DU philosophers, thinkers- my friend now posting Q "Covid is fake" bs, asking how does anyone know

[mahina]

Unless it’s happening to you?”

I’m going to do my best here but if you have any polished nuggets of reasoning, it could really help out.

Mahalo in advance.

[Maru Kitteh]

1. could you be a little more specific?

[Nevilledog]

2. I'd start by asking them questions.

Why do they think it's fake?
What evidence do they have?

That'll give you some ideas.

[Brainfodder]

3. Advise them to call their nearest hospital and ask them that question.

So all 140K+ obituaries are fake too?

[FM123]

4. Hard to reason with kooks like that.

Perhaps you can refer him to Trump's friend Chuck Woolery the game show guy - he was spouting the same nonsense about covid then his son got sick the next day.
https://news.yahoo.com/chuck-woolery-says-everyone-lying-210852721.html

[SWBTATTReg]

5. Tell them to go and try to get into the hospital for some reason. They'll find out the reality of

the situation when they don't let them in (or just in a certain part of the hospital only), being that more than likely, only a certain part of the hospital is open to the public if at all, the rest of the hospital is closed off or isolated due to the CV.

[ismnotwasm]

6. Well. I work in a hospital I'm an RN

I’ve spent hours in isolation doing dialysis on Covid patients. It’s real to me, I mean, it’s a real as MRSA or tuberculosis or Hepatitis B. I could tell a lot of stories.

As of July 16th, my Seattle area four hospital system
Is at 36 positive patients. My hospital has 6 with 4 pending. I’m looking at the data as I type this.

We were at zero a couple of weeks ago. Zero.

Edit to add the height was 122 patients in April

[The Magistrate]

7. Tell Him You Cannot Be Sure He Exists, Ma'am

Let him know he is nothing but a thought in your own mind that your own mind perceives, and that since you have stopped thinking of him now, therefore he has ceased to exist....

Back it up by breaking off contact with the fucking idiot.

[mahina]

9. I'm just seeing it as an opportunity as there are very few chances to pierce the veil.

Thank you though Magistrate.

[The Magistrate]

26. More An Exercise In Humor Than Serious Advice, Ma'am

The number of things people must take the report of others for amounts to pretty nearly the whole of existence as experienced. There really is not anything serious about his claiming he cannot trust medical reports and expertise --- it is a game, not a reasoned view he is willing to follow through. He obviously takes as true a great deal of nonesense he has neither personal experience nor personal knowledge of. It cannot be otherwise, if he expresses belief in any Q claims. He takes them on report, like he takes just about everything else. He simply selects what he wishes to skeptical about, like people who enjoy quoting the prophet who says they shall beat their swords into plowshares while ignoring the prophet who says they shall beat their plowshares into swords. The only criteria he exercises for what he credits and what he doubts is entertainment value --- he enjoys feeling he sees what others are not able to see, it makes him feel superior, special, not just one of the herd. Which is of course exactly what he is. It is what everybody is, struggle against it though some may. Compared to the infinite chaos and blank indifference of the Universe, what else could any of us be?

[dawg day]

27. Good thought--

"You are not me. So you don't exist. Now do you want to recognize that Covid exists even if you don't have it, or admit you don't exist because you're not me?"

LOL.

[Nevilledog]

31. *snicker*

[Takket]

8. any such person should volenteer in the covid ward at their hospital, otherwise shut the fuck up

[Alex4Martinez]

10. There's no fixing stupid. Ask them to prove the sun exists, or how magnets work.

Most of what we think we know we know of faith alone.

Most of what we treat as truth we do without proof but because it makes sense and fits our observations.

So, it's not your job to prove Covid but there's to disprove it.

What else, truly, could explain all the bodies in Ecuador, NY, Brazil, etc.?

What can explain the numbers of experts attesting to this plague.

At some point, it's a waste of time to even try but I wish you luck!

[chowder66]

11. Ask her if she thinks STD's are fake.

[Lars39]

14. I swear its the same set of people that don't understand STDs, too.

[Trenzalore]

12. This reminds me of a particularly awful philosophy class in college

The professor sat there and asked us to prove the chair exist and gave us all kinds of reasons why our logic on the chair existing could be faulty.

It was the biggest waste of an hour of my life.

[dawg day]

24. I took a creative writing course once--

And the professor gave us the assignment of writing a sonnet about teeth.

That was more worthwhile than trying to talk sense to Trumpers!

[Dan]

35. And the reason I dropped my Philosophy class...

More to the subject - my GOP friend told me last night that the deaths by COVID-19 are fake, because now every death is defined as the result of COVID-19. We agreed that we couldn’t agree because we saw the world so differently. I will miss my friend.

[lastlib]

36. You must've had the same prof I had!

He asked if it was a chair, and how we knew it. Trying to explain the difference between materialism and idealism. A few minutes into his dialogue, I told him I was an existentialist, that it didn't matter whether it was a chair in reality, or in our minds, that we were all doomed anyway. Profs hate it when they get shot down in their own classroom!

Somehow, I DID manage to get an A in the class!

[KY_EnviroGuy]

13. Suggest that your friend temporarily step out of their information bubble.....

and scan through a few international news web sites such as the BBC, The Guardian, ABC (Australia), DK (Germany) and the CBC (Canada). I'm assuming they won't trust American networks other than Fox.

If he/she wants to think all the rest of the world is faking a pandemic, strongly suggest they seek medical help.

KY

[ck4829]

15. Flag that nonsense, that's the only REAL solution

[panader0]

16. So are all of the other countries in the world faking it too?

[jalan48]

17. An example of solipsism. Your friend is like an infant who believes nothing exists outside himself

Definition of solipsism

Solipsism (/ˈsɒlɪpsɪzəm/ (About this soundlisten); from Latin solus, meaning 'alone', and ipse, meaning 'self')[1] is the philosophical idea that only one's mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism

Psychologists believe that we all start life as solipsists. At the moment of birth, a baby can barely sense its surroundings, so its perceptions are entirely internal. Very young infants may not be able to distinguish between their own body and external objects. As they grow, babies learn the limits of their own bodies and slowly develop an awareness of the outside world.

Even then, however, there are some quirks — for example, you’ve probably seen parents play “peek-a-boo” with babies. Why is this simple game so amusing for babies? The answer is that babies lack what psychologists call “object permanence,” meaning they think the only things that exist are the things in their immediate field of vision; if something gets hidden, the baby believes that it has ceased to exist. As we’ll see, philosophical solipsism has some surprising commonalities with the thinking of babies.

https://philosophyterms.com/solipsism/

[ret5hd]

18. I think, therefore I am not Q.

[mcar]

19. Anyone who is saying that is redeemable

how does your friend account for 140,000 dead?

[Jim__]

20. Sure. The pandemic that's killing people all over the world is a giant hoax.

All those people are dying as a prank on your friend.

[mahina]

21. Snark aside, this was part of my argument. Even if you accept for a moment that the US numbers are

Wrong, are you proposing that the loss of life around the world is being presented to make trump look bad?

[Jim__]

22. I'm asking if that's what your friend believes.

S/he can check the foreign press to see if they're reporting on the pandemic. Does s/he actually believe this is a worldwide hoax to impact US politics?

[gratuitous]

29. And, assuming it's all a hoax, what's the payoff?

There has to be an aim, a goal, for this hoax. And who's running the hoax? How do they communicate what to do to the (hundreds? thousands? millions?) conspirators in a way that hides the hoax's machinations away from everyone except, apparently, your friend?

[dawg day]

23. It can't be raining in the Brazil rainforest, because it's not happening to me!

I'd simply point out that reality is not confined to what happens to him/her. In fact, the great majority of reality doesn't happen to any one person, but it still happens.

But there's just a point where it's fruitless to argue with them. Today, I said to one of these people-- not that bad or Q, but "I heard masks are more dangerous that Covid" and "Fauci is the real problem"-- "There's really nothing we can talk about. Let's wait until next year, when things settle down."

LOL. It's a close relative, so I probably will have to talk to him before next year. But I did want to convey that I didn't find it fruitful to try to transmit common sense to someone resisting with every fiber of being.

[lpbk2713]

25. I hope they attend every possible GOP state convention that they can.

And I hope they get to stand shoulder to shoulder with thousands of rethugs.

[hunter]

28. Telling them to "fuck off and die" didn't work?

My wife is a front line health care professional. She can't "social distance" from her patients.

She gets home from work, throws her clothes in the "biohazard" bin, and heads straight for the shower.

I've no patience left for these "Covid is fake" fools.

My wife and I can't visit family, especially our parents and other older and at-risk relatives, because we simply don't know if we'd be bringing the virus to them or not.

I hate this.

The young people in my family have suffered especially. Two are doing their university classes remotely, and others have been furloughed from their day jobs. They never expected they'd be moving back in with their parents.

In my prideful family it's tradition that once you quit or graduate from high school you don't go home again, even if your parents try to drag you or buy you back.

I quit high school at sixteen and was kicked out of college twice. There were times I chose to be homeless rather than go back to my parents house, just for my own pride, nothing more. My parents always welcomed me non-judgmentally with a comfortable place to sleep, good food, opportunities for work, and interesting conversation. I just didn't want to be there.

Three of my adult nieces and one of my nephews are back living with parents because of this stupid virus and I can feel their pain.

[ms liberty]

30. Just last week I filed my FiL's death certificate in the fire safe

And it says "due to COVID19." He was at one of the top medical centers in the nation, not just the south.
And if she insists it's some kind of conspiracy, remind her that Benjamin Franklin once said that "three can keep a secret if two of them are dead." There is no way this thing is a hoax, too many people in too many places would have to be in on it.

[GoCubsGo]

32. Ask him/her why all the pro sports leagues are willing to give up billions of dollars in revenue,

and cancel/postpone their seasons, in order to participate in a hoax. Do they really think that none of them checked things out first? And, how did the perpetrators of this alleged hoax got the rest of the world to go along with it, as well? Or, is the majority of the world stupid and gullible? If this is a hoax, it's pretty fucking elaborate.

As for "Unless it's happening to you", as them if they think cancer is a hoax, just because they don't have it. (I assume.)

[mahina]

33. Great, thank you.

I’m using the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy definition of epistemology, as more readable list of logical fallacies https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/fallacies_list.html
And an appeal to common sense. Will include yours.

One challenge is not to come off as snotty or superior, because we all know where that gets us.

I consider the question an opportunity but am also aware that I’m talking with a person who is not educated. She has a good heart.

Aloha.

[captain queeg]

34. I've got a friend who thinks there's something's they aren't telling us

Not sure he thinks it’s all fake but some kind of conspiracy. I don’t really want to know exactly what he thinks because we are on the same page with most things but pretty sure he’s out in left field on the pandemic. He sent me a couple videos with Bill Gates and refers to him as white Jesus so pretty sure he’s drank the crazy kool ade. He’s not a trumpeR at all so not sure where he’s getting his info. Well, that’s not true; off the internet.

[keithbvadu2]

37. Tell friend: 'I don't know that you are a citizen.'

Tell friend: 'I don't know that you are a citizen.'

How can you convince me, right now?

[Baclava]

38. Ask them what its like to be afraid of a little piece of cloth