Debunking: Emotions & Community

In politics, we're finding people believing some truly bizarre conspiracies, very easily fact-checked. Often the theories contradict: Covid is a Chinese bioterror weapon and no worse than the flu — those beliefs should take care of themselves. But they are not. And progressives tend to try to debunk the obviously absurd facts that are symptoms of cult-like thinking, with a stunning failure rate. We propose helping people "debunk" their emotional states rather than debunk facts: help people understand what they are getting out of their communities — to become conscious that they are believing things in order to have community, rather than told that the first step is to debunk facts that would cause them to lose friends.