There are three reasons to always engage in debate.

Research tells us that people who hold strong, but unfounded beliefs are most likely to change those by being informed by people they have a personal relationship with. This is why the less qualified family doctor has more sway than the researcher when it comes to informing people about their health, but less sway than friends and family. That in turn means that we need to arm those friends and family with good arguments to bring up in conversations.

We, as motorcyclists, are a quite close knit community. This means that we can influence each other, but more importantly, we can arm each other with good arguments to take out into our other social circles. The "sensible" arguments are less sticky than the emotional ones (see below), so we need to practice them whenever we can. So while I'm sure my rather arrogant style does not convince too many people, I hope that I can inspire those nicer than me.

Secondly, we may want to police our spaces to instigate change. This is how we're succeeding in fighting racism, homophobia, sexism, etc. When racist remarks can no longer be excused, people stop making them. They start self-policing, which in turn makes them question their attitudes. So policing our social spaces should always be with the goal that people start changing themselves.

The third reason is really perfectly meta in this discussion. In the 90s, Richard Dawkins, Susan Blackmore and some others launched the concept of the meme. While it now means something else, the original meme theory was that ideas work like viruses. They infect the brain, and mutate, evolve, and spread through evolutionary processes. Unfortunately, correctness is not the best selector, but compatibility with other existing memes (memeplexes), evocation of basic instincts and feelings, etc, are.

An example of a meme in this context is that vaccines contain dangerous (non-specific) stuff. The meme does not define what the stuff is, so seen from a rational angle, it should be rejected. But since it plays into our fear of being harmed by pollution (and fits very well with memes saying that organic produce is superior, etc) it easily takes root, and since it is simple in form, it is easy to transmit to others. It is an example of a harmful meme, or rather, a meme that is harmful to its host, while succeeding in its own transmission. Just like a virus that can kill you.

The memes building up the Q-anon conspiracy theory is a great example. They are compatible with some very strong existing memes like protecting children is good (a benign meme), white men are losing out (a harmful meme), etc. They build up a memeplex, where each meme is quite compatible with the whole, even if some of them may be mutually incompatible. And even if the meme that Clinton is raping babies in a basement that does not exist falls, the memeplex survives and readily accepts new memes.

Other examples of memeplexes are religions and cults, political views, cultural identity, etc. Figuring out which is good and which is bad can be left as an "exercise to the reader" - but in itself this is a morally neutral phenomenon.

Continuing this train of thought, we want to find out how we can avoid exposing ourselves to dangerous memes, and if we can vaccinate ourselves and others against memes. The exposure part is pretty obvious, but the meme vaccine is interesting. Why do we today reject memes that were previously strong? Examples are the right of men to rape women, violence as a righteous solution to most conflicts, etc. It's because we're infected by other memes that vaccinate us against the dangerous ones. So, in very complex thinking, hopefully our efforts to teach people to think properly around conspiracy theories etc can train their mental immune responses to resist the attractiveness of harmful memes.

So we trudge along, fighting the good fight, knowing that the only thing worse than making what seems like a futile effort is giving up. But we also know that what we're fighting for is a better world - or is that just a meme that has infected us? Damn...