system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Shaming is an ineffective tool in deradicalizing extreme belief like conspiracy theorists and hate (Racism, Sexism, Homophobia etc)

To start, we are deeply social animals and group-belonging is an essential part of human psychology. 

Shaming is effectively "You don't belong to my group if you act or believe as you do." which might be effective if you the person being shamed had no where to go.

However, particularly in this day of the internet, you can find community for almost anything. It's a powerful tool for marginalized communities but it's also a double edged sword that groups like Flat Earthers can feed each other. It's the modern day invention akin to fire. It can keep us alive. It can also burn us.

The reason I believe that it's an ineffective tool is because shaming is rejecting someone from your tribe, your group, and as such it leaves the target of shaming with no where to go except the group of people who will feed them the lies of conspiracy theory and/or hate. 

Shaming will cut off any opportunity for a person to abandon their flawed beliefs because it burns that bridge. 

Lastly, our instinct to shame people, doesn't come from a reasoned belief that it's effective but it comes from a knee-jerk desire for retribution for a moral violation. So we act on that desire in contradiction to its efficacy as a solution. 

It's not just ineffective, it actually makes the problem worse. 

I'm open to being wrong about this. I would like to understand all the tools in my toolbox for changing the hearts and minds of people.
gpt
The beneficiary of shame is the audience. 


You wrote this assuming the one who needed to be deradicalized is the subject of the opprobrium. However, the purpose of making shaming a *public* affair is that a public shaming demonstrates to the audience how ridiculous the subject is. 

The target is not the subject of the shame. It’s the audience member who is susceptible to peer pressure and might have been a peer of the subject of the shame. You’re much less likely to look up to or copy the behavior of someone that has been publicly ridiculed and through that mechanism public shaming stops the spread of extreme belief infrastructures and networks.