions.
Research shows that after people encounter opposing views, opponents often become even more firmly entrenched in their original views. Especially if it happened publicly, confrontationally, and with ridicule. As Juvenal correctly noted long ago, “opinions are like nails: the more you hammer them, the deeper they sink.” Therefore, you did not ridicule the lie—you only convinced the other person even more that they are right.
2. Spreading lies.
The more often you reproduce lying memes, the more widely they spread. That is why lies and propaganda are often deliberately absurd—it’s a feature, not a bug. By challenging, ridiculing, and discussing them, you only stretch the lie to a new audience and charge it with even more emotion (like a Trojan horse), carrying it where the lie itself cannot get.
The more absurd the lie, the more deeply it can hook you emotionally — and the more deeply you may remember it. It doesn’t matter whether you laugh at it or hate it. You’re helping it stick. Frequent repetition only increases trust and improves recognition. Any publicity is good publicity, except an obituary notice. “There’s no bad publicity except an obituary notice.”
What should we do?
1. The first medical principle — do no harm.
Maintain mental hygiene. Do not allow evil or lies to pass through you. Do not spread them, do not make things worse. This is a very ancient Buddhist rule of mental hygiene: the metaphor of the three monkeys opposing evil: “Do not look at what is wrong, do not listen to what is wrong, do not say what is wrong.” Support and call things by their proper names — this is not true. This is evil.
2. Do medical triage.
Choose those whom you can still help, where your efforts will be effective. Where the “crystallization of delusion” has already occurred, you are powerless. But where there is a willingness to talk, where there is hope — that is where you are needed. You can persuade people offline, but talking to bots carries the risk of becoming infected yourself.
3. Identify the need.
And then find how to satisfy it in a better, healthier, and more effective way. A person does not consciously and deliberately choose to be wrong; they are looking for a way to satisfy their needs, often following innate instincts and cognitive biases. Recognize the need — and offer a whole spectrum of ways to satisfy it instead of a black-and-white “right-wrong.”
4. Find another Self.
When propaganda or beliefs become fused with a person’s identity, they are difficult to separate. A core belief is absorbed uncritically and is not questioned; a person “merges” with it, and changing or challenging a cultural dogma means breaking that connection and “losing oneself.” After all, these are not simply views — they are part of one’s identity. Therefore, when persuading someone, it is so important to separate the person’s identity from their misconceptions and show that they are more than those misconceptions.
5. Show them a cool tribe they can join.
Often, an opinion or position is not simply a personal choice, but a marker of belonging to a certain “majority” where it is safe and where you are recognized as one of their own. Show them that there is a cooler “majority.”
6. Make changing one’s mind less painful than persisting in it.
Tell your own examples from your life, when you were fooled, did not want to admit it, and were glad to “come to your senses.” Give historical examples of when people were deceived by propaganda and used. Create a feeling of joyful “Hurray, now I know how it should be, and finally I am no longer doing it wrong.”
7. Be a missionary of your ideas, values, and beliefs. Tell people everywhere what you do and why you do not do certain things, and why they are important to you. Be a mentor, teach, spread, and plant the seeds of these ideas and values.