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I recommended it in the other conspiracy thread but Ron Johnson's book Them is an interesting look at the community of outsider groups including a few different conspiracy theory groups. He also spends some time with white Supremacist groups in the US and Islamic extremists in the UK. It's interesting the toes between these two and conspiracy theory believers, most of them seem to have some level of acceptance of conspiracies.
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Sep 14, 2013 09:51
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 03:36 |
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I had a fun discussing once meeting my uncle's (by marriage) family for an afternoon bbq in Manchester. One of his nephews was, I think, working in software engineering and we got chatting. It rapidly devolved into him telling me about the role of the Illuminati in America as can be clearly seen by all the symbology on dollar bills. I tried explaining the whole Masonic/Deist/Englightenment era philosophy and history of that thing, which he pretty much interpreted as 'Masons? See I told you the Illuminati is controlling it. You've bought into the cover story perpetrated by their history books!' Which was frustrating but pretty much what I expected. The interesting bit was when he got onto how alternative energy is a scam that will destroy us all because energy isn't real (I think, this was a few years back). That was the major part of the discussion but I really couldn't figure out what he was on about beyond 'all these types of things are called energy but they're all different and I can't see energy so it's a hoax'. The thing I did get was he though wind power was a scientific Frankenstein's monster that would kill us all by using up all the energy in the atmosphere and destroying global weather patterns. Trying to explain to him that energy from wind storms, etc. would be getting converted blowing through forests, etc. didn't do much as he seemed to think if that was getting used to power televisions it pretty much meant we'd destroy weather or something. He also had some theory about perpetual motion engines and how we should be able to produce them. I just don't get how people manage to get through a sane schooling system and believe some/any of this poo poo. Especially the science stuff.
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Nov 26, 2013 02:59
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It's not even that, it's that once you've bought into the idea of a conspiracy existing that does this kind of thing everything can be interpreted as confirming evidence. Something appears to contradict it? False-flags! They're just that devious. Something confirms it? Successful leak! The conspiracy is dangerous but vulnerable! Something else confirms it? Deliberate display of their existence! They're just that arrogant (and so powerful but also vulnerable). Of course the fact that a conspiracy would be simultaneously leaving symbols confirming their existence to rub it in our faces and conducting false-flag operations to cover up their existence isn't something they really spend too much time thinking about. But the conspiracy existing has become part of their axioms for understanding the world, changing that requires a paradigm shift in their thinking which is a pretty major upheaval. For a history of science analogy it's like convincing someone to give up the idea that the Sun goes round the Earth. Sure you might have all these observations but they've got Ptolemaic epicycles to explain them. They're not wrong it's just that the planet's orbits are staggeringly more complex than we can get our heads around!
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Nov 26, 2013 03:12
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twistedmentat posted:*in the paranoid world of food woo that exists, literally people believe good for you = natural, bad for you = artificial. Even though a chemical, is a chemical is a chemical. The natural/artificial thing is one of those terminology issues that made me actually value university level education simply because of the focus on definition of terms (in my case in Philosophy, which particularly gets off on that kind of thing). At it's root the good/bad values applied to those makes some sense, at it's heart it's getting concerned about eating new things versus things we've eaten for a long time. With more recently engineered things (like trans fats) we get things in our diet in very different amounts or stripped away from things we'd normally be having them with. The problem is the terminology used to convey these ideas isn't particularly accurate, like you said chemicals is chemicals and we've been altering the 'natural' foods around since before we figured out how to master the demon element Fire. It's another example of people latching onto an intuition without really examining it and instead getting deeply into pseudoscience, general assumptions and 'knowledge' taking that original unclearly defined intuition as axiomatic. At the same time there's something to be said for the intuition, eating highly processed foods solely can end up in missing out on some important micronutrients or getting doses of specific food elements (like transfats) that our bodies aren't really used to in those quantities. Hell we kind of got started on that poo poo back when sugar became widely available. The rational basis though seems to send a lot of people off into crazy land, especially when you throw in the lack of certainty in some areas just turns into people assuming they have carte blanche to believe anything.
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Jan 4, 2014 02:59
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twistedmentat posted:Tobacco is one of the most heavily modified crops in existence, and tobacco companies was way worse than Monsanto, not only in delivering a product that is nothing but harmful and their capitialism makes other companies save weapons look like amateur hour. But nope, they smoke because they're told not to, and because that's playing right into the medical-industrialist complex. Because a doctor, who gains no money by having you stop smoking is not to be listened to, but this guy online says that cancer is not caused by smoking but by tomatoes that were made from Monsanto seeds. On the other end of that I've got friends who stopped trying to cut down or give up smoking because they now smoke 'natural' tobacco, which apparently is free of chemical treatment and so reduces your risk of cancer. Apparently this is as good as cutting down on their smoking so they're being healthier. They're really hard pressed to explain exactly what these evil chemical treatments most companies use are but they're pretty confident it involves adding tar to the final product (I guess there could be a flavour thing?) I can kind of understand that they're addicts who have been taken in by a marketing scheme that saves them having to quit but it's still a pain that they think natural in this case means safe. Of course I shouldn't be too surprised in a couple of cases as they're also strong exponents of The Secret.
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Jan 4, 2014 15:03
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I think there's a strong point making the distinction between structures that survive today and those that don't in terms of the Aliens thing. We don't hear people talking about the Hanging Gardens of Babylon being built by aliens either. In general it's cases where large structures were built by cultures that are no longer around, creating structures that seem divorced from human presence. Inca temples out in the middle of unpopulated jungle seem inexplicable partly because most people know so little about the culture (it was pretty much anhilated) and partly because it's hard to square these giant structures in the wilderness with thriving human civilisations in the same place. While it doesn't make any intellectual sense, I can understand the appeal of 'aliens did it' in that light. As a further counter, the Chinese are still around today and had a pretty continuous social infrastructure and nobody really tries to argue that the Chinese wall was built by aliens. Although that could also be related to the wall serving an easily understandable function, something Stonehenge or the pyramids don't really seem to. Perhaps that cultural barrier also plays a part, it isn't immediately obvious why humans would build structure X (we don't build anything like it) so aliens! Maybe if we built churches in the form of ziggurats we wouldn't see people latching onto the ancient aliens thing so readily.
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Jan 13, 2014 03:22
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 03:36 |
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I've had very little real world interaction with conspiracy theorists barring one uncle-in law's nephew who was full on crazy. His main thing seemed to be about money being a government conspiracy to control you (also energy being some sort of fiction and wind turbines potentially using up all the wind by evening out pressure/temperature imbalances to the point where they no longer occurred in the atmosphere, money was the main one). Based on what he said about them though it seemed more like some sort of reaction to the idea that the value of money is determined by the semi-mindless act of the market collective. He seemed to clearly feel the US dollar was some tool of the illuminati (he was British so I'm thinking he contracted most/all of it from American sites because his only argument for currency in general being a tool of the illuminati was 'just like the US dollar!'). I think that's just an easier thing to come to terms with, yes some shadowy force has designed and uses currency to control society but you've seen through it, you know what's happening and you can adapt yourself to it. There's a plan and you know about it. Somehow that's more comforting than 'there's a random unstable mess we all pretend makes sense and there's currently no way to possibly predict or understand it. Good luck!'
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Dec 12, 2015 03:22
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