9 out of 10 experts agree. It's that last one. That one person is just enough for people to latch on. Then, of the 9, 6 of them get tired of yelling at clouds and quit. The 6 get replaced with those that believe the one so that there's not 7. That goes on for long enough, you get people in charge that do away with vaccinations and measles has a come back.
That's not actually how the measles thing happens.
What really happens is that the one nutter stands in the town square ranting about lizardmen and 99.99% of people ignore him, or an actual scientist gets bored and challenges him to a debate and then lizardmen guy gets trounced and further discredited, and everything is fine. Until someone with an authoritarian streak gets tired of winning debates with lizardmen guy and instead tries to shut him up, or starts suppressing data that doesn't actually support the crazy theory but is kind of inconvenient or complicated to explain.
Then you're screwed because you're letting the conspiracy guy point to an actual conspiracy to suppress his views, which provides evidentiary support for the claim that their crazy theory isn't mainstream because it's being suppressed. Meanwhile you get free speech defenders concerned about a bad precedent coming out to oppose you, and then political lines get drawn over something that never should have been partisan, but now everyone is expected to pick a side. And a lot of people end up on the side of lizardmen guy.
But once it's partisan, people are hopeless at being neutral. If you're on lizardmen guy's side then you're giving him the benefit of the doubt and on the lookout for any fault in his critics, which is how you get way too many people actually believing in lizardmen.
The problem is fundamentally that censoring something discredits you rather than them.
Is the number of people high enough to make them right?
For example if one doctor says I have cancer but 100 electricians say I don't I'm cancer free
> Is the number of people high enough to make them right?
The term you are looking for is 'an argument to popularity'. It's one of many such logical fallacies.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Logical_fallacy
9 out of 10 experts agree. It's that last one. That one person is just enough for people to latch on. Then, of the 9, 6 of them get tired of yelling at clouds and quit. The 6 get replaced with those that believe the one so that there's not 7. That goes on for long enough, you get people in charge that do away with vaccinations and measles has a come back.
That's not actually how the measles thing happens.
What really happens is that the one nutter stands in the town square ranting about lizardmen and 99.99% of people ignore him, or an actual scientist gets bored and challenges him to a debate and then lizardmen guy gets trounced and further discredited, and everything is fine. Until someone with an authoritarian streak gets tired of winning debates with lizardmen guy and instead tries to shut him up, or starts suppressing data that doesn't actually support the crazy theory but is kind of inconvenient or complicated to explain.
Then you're screwed because you're letting the conspiracy guy point to an actual conspiracy to suppress his views, which provides evidentiary support for the claim that their crazy theory isn't mainstream because it's being suppressed. Meanwhile you get free speech defenders concerned about a bad precedent coming out to oppose you, and then political lines get drawn over something that never should have been partisan, but now everyone is expected to pick a side. And a lot of people end up on the side of lizardmen guy.
But once it's partisan, people are hopeless at being neutral. If you're on lizardmen guy's side then you're giving him the benefit of the doubt and on the lookout for any fault in his critics, which is how you get way too many people actually believing in lizardmen.
The problem is fundamentally that censoring something discredits you rather than them.
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