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So what conspiracy did you fall for?
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Jan 17, 2019 19:22
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Platystemon posted:So what conspiracy did you fall for? None that I'm aware of, but then I wouldn't be aware of it. I taught critical source analysis for a couple years and my education is partly in persuasive message campaign design. I post a lot in the pseudoscience thread and am one of the (very loosely) "authorities" there on things like fringe dietary supplement and nutrition beliefs. But even though I'm pretty close to an expert on some of those topics, I still occasionally get corrected and jolted out of false beliefs that slipped past my defenses. And that happens to all of us. I'm the beneficiary of a ton of privilege and a set of strange, traumatic childhood circumstances that made me sensitive to these issues, and I'm basically just very, very lucky that I came out of it the way I am and not some horrible Rational New Atheist. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Jan 17, 2019 |
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Jan 17, 2019 19:31
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So despite Republicans not being too sweet on JFK, what with him being a Democrat and therefore pro-every bad thing, lots of Q people seem to like him. Probably because his death reminds them of lost innocence or whatever. And therefore he gets to be a good guy on their mythos. Many of them transfer these onto JFK Jr. So how does Ted Kennedy, eternal proof that Democrats are the real misogynists, fit into that? Did he betray the family or something?
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Jan 17, 2019 19:43
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happyhippy posted:I think he's the first who started mentioning flight paths prove its a globe. I mean, we have pictures. Of the earth. From space. Tons of them. New ones come constantly. The very idea that we'd need to resort to flight paths is evidence that those questioning the globe are really, really, really far gone. I can't even wrap my mind around the contortions one would have to accept to believe that every single picture ever taken from space by anyone in history was faked. But people do it. On their iphones.
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Jan 17, 2019 19:45
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Platystemon posted:So what conspiracy did you fall for? As pointed out by Poincare (as attributed by Feynman): There are some conspiracies that are so true that they are "complete" - it is as if every attempt to test against the conspiracy is confounded by the conspiracy. These 'complete conspiracies' are in fact laws of nature.
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Jan 17, 2019 19:48
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ashpanash posted:As pointed out by Poincare (as attributed by Feynman): There are some conspiracies that are so true that they are "complete" - it is as if every attempt to test against the conspiracy is confounded by the conspiracy. who conspired to make all the massive particles in the universe attract each other? was it the Jews? 
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Jan 17, 2019 19:53
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Raspberry Jam It In Me posted:who conspired to make all the massive particles in the universe attract each other? was it the Jews? There are no particles, only bodies, guided by monads. Checkmate, Newton cucks :smugfacewithgiantwig:
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Jan 17, 2019 20:01
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Discendo Vox posted:None that I'm aware of, but then I wouldn't be aware of it. Where is the psuedoscience thread? Sounds like something Id want to read.
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Jan 17, 2019 21:41
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ashpanash posted:I mean, we have pictures. Of the earth. From space. Tons of them. New ones come constantly. Yes, but they're composite images. They take that to mean "fake" or "doctored". So, you can immediately throw them all out as sufficient proof.
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Jan 17, 2019 21:45
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Discendo Vox posted:Generally, try not to look down on conspiracy theorists too hard. With the exception of the ones with mental illnesses, these are people that are every bit as intelligent as you are. These people were just exposed to this information in a particular emotional or contextual state that pushed them into it - they didn't have the critical thinking tools or outside information sources to fight it, or they were in an especially vulnerable state when they were targeted. The incredible, infinite rationalizations you're seeing are the functions of a healthy brain burdened by trying to reconcile incredibly unhealthy beliefs. I'd agree with you on more or less harmless conspiracy theories like aliens, or cryptids, or even something like 9/11 Trutherism, since in most stands of that it's simply taking evil people and accusing them of even greater crimes than the ones they are actually guilty of. But when it comes to stuff Q and the NWO and other such things, there is a moral failing involved as well as an intellectual failing. If you are willing to hate and demonize innocent or more or less innocent people so extremely and with so little proof, that says at least as much about your moral character as it does about your intellectual rigor. There are tons of gullible or stupid people who don't buy into hateful nonsense because, even for all their credulity, they still need a bit extra to be persuaded to hate someone. If you can be convinced that liberals are literally satanic pedophiles on such flimsy evidence, then odds are you weren't convinced at all and simply latched on to a conspiracy theory that said what you already believed. EDIT: And I meant agreeing with you on looking down on people. I generally disagree with your comments on the intelligence of these people. Being able to be convinced about extremely improbable things with extremely flimsy evidence is a sign of either poor critical reasoning skills, and/or - as noted above - a pre-existing desire to accept the claims as true. RoboChrist 9000 fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Jan 17, 2019 |
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Jan 17, 2019 21:56
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Discendo Vox posted:None that I'm aware of, but then I wouldn't be aware of it. Is there a difference between being mistaken about the effect of say cholesterol on cardiovascular health, and believing the President is a time traveller? Like it seems to me that people doing the former don't typically confabulate reasons to continue believing their mistaken idea when presented with conclusive evidence, even if the mistaken idea itself came from not affirmatively examining something they heard? This is not a snarky question, I'm genuinely curious about your perspective.
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Jan 17, 2019 21:58
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New Yorp New Yorp posted:Yes, but they're composite images. They take that to mean "fake" or "doctored". So, you can immediately throw them all out as sufficient proof. I know, that's what they say, but it's not true, in any sense, and if they are not going to accept that, or things like this: https://twitter.com/dscovr_epic?lang=en then they are not going to accept 'flight paths' or pendulums or whatever as proof either.
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Jan 17, 2019 22:09
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My opinion is that conspiracy theorists are dumb as dog poo poo and for proof they are signing up for a flat earth cruise
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Jan 17, 2019 22:27
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Loel posted:Where is the psuedoscience thread? Sounds like something Id want to read. SAL. VitalSigns posted:Is there a difference between being mistaken about the effect of say cholesterol on cardiovascular health, and believing the President is a time traveller? Like it seems to me that people doing the former don't typically confabulate reasons to continue believing their mistaken idea when presented with conclusive evidence, even if the mistaken idea itself came from not affirmatively examining something they heard? We use the same apparatus to evaluate all information, and all information is subject to the same cognitive biases and limitations. There's a reason Alex Jones' profits actually come from dietary supplement sales, after all! To vastly oversimplify, people who seem to believe these worse, crazier things do so because they establish them as more fundamental anchors of belief or identity, such that it would be more painful or difficult for them to revise their beliefs. But the same underlying causes and mechanisms are at play with both - emerging out of insecurities and fears, providing a sense of certainty, giving a feeling of confidence or comprehension, allowing alternative explanations to be discarded, giving a rationale to share and perpetuate the belief. IQ or other discriminant intelligence factors can play a role, and there are rules and practices and heuristics you can use to make you resistant to some specific attacks or methods. But a lot of these people seem like crazy morons principally because they a) didn't have access to the tools of critical thought or source analysis that we do at the time they were exposed to the belief (think ACE schools like in Prester Jane's posts), and b) the belief has become extremely ingrained into their identity and social functioning. This embedding can occur because they've defended it a lot, because they were exposed to it as the solution to an incredibly vulnerable emotional state (oh god, my son was killed in a Libyan embassy), or (and this is arguably the nastiest, most pernicious form) because it provides a social function, i.e. their friends or other peers, who they trust, believe it, and the belief offers prosocial benefits. A fair number of Lesswrongers are genuinely very smart people who have the problem of being in a peer group that reinforces their egos through commitment to absolutely bonkers sci fi garbage (that also addresses their fear of death). RoboChrist 9000 posted:I'd agree with you on more or less harmless conspiracy theories like aliens, or cryptids, or even something like 9/11 Trutherism, since in most stands of that it's simply taking evil people and accusing them of even greater crimes than the ones they are actually guilty of. But when it comes to stuff Q and the NWO and other such things, there is a moral failing involved as well as an intellectual failing. If you are willing to hate and demonize innocent or more or less innocent people so extremely and with so little proof, that says at least as much about your moral character as it does about your intellectual rigor. Yeah agreed...to an extent. But if we go back even further, there are also causal mechanisms at play in the moral failings that drive people to things like Q and NWO and antisemitism. This doesn't ultimately excuse these people (and their beliefs remain comedy gold), but it's worth understanding the how, the why, and also the cui bono of these movements - and to never forget that there but for the grace of god go we. This concludes my Vox Writes Too Much on Context of Thread Subject Series for the day. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Jan 17, 2019 |
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Jan 17, 2019 23:17
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Platystemon posted:So what conspiracy did you fall for? There's conspiracies even on this forum. In the "cops are bad" thread a 22-year-old cop in a small town was shot by a guy on a bicycle and the thread immediately jumped into action with statements that clearly she was murdered by the rest of the department for uncovering corruption. When it came out that it was a crazy right-wing old man in town who did it, they jumped on the fact that information differed between when the incident was new and when everything got confirmed by the media as "proof" that it was a frame job.
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Jan 18, 2019 00:14
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chitoryu12 posted:There's conspiracies even on this forum. In the "cops are bad" thread a 22-year-old cop in a small town was shot by a guy on a bicycle and the thread immediately jumped into action with statements that clearly she was murdered by the rest of the department for uncovering corruption. When it came out that it was a crazy right-wing old man in town who did it, they jumped on the fact that information differed between when the incident was new and when everything got confirmed by the media as "proof" that it was a frame job. To be fair of you get deep enough into those spaces of hardcore believers the crazies do come out. I used to hang out in the CSPAM chat group because they were friendly peeps who watched cool videos with me. But one day I got chased out for being unapologetic that as part of my work I participated in searching for evidence hidden by drug dealers with the local police. When I got challenged on it I pointed out I in fact have close family and friends in the police. I subsequently got chased out of the chat and forum by a goon I previously got on well with spamming COP FRIEND at me and acting like I'd ruined a poor innocent drug dealers life.
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Jan 18, 2019 01:04
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The assertion that there aren't a huge amount of conspiracy theorists who are just plain stupid is wild. Many of the theories fall apart quickly if a completely average person thinks about them for any time at all. Like there's a whole bunch of people out there who've been shown the galaxy of interwoven theories around flat earth and just on the face of it can go "nah I can see how it curves when I go look at any of a number of things, i'm out" or "columbus proved the earth is round*, they taught me that in grade school". *obviously he didn't actually do that, but that's still how a lot of people were taught.
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Jan 18, 2019 01:34
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Columbus was an idiot and a horrible human being who was saved from an ignominious death by the existence of a landmass he had no reason to believe existed. Motherfucker literally believed the Earth was pear-shaped. Platystemon fucked around with this message at 01:59 on Jan 18, 2019 |
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Jan 18, 2019 01:54
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The real biggest problem with conspiracy theories in general is that not only are they bullshit, but even if they were true knowing the truth would not meaningfully impact your life. We already know the world is largely run by uncaring sociopath criminals, is it somehow worse if they are doing cartoonishly evil fake Satanist poo poo at the same time? Or if they're lizard people or what the gently caress ever?
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Jan 18, 2019 02:01
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Feinne posted:The real biggest problem with conspiracy theories in general is that not only are they bullshit, but even if they were true knowing the truth would not meaningfully impact your life. We already know the world is largely run by uncaring sociopath criminals, is it somehow worse if they are doing cartoonishly evil fake Satanist poo poo at the same time? Or if they're lizard people or what the gently caress ever? They would say, and I would agree, that you are better able to fight or resist an enemy you more fully understand, and besides that, there is some intrinsic value to be found in the truth. I mean, does knowing that an atom is made of protons, electrons, and neutrons meaningfully impact you?
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Jan 18, 2019 02:49
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So last memorial day weekend I met a dude at my local drive bar who was in town on business and we really hit it off. We met because someone had played one of my favorite rock albums in its entirety on the jukebox and I announced to the bar that I was buying drinks for whomever had played the album. Turns out we had a lot in common and I invited him to a BBQ at my place that weekend. Dude gave me some primo LSD and we stayed up all night watching movies and shooting the poo poo and then things get weird. Politics eventually comes up in conversation and he starts talking about how Trump is intentionally misspelled things in his tweets because he's sending coded messages playing the dimensional chess with the media and is some kind of mastermind. He tells me that he knows of a government insider who told him about Trump's master plan. He goes off on this stuff for a while but I eventually change the subject because it's harshing my trip. Some time later I find this thread and realize that he was an early Qanon believer. It totally blew me away because he seemed completely normal (by my albeit hosed up standards) and even rather liberal except for this. Well he just texted me and he's back in town and wants to get a drink. Im on my way to go meet him. Hopefully I come back with some good material.
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Jan 18, 2019 03:05
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James Woods posted:So last memorial day weekend I met a dude at my local drive bar who was in town on business and we really hit it off. We met because someone had played one of my favorite rock albums in its entirety on the jukebox and I announced to the bar that I was buying drinks for whomever had played the album. Turns out we had a lot in common and I invited him to a BBQ at my place that weekend. Dude gave me some primo LSD and we stayed up all night watching movies and shooting the poo poo and then things get weird. Politics eventually comes up in conversation and he starts talking about how Trump is intentionally misspelled things in his tweets because he's sending coded messages playing the dimensional chess with the media and is some kind of mastermind. He tells me that he knows of a government insider who told him about Trump's master plan. He goes off on this stuff for a while but I eventually change the subject because it's harshing my trip. Some time later I find this thread and realize that he was an early Qanon believer. It totally blew me away because he seemed completely normal (by my albeit hosed up standards) and even rather liberal except for this. Well he just texted me and he's back in town and wants to get a drink. Im on my way to go meet him. Hopefully I come back with some good material. or at the very least a good acid trip 
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Jan 18, 2019 03:22
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chitoryu12 posted:There's conspiracies even on this forum. In the "cops are bad" thread a 22-year-old cop in a small town was shot by a guy on a bicycle and the thread immediately jumped into action with statements that clearly she was murdered by the rest of the department for uncovering corruption. When it came out that it was a crazy right-wing old man in town who did it, they jumped on the fact that information differed between when the incident was new and when everything got confirmed by the media as "proof" that it was a frame job. I think conspiracy stuff gets weird when the person is on the overall correct side of things. Like sometimes you see people that have like weirdly conspeircified versions of real things and you can tell no one ever really knows what to do with it. Like people that correctly identify the correct and real issues in society but like, have a vastly more top down organizational view of actual societal forces. And you can tell no one wants to correct or call it out because like, they got the general idea at least and they will never take any argument as anything but an argument against the real thing and will see any confirmation of the real thing as confirmation of their additional layers or people that turn general societal level trends into things that they need to be always true in all cases. Where they have a powerful conspiracy theory mindset but like, lucked into picking their one thing to hook over top a less wrong thing.
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Jan 18, 2019 03:25
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Platystemon posted:Columbus was an idiot and a horrible human being who was saved from an ignominious death by the existence of a landmass he had no reason to believe existed. Everyone knows its egg shaped.
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Jan 18, 2019 04:00
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:They would say, and I would agree, that you are better able to fight or resist an enemy you more fully understand, and besides that, there is some intrinsic value to be found in the truth. Beyond the aspect where they identify the lovely people they think run the world specifically though their theory doesn't actually have any added value, because the lovely people who run the world aren't even remotely secretive about how lovely they are. Them being secret reptiloid satanic whatever the gently caress doesn't matter because they are also openly super lovely in entirely prosaic ways. End of the day your theory has just added some pizzazz to something you'd still feel if you'd never heard about it. In that better understanding of the physical world allows scientific advances that impact our lives for better and worse yes it does. It's also often relevant to my work when my consulting is more on the technical than regulatory side. So it would matter quite a bit if an alien appeared in my hotel room right now and revealed to me proof that atoms are bullshit. And to be clear I'm not saying this is an inherent aspect of all conspiracy theories. Q might not even be a great example, in that it does accuse a whole bunch of people who are not obviously awful of being satanic pedomurderers. If that were true, that would be of actual import.
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Jan 18, 2019 04:08
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That conspiracy thinking can sometimes lead accidentally to the right area for the wrong reason does not change that so many of these people target the wrong people for the wrong reason, and then ignore signs they would read as ominous and troubling when they show up in the people they support.
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Jan 18, 2019 04:47
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remusclaw posted:That conspiracy thinking can sometimes lead accidentally to the right area for the wrong reason does not change that so many of these people target the wrong people for the wrong reason, and then ignore signs they would read as ominous and troubling when they show up in the people they support. ~10% of people in Israel threads dot txt
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Jan 18, 2019 05:05
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A point I've seen a few times is people are spending all this time, money and energy on imagined problems when there are massive, serious problems that they should be worried about. Hey Global warming, increasing fascism in governments, militarization of police, exploitation of workers, all these aren't as important than proving the earth is flat!!!!! Some of those SciManDan videos made my eyes bleed, the people he's talking about are just this level of willful ignorance and stupid that is hard to believe they are functional in real life. LIke that guy who told he daughter that dinosaurs aren't real because they want you to believe in a round earth, seriousl dude, dick move, I can't wait until she goes to University and never talks to you again. Or that Woman who claims that photos from probes aren't real because they weren't directly observed by people.
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Jan 18, 2019 05:05
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remusclaw posted:That conspiracy thinking can sometimes lead accidentally to the right area for the wrong reason does not change that so many of these people target the wrong people for the wrong reason, and then ignore signs they would read as ominous and troubling when they show up in the people they support. Sometimes some of the truth does end up refracted through the funhouse mirror of conspiracism. The David Icke crew had been naming Jimmy Savile as a ringleader in the secret reptile pedophile conspiracy, possibly because some of the poor or institutionalized kids he targeted grew up to be unstable conspiracy freaks, or knew people who did. Of course the larger truth that all conspiracy theories touch on is that a small circle of all-powerful amoral hedonists oppress us and treat us as food. Everyone knows this is true on at least an emotional level.
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Jan 18, 2019 05:06
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Politics haven't come up yet but Qanon LSD buddy and I are watching Planet Earth on the bar T.V. and he's convinced that it's all CGI. "Dude snakes don't move like that. ".
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Jan 18, 2019 05:23
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Antifa Turkeesian posted:Of course the larger truth that all conspiracy theories touch on is that a small circle of all-powerful amoral hedonists oppress us and treat us as food. Everyone knows this is true on at least an emotional level. Conspiracy theories are appealing because they suggest a level of order and control and conscious thought that isn't there. The conspiracy's the thing that defines them, after all. There isn't a small circle of all-powerful amoral hedonists oppressing us - even the most powerful people aren't competent, controlling, aware or hedonic enough to do that. No one benefits from the vast majority of suffering. The reality is no one is at the wheel. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 05:34 on Jan 18, 2019 |
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Jan 18, 2019 05:25
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James Woods posted:Politics haven't come up yet but Qanon LSD buddy and I are watching Planet Earth on the bar T.V. and he's convinced that it's all CGI. "Dude snakes don't move like that. ". I am somewhat near sighted, and pretty much all high def tv looked cgi to me until I got a decent pair of glasses and realized that real life isn't actually slightly fuzzy around the edges.
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Jan 18, 2019 05:28
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remusclaw posted:I am somewhat near sighted, and pretty much all high def tv looked cgi to me until I got a decent pair of glasses and realized that real life isn't actually slightly fuzzy around the edges. He's also convinced that his roommate is druging him at night to make him sleep in so the jury is still out. Either way this dude is still a blast to hang out with. James Woods fucked around with this message at 06:00 on Jan 18, 2019 |
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Jan 18, 2019 05:34
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Antifa Turkeesian posted:
There is a difference between thinking George Soros having a billion dollars gives him a lot of options not available to others and thinking he sits in a room with Oprah making plans for what events are going to happen in 2019
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Jan 18, 2019 05:37
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:There is a difference between thinking George Soros having a billion dollars gives him a lot of options not available to others and thinking he sits in a room with Oprah making plans for what events are going to happen in 2019 though tbf that'd make a great podcast. edit: Soros is a fascinating guy to hear talk, he's very controlled but he's also got this incredible reflexive self-blame thing going. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 06:31 on Jan 18, 2019 |
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Jan 18, 2019 06:22
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Dude wound up being pretty chill. Is he crazy? Hell yes. Most certainly. Maybe we've been doing this wrong. Maybe we should get crazy on our side instead of insisting that everyone else is wrong. Im not calling for an end to reason. Im calling for a start of espousing logic rather than conjecture. It's easier to dismiss these people rather than to do the work and bring them into the fold. Im a firm believer that there are no bad people. Just bad ideas.
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Jan 18, 2019 10:16
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James Woods posted:Dude wound up being pretty chill. Is he crazy? Hell yes. Most certainly. Maybe we've been doing this wrong. Maybe we should get crazy on our side instead of insisting that everyone else is wrong. Im not calling for an end to reason. Im calling for a start of espousing logic rather than conjecture. It's easier to dismiss these people rather than to do the work and bring them into the fold. Please do not get murdered by your LSD friend after he decides you're part of the lizard cabal because his fillings told him.
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Jan 18, 2019 12:57
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Yeah please don't underestimate mental illness. I had to have a roommate commited after he had a breakdown out of nowhere and his reality broke down. "Something terrible is going to happen and we have to stop it!" type stuff. Wasn't fun.
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Jan 18, 2019 13:10
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James Woods posted:Dude wound up being pretty chill. Is he crazy? Hell yes. Most certainly. Maybe we've been doing this wrong. Maybe we should get crazy on our side instead of insisting that everyone else is wrong. Im not calling for an end to reason. Im calling for a start of espousing logic rather than conjecture. It's easier to dismiss these people rather than to do the work and bring them into the fold. Ideas are not magical mental parasites born in the ether and which latch onto poor unwilling human hosts. They are though up by humans and then, for many reasons, accepted by other humans. Ideas do not have moral agency or intent, people do. Ideas, in fact, do not even have an existence outside people.
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Jan 18, 2019 13:42
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James Woods posted:Dude wound up being pretty chill. Is he crazy? Hell yes. Most certainly. Maybe we've been doing this wrong. Maybe we should get crazy on our side instead of insisting that everyone else is wrong. Im not calling for an end to reason. Im calling for a start of espousing logic rather than conjecture. It's easier to dismiss these people rather than to do the work and bring them into the fold. He's going to see you posting as "James Woods" think you're a shape shifter and try to kill you.
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Jan 18, 2019 13:43
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