This is off topic, but conspiracy-ish I suppose... And related because of looking at that article...
With Covid being shown to be more potent in people who are obese, do you think the 'obese and proud' crew and their supporters, like Tess Holiday have had their position diminished? It's 'their body' to do as they please etc...
I'm fairly liberal in my outlook on life, and I think people should be able to live their life how they want as long as it does not impact upon others, however, in a pandemic where at times beds and medical attention is stretched, is it not putting other people at risk by being obese, if you are more likely to get ill, in a more severe manor, and needing extensive resources used on you by not maintaining a healthy lifestyle?
I am also very aware a plethora of baggage that accompanies obesity, or can cause it and I'm sensitive to that also, so the above is is more for people who actually are obese because they are lazy and/or don't prioritise their health.
I'm conflicted on this view point anyway, it goes against my ethos to instruct someone on how to live their life.... hmmm
The Protocols of Zion lead to millions of deaths. I don’t understand why you brought the Coronavirus—a topic banned on Dakka—into this thread after telling us not to discuss one of the most harmful conspiracy theories of all time or its modern configuration.
I mean, I’m not saying you shouldn’t post that or that we shouldn’t discuss it. I’m saying I’d appreciate being able to discuss the other elephants in the Conspiracy Theory room, especially when they will cost real lives in the near future. You want to warn people about dangerous conspiracy theories? Then by all means, please warn people about dangerous conspiracy theories.
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endlesswaltz123 wrote: This is off topic, but conspiracy-ish I suppose... And related because of looking at that article...
With Covid being shown to be more potent in people who are obese, do you think the 'obese and proud' crew and their supporters, like Tess Holiday have had their position diminished? It's 'their body' to do as they please etc...
I'm fairly liberal in my outlook on life, and I think people should be able to live their life how they want as long as it does not impact upon others, however, in a pandemic where at times beds and medical attention is stretched, is it not putting other people at risk by being obese, if you are more likely to get ill, in a more severe manor, and needing extensive resources used on you by not maintaining a healthy lifestyle?
I am also very aware a plethora of baggage that accompanies obesity, or can cause it and I'm sensitive to that also, so the above is is more for people who actually are obese because they are lazy and/or don't prioritise their health.
I'm conflicted on this view point anyway, it goes against my ethos to instruct someone on how to live their life.... hmmm
It is very difficult for a lot of people to lose weight and keep it off. There’s a lot of finger pointing and blame around obesity, and I suspect a lot of the proud obese are just reacting defensively against that.
That said, obese people tend to have better recoveries after surgery and handle some illnesses better than non-obese people. There’s a lot we don’t know about the health impact of obesity. In fact, unless new information has come to light, I thought obesity was pretty far down the list of conditions that left a person vulnerable to COVID.
I would love to see more rigorous science applied to weight loss, especially which factors make particular diets or methods more of less effective for different people, but right now there is just too much money is shaming people and then selling the cure to that shame.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: The Protocols of Zion lead to millions of deaths. I don’t understand why you brought the Coronavirus—a topic banned on Dakka—into this thread after telling us not to discuss one of the most harmful conspiracy theories of all time or its modern configuration.
I mean, I’m not saying you shouldn’t post that or that we shouldn’t discuss it. I’m saying I’d appreciate being able to discuss the other elephants in the Conspiracy Theory room, especially when they will cost real lives in the near future. You want to warn people about dangerous conspiracy theories? Then by all means, please warn people about dangerous conspiracy theories.
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endlesswaltz123 wrote: This is off topic, but conspiracy-ish I suppose... And related because of looking at that article...
With Covid being shown to be more potent in people who are obese, do you think the 'obese and proud' crew and their supporters, like Tess Holiday have had their position diminished? It's 'their body' to do as they please etc...
I'm fairly liberal in my outlook on life, and I think people should be able to live their life how they want as long as it does not impact upon others, however, in a pandemic where at times beds and medical attention is stretched, is it not putting other people at risk by being obese, if you are more likely to get ill, in a more severe manor, and needing extensive resources used on you by not maintaining a healthy lifestyle?
I am also very aware a plethora of baggage that accompanies obesity, or can cause it and I'm sensitive to that also, so the above is is more for people who actually are obese because they are lazy and/or don't prioritise their health.
I'm conflicted on this view point anyway, it goes against my ethos to instruct someone on how to live their life.... hmmm
It is very difficult for a lot of people to lose weight and keep it off. There’s a lot of finger pointing and blame around obesity, and I suspect a lot of the proud obese are just reacting defensively against that.
That said, obese people tend to have better recoveries after surgery and handle some illnesses better than non-obese people. There’s a lot we don’t know about the health impact of obesity. In fact, unless new information has come to light, I thought obesity was pretty far down the list of conditions that left a person vulnerable to COVID.
I would love to see more rigorous science applied to weight loss, especially which factors make particular diets or methods more of less effective for different people, but right now there is just too much money is shaming people and then selling the cure to that shame.
It’s a live example of where CT thinking can lead, albeit in extremis.
And COVID isn’t, to the best of my knowledge, banned on Dakka. Rather the main thread was locked because of constant derailment (of which I am guilty myself)
Now, the weight issue? As a lard arse myself, I’m ill placed to comment. Granted I’m not particularly large. I’m 6’2”, 17 Stone at last weigh in. And I could certainly do something about it if I had discipline in the right area.
But body weight is a massively complex issue. Psychological, physiological etc, people vary quite wildly. So I think I’ll have to rule it out as a topic of this thread. Because some (hi!) won’t do something about it, and some can’t do something about it. And trying to parse which is which is a fool’s errand. So let’s just not, yeah?
I wouldn't mind discussing some of the weird fads that border on CT in the realm of weight loss. I have friends who went way off the deep end with Paleo/Keto/Vegan/whatever diets who ended up circling the wagons about any information that their diets were harmful. I know a dude who believes a specific kind of exercise is the only answer, and that the obese and big money people keep it a secret because it clears one's thinking and produces natural happiness.
As for differences, my wife and I are about the same age, height and often weight. I have a few congenital heart defects and a heart block that limit my exercise options. She has severe asthma (pneumonia 4 times in 3 years) that limits her exercise. We both go on the same healthy eating kicks, and I lose 20 pounds in a couple months while she loses nothing. Once we've lost the weight, we can be eating the same things in the same proportions, but suddenly gain a ton due to stress or illness or something. There's clearly a lot we don't know about maintaining a healthy weight. Whenever we try to get medical advice, we end up bombarded by questionable info or misinformation.
Of course it's all for naught if someone shoots up our synagogue or bombs out our workplaces when the pandemic is over.
Hence weight is a genuinely personal issue, and not suited to this thread.
Yes. A lot of diets are essentially crash diets, and not life long alternatives. In moderation, the risk of harm is pretty low. But as a lifestyle, yeah let’s just not.
Sorry if it seems I’m shutting it down because it’s a personal issue. It’s really not that. Call me a fat knacker, and you’re being factually accurate. I’ve a thick skin, and I know if I hit the gym I’d be alright, and that I simply can’t be bothered.
But for far too many folk to be comfortable, that’s not always the case.
So let’s all agree to disagree on that topic, whatever your leaning, and move on. No blame laid at endlesswaltz’s door here either.
I'm a little confused why you keep shutting down discussions that fit under the subject of conspiracy theories. You didn't want to talk about the big, heavy, harmful stuff, nor the er, lighter stuff. Did you not want to talk about conspiracy theories at all?
I suppose weight/diet/obesity is not really conspiracy, however a lot is due to misinformation which is closely linked but not the same thing.
Most misinformation that comes from diet is caused by people trying to make quick and easy money btw. I am in no way good shape currently, but I could have six pack abs in the space of 6 days if needed via extreme water manipulation, posing and lighting... Those 'transformation' pics you see on social media etc... Yeah, a lot of it is grade A BS.
More than happy to have the discussion elsewhere, I also can answer a lot of questions in regards to weight/diet etc (my day job, sport science lecturer, also a PT) if any are interested, also happy to give advice about exercise and training.
Given the amount of blend between 'conspiracy theories' and 'general misinformation' I can see why it would be difficult to figure out exactly where a given topic falls.
A man is told by a highway patrol officer to move off the road because a vehicle is coming and it could hit him. The man is also told by an anonymous person online that there is no vehicle and he will be safe. The man stays on the road, gets hit, and dies.
I have no sympathy for those involved. It was a very direct case of action to consequence; to me I see it like sympathy for someone having wet clothes after they jumped into a pond. At MOST I would have pity for them being so stupid. I would go so far as to say that I think lending sympathy to such people helps perpetuate the problem by creating a sense that it was to some degree not their fault, and that their own actions did not have consequences.
Put more simply: I think lending sympathy in cases like this is coddling people and ultimately harming them in the long term. I also think there is not an abundance of sympathy to go around and there ARE an abundance of people suffering in ways that are not their own fault, who could really have their lives brightened just a bit by that sympathy.
There's part of me that agrees with you, it was an idiotic stance to have. Have we not all been idiots at some point in life though? Have you never been wrong about something? Unfortunately he was wrong about COVID and it has cost his wife her life..... I hope no other people make such a costly mistake in their lives for the rest of eternity.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I'm a little confused why you keep shutting down discussions that fit under the subject of conspiracy theories. You didn't want to talk about the big, heavy, harmful stuff, nor the er, lighter stuff. Did you not want to talk about conspiracy theories at all?
Steering it away from Politics, Religion and Personal is all.
endlesswaltz123 wrote: There's part of me that agrees with you, it was an idiotic stance to have. Have we not all been idiots at some point in life though? Have you never been wrong about something? Unfortunately he was wrong about COVID and it has cost his wife her life..... I hope no other people make such a costly mistake in their lives for the rest of eternity.
Oh man I have been wrong about so many things, messed up so many times. "That was a result of your actions" was never something I wanted to hear but it was something I learned from hearing (though obviously timing & phrasing are essential elements). At any rate, the risk of death was one both he and his wife chose to accept. I know that when I go into a situation where I am accepting that risk I would not want those around me to be burning sympathy should the worst happen; I made that gamble and it didn't go my way, but it was my gamble to make. Save the sympathy for when something bad happens and it isn't the person's fault, we all know there's way too much of that in the world.
But I also think it would be disingenuous to not claim there is some element of defense mechanism in all this for me. So much nasty stuff happens all the time that writing off things which were self-inflicted becomes a necessary emotional shield to avoid an inordinate amount of anguish.
endlesswaltz123 wrote: There's part of me that agrees with you, it was an idiotic stance to have. Have we not all been idiots at some point in life though? Have you never been wrong about something? Unfortunately he was wrong about COVID and it has cost his wife her life..... I hope no other people make such a costly mistake in their lives for the rest of eternity.
While I agree that nobody manages to go through their life without being an idiot and hugely wrong about things at least once I think there's a difference in terms of what it is you're wrong about. Ultimately, if somebody wants to claim 9/11 was an inside job, for example, that's a stance that doesn't really do much harm in isolation. It could have wider repercussions if it's also linked to certain political or religious leanings I suppose. If you want to claim a highly infectious disease is a hoax you better be 100% sure you're right given the cost of being wrong.
In cases like this I think there are a series of failures at many levels, some of which the people involved need to take responsibility for and some of which are societal failures. One thing I think the British and US school systems are absolutely abysmal at, for example, is teaching people how to think critically. We don't really learn about the power of science and reason/logic in British schools (or we didn't 25 years ago when I was at school). Instead we learn about equations and processes and call it science. I think that exacerbates the problems of people who see science as this mysterious black box and therefore mistrust its conclusions. If you're a grown adult and you think a virus with millions of confirmed cases and hundreds of thousands of confirmed deaths worldwide is a hoax you're an idiot. However, if you've been ill-equipped to understand how to think critically at least some of the blame for that idiocy is not yours alone. Doesn't make you any less of an idiot, of course.
Maybe he's highly naive, easily manipulated, very impressionable... Maybe they both were... Sometimes you have to accept people for one reason or another to not make a balanced or reasoned decision, and sometimes it's other peoples influence that has a factor in that.
I'm not saying this is going on in this thread but I don't think piling on him which people will inevitably do, probably calling him all sorts of names etc is the right, or a nice thing to do right now.
endlesswaltz123 wrote: There's part of me that agrees with you, it was an idiotic stance to have. Have we not all been idiots at some point in life though? Have you never been wrong about something? Unfortunately he was wrong about COVID and it has cost his wife her life..... I hope no other people make such a costly mistake in their lives for the rest of eternity.
In cases like this I think there are a series of failures at many levels, some of which the people involved need to take responsibility for and some of which are societal failures. One thing I think the British and US school systems are absolutely abysmal at, for example, is teaching people how to think critically. We don't really learn about the power of science and reason/logic in British schools (or we didn't 25 years ago when I was at school). Instead we learn about equations and processes and call it science. I think that exacerbates the problems of people who see science as this mysterious black box and therefore mistrust its conclusions. If you're a grown adult and you think a virus with millions of confirmed cases and hundreds of thousands of confirmed deaths worldwide is a hoax you're an idiot. However, if you've been ill-equipped to understand how to think critically at least some of the blame for that idiocy is not yours alone. Doesn't make you any less of an idiot, of course.
As a teacher, in Britain, and one that teaches science and specifically critical thinking... The reason why you don't learn it at younger ages, typically in state schools is because it requires a lot of higher order thinking, and also, you need to be able to utilise base principles and equations to validate any criticism of a concept... How can you utilise a counter argument if you cannot prove the base principles of the counter argument is correct?
Teaching all of those base principles is firstly time consuming, and requires numerous repetitions and practice of it, it takes all of your base school education to cover it.
Then, referring to higher order thinking, unfortunately some people are not capable of that.. This is why it is so important to not spread misinformation, especially in the modern age where it is so easy to reach huge numbers of people in seconds with the correct exposure..
And now someone else has prominently retweeted the Protocols of Zion. This conspiracy theory is getting a lot of mainstream movement piggybacking on QAnon.
This is a reminder that conspiracy theories are not always harmless or humorous.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: And now someone else has prominently retweeted the Protocols of Zion. This conspiracy theory is getting a lot of mainstream movement piggybacking on QAnon.
This is a reminder that conspiracy theories are not always harmless or humorous.
Oh look at the time, it's protocols again.... I'll just wait until they bring up the whole well poisioning again...
remember, this process is in a country that at the time, had not really a high opinion of jews. Tbf though at the time we were more concerned with stopping solving internal issues by stopping to demand revolution or counter revolution and actually were attempting to build up a wellfare state to a degree and propperly organise all political relevant entities into the government not to mention preparing for a certain waste of time but still.
they are nothing more then the convenient scapegoat doccuments , having been adapted by more radical exponents.
Not Online!!! wrote: That is extremely paternalistic and pessimistic , not to mention deterministic in it's Outlook of human capability and how to right wrongs.
Not to contradict myself, but I do agree with you. However, from experience (and this is not anecdotal, I've met hundreds upon hundreds of teachers at this point who agree) not everyone is capable of high level critical thinking it. It's fairly well reasoned that plenty of people are on the spectrum, it's also fairly evident many are undiagnosed, we have at least a few students a year that get diagnosed and I teach 16 years plus, they have gone through 16 years without a diagnosis.... Not to say being on the autistic spectrum can stop you from critically thinking, but it most certainly can be a barrier.
And unfortunately, some people are just not academically minded to decode complex theories and situations, especially those portrayed in the media that have multiple variables. Also, intelligence really is genuinely not fully understood, and the caveats of intelligence. Some people absolute will not be able to decipher and critically analyse and evaluate a subject, however them same people may be able to manipulate a football and place it on a pin head from 70 yards away on a consistent basis, no matter the weather. That evidences a high level of intelligence, including analytical skill... It just is not represented in the education system, and is not a skill that society desires so is not respected as much as it should be. The true challenge of the world is to harness human capability and make use of it, unfortunately academia is not the only route to do so, but is presented as the main route, and the alternatives are few and far between.
I should add, I have experience in the british education system and I am fully aware that this is not the standard necessarily across the globe... I want a Finnish education system if I could choose tbh.
I'd also add that some people get odd mental blocks regarding certain subjects. So whilst they might show skill regarding one subject, they appear unable to transfer that skill to another subject area that they've historically be "told" they are bad at.
I'd also agree that the education system in the UK has a terrible bias for promoting those who can do well in exams and who are good with generally abstract/theory/book learning. Meanwhile physical skills, hands skills and other areas of more practical application are often vastly under represented. I think its got better slowly, but there's still a body of students that I think would be better doing basic schooling and alongside an apprentice in a manual skill.
I could rant for years on end about the fallacy of exams, and also the ridiculous standard and barriers put up by the requirement of a GCSE of grade C/4 in maths... Functional skills is appropriate for many. Trigonometry, algebra etc has it's place, those places are few and far between though...
UK’s education system doesn’t seem to have really caught up with the digital world, and the perils contained there in.
Critical Thinking is of course essential for not taking information at face value.
Even the relatively simple “is this corroborated elsewhere?” question helps a lot.
Consider the “insider” often quoted in sensationalist stories. I’ll use Solo as a bipartisan example. Yes, it was known and widely reported to have been a difficult child. But the tales of “on-site dialogue coaches” and serious behind the screen issues? All came from a single, uncorroborated source, who was of course anonymous.
Clearly, it had some grain of truth (difficult child), but the rest? It seems likely to have just been click bait nonsense, dreamt up for the sensation and attention.
Qanon and the Protocols of Zion? I’m pretty sure Q started off as a genuine prank. Some wag seeing just how much online chaos vague statements and an unverified source could create.
Since then, it’s clearly been hijacked by persons with a clear agenda of anti-semitism, weaving centuries old and long debunked tales of bigotry into a very modern setting.
To people of a similar leaning, it’s not just the same old bigotry rearing it’s ugly head, but proof that said tales were true, are true, and unless “something are din abow tit”, will always be true.
What started as a joke from the outside looking in, and a pool of idiots to laugh at, is becoming deeply sinister, and worrying.
Critical Thinking is only part of the answer though. The appeal of these Conspiracy Theories runs very, very deep.
Please note folks I’ve again been careful to leave Politics out of it as far as I can. We’re discussing the Theory, not the politics and who they support.
Not Online!!! wrote: That is extremely paternalistic and pessimistic , not to mention deterministic in it's Outlook of human capability and how to right wrongs.
Not to contradict myself, but I do agree with you. However, from experience (and this is not anecdotal, I've met hundreds upon hundreds of teachers at this point who agree) not everyone is capable of high level critical thinking it. It's fairly well reasoned that plenty of people are on the spectrum, it's also fairly evident many are undiagnosed, we have at least a few students a year that get diagnosed and I teach 16 years plus, they have gone through 16 years without a diagnosis.... Not to say being on the autistic spectrum can stop you from critically thinking, but it most certainly can be a barrier.
Absolutely, however, critical thought for me, is not just decoding but also the question asked in counter to what is presented.
And unfortunately, some people are just not academically minded to decode complex theories and situations, especially those portrayed in the media that have multiple variables. Also, intelligence really is genuinely not fully understood, and the caveats of intelligence. Some people absolute will not be able to decipher and critically analyse and evaluate a subject, however them same people may be able to manipulate a football and place it on a pin head from 70 yards away on a consistent basis, no matter the weather. That evidences a high level of intelligence, including analytical skill... It just is not represented in the education system, and is not a skill that society desires so is not respected as much as it should be. The true challenge of the world is to harness human capability and make use of it, unfortunately academia is not the only route to do so, but is presented as the main route, and the alternatives are few and far between.
I should add, I have experience in the british education system and I am fully aware that this is not the standard necessarily across the globe... I want a Finnish education system if I could choose tbh.
See, and this is where i think we differ to what critically thinking means: For political decisions to happen on the basis of abstract and difficult to understand dogma and theory you don't need any university degree. The main reason i refuse your position simply is that i am keen on protecting my rights for halfdirect democratic systems. Which inherently rely upon a citizens understanding, and so far, that seems the case, even the most abstract concepts like "Vollgeld" can be voted on and explained propperly with time and skill.
Vice versa so are other economic initiatives. It turns out the average citizen is very well capable of finding a balanced opinion founded on a basis that is arguable debatable and strengthened by facts atleast over here.
OTOH Education was allways a core tenant of swiss kantons planning, regardless of nature of the respective Kantons in order to ideologically opose other Kantons influences. A reading population is one you can propagandistically work with, it's however also one that when there is no censorship can decide at any point that your attempt at that is nonsense and they search then out a quality paper instead.
As for intelligence, and i guess it also goes back into lawenforcement and punishment, the core tenents are imo that the question what is intelligence, beyond a moment of selfawareness (which is probably the smalles common denominator out there...) , is simply up for debate. We are now neurologically and psychologically at a point that is nothing more then the "leib-seele-problematik" that philosphy is biting it's teeth out since 3000 years. Psychology did run in this problem when psychiatric therapy failed on urge crime, neurology to describe the phenomenon of thought.
And as for societal value, or overvalueing of academia, or under valueing, i honestly think that also has to do with societal classes beeing attached to education and possibilities for education and having become nothing more in some cases , then a pawn in the game of politics.
It's also something that is really confusing for me to watch, basically you have to do x level of schooling to get x job, ignoring completley the reality that a wall builder ( Maurer) can just as easily and more correctly learn the practical skills of an ingenieur for statics out of personal experience and with a dual way of education should be able to reach the same position of education through his addmitedly diffrent set of intelligence / skills.
meanwhile when you hear french people talk : make the Lycée!
Even if that doesn't fit the students capability or set of inteligence or skills. It's a narrowmindedness i feel is extremely contraproductive.
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Overread wrote: I think we could probably generate a whole thread on the ills and issues of education systems and the curriculum!
by all means, it would lead at the very least , to interesting discussion and debatte on probably the most important thing a state has to provide and how people view it.
As a teacher, in Britain, and one that teaches science and specifically critical thinking... The reason why you don't learn it at younger ages, typically in state schools is because it requires a lot of higher order thinking, and also, you need to be able to utilise base principles and equations to validate any criticism of a concept... How can you utilise a counter argument if you cannot prove the base principles of the counter argument is correct?
Teaching all of those base principles is firstly time consuming, and requires numerous repetitions and practice of it, it takes all of your base school education to cover it.
Then, referring to higher order thinking, unfortunately some people are not capable of that.. This is why it is so important to not spread misinformation, especially in the modern age where it is so easy to reach huge numbers of people in seconds with the correct exposure..
I agree that the general subject area of critical thinking can become extremely complex but I would argue all subjects taught in school are the same. My first year studying chemistry at university was basically dedicated to explaining how all the stuff we were taught in high school was wrong. Not wrong because teachers are stupid, but wrong because school kids don't have the requirement or foundational knowledge required to be taught the reality so instead we were taught something close enough to understand the concepts and not provide completely erroneous answers in exams, which helped provide a foundation for university to teach from.
But when I talk about critical thinking I'm not talking about the nuances of philosophy, deduction and logical argument. I'm talking about the sort of simple principles that those things are built on. Like MDG points out, there are simple concepts like corroboration that aren't really discussed. Or the scientific method. When I was at school that was never properly explained and I'm still not sure whether that's because it was assumed knowledge or deemed irrelevant to passing exams (I suspect the latter). I think that's what leads to people so readily dismissing science later in life. They don't understand how the process works so they see it purely as some random person giving their opinion and equate that to some other random person on Facebook doing the same. If you don't know any better it's all just opinion, right?
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: UK’s education system doesn’t seem to have really caught up with the digital world, and the perils contained there in.
Critical Thinking is of course essential for not taking information at face value.
Even the relatively simple “is this corroborated elsewhere?” question helps a lot.
Consider the “insider” often quoted in sensationalist stories. I’ll use Solo as a bipartisan example. Yes, it was known and widely reported to have been a difficult child. But the tales of “on-site dialogue coaches” and serious behind the screen issues? All came from a single, uncorroborated source, who was of course anonymous.
Clearly, it had some grain of truth (difficult child), but the rest? It seems likely to have just been click bait nonsense, dreamt up for the sensation and attention.
Dare i ask what or who this Solo is?
Also, you should add to the corroborated, where is it from? who has paid for it?, With these two you can easily discern ALOT of what is written.
Qanon and the Protocols of Zion? I’m pretty sure Q started off as a genuine prank. Some wag seeing just how much online chaos vague statements and an unverified source could create.
Since then, it’s clearly been hijacked by persons with a clear agenda of anti-semitism, weaving centuries old and long debunked tales of bigotry into a very modern setting.
To people of a similar leaning, it’s not just the same old bigotry rearing it’s ugly head, but proof that said tales were true, are true, and unless “something are din abow tit”, will always be true.
Let's not kid ourself, intra societal interaction is pretty much, in many countries , dead. Classes living in closed communities, religious groups doing the same, all that leads to stagnation in understanding and debate. In many cases the Government is at fault at large, f.e. think of the rural and urban divide in politics and who get's voted into office, let's just say that Millieus exist for a reason, but how else are you expecting rural populations to vote f.e. in eastern germany, france, or the USA, when investments just simply don't happen, when infrastructure get's ignored, etc. When instead of actually paying attention to these portions of a country politicians just revert to killer arguments and what is colloquially dubbed the "Faschistenkeule" in discussion because the differing viewpoint has also attached diffrent values that seem unacceptable.
Same with migrants, how do you expect them to be able to integrate in a society when you cast them asside on a pile somewhere ? They aren't forced to interact with the local populus that way, why should they even bother to learn the language of said country, much less the culture?
What started as a joke from the outside looking in, and a pool of idiots to laugh at, is becoming deeply sinister, and worrying.
Critical Thinking is only part of the answer though. The appeal of these Conspiracy Theories runs very, very deep.
Please note folks I’ve again been careful to leave Politics out of it as far as I can. We’re discussing the Theory, not the politics and who they support.
Somewhere back in this thread, i mentioned it is like a religious cult often time attached to a personality cult aswell and the desire for people to have a stable place in a "society". I'd like to add to that, that the conditions for beeing caught in that rattrap skyrocket exponentially in regions that have lackluster perspectives and infrastructure.
Much less opportunity. Hopelessness afterall breeds the acceptance of a Messiah.
I'll leave this as my last post on the matter, unless we go down the rabbit hole in a separate thread, which I am more than happy to be a part of.
When I say academically minded, I don't necessarily mean intelligence in the form of knowledge, and applying knowledge, that is a factor, and I stand to reason that some people struggle with this factor, hence honesty and reducing all misinformation is key. However some of it is down to processing, or information processing. There are numerous theories on the cognitive function of the brain, and whilst flawed, the analogy or design is built on the brain being a computer. Most of us will know that computers come in different shapes, sizes, power and importantly for this argument, ability to process multiple tasks/actions at once. Many people do not attain an efficient processing ability. Now it's not that they are incapable of processing the arguments, it's how much time are they given to do so? Time is precious, not many people have vast amounts of time to dedicate to decoding a problem. It's also why exams in part are a fallacy, it is used as a measure of capability, when it is actually a measure of capability only within a time constraint. Give people enough time, they can find the right answer, so many people don't have the time to do so. Then when you inspect the difficulty of the task, is there the motivation to carry on chipping away, is the ram their to maintain one crucial counter point that invalidates the whole counter argument when taken down a specific avenue, there's just too many variables to juggle for some people to formulate the correct outcome.
And this isn't taking into account the impact of stress, positive and/or negative feedback and many other factors that go into the ability of a person to process information effectively.
BTW, this is my opinion, and I believe myself to be correct, I'm also not pig headed enough to suggest I definitely am correct on this matter though.
But when I talk about critical thinking I'm not talking about the nuances of philosophy, deduction and logical argument. I'm talking about the sort of simple principles that those things are built on. Like MDG points out, there are simple concepts like corroboration that aren't really discussed. Or the scientific method. When I was at school that was never properly explained and I'm still not sure whether that's because it was assumed knowledge or deemed irrelevant to passing exams (I suspect the latter). I think that's what leads to people so readily dismissing science later in life. They don't understand how the process works so they see it purely as some random person giving their opinion and equate that to some other random person on Facebook doing the same. If you don't know any better it's all just opinion, right?
If there is any reason for this phenomenon indeed beeing so widespread then yes, this will probably be it, now we just would need to test the hypothesis.
endlesswaltz123 wrote: Also, intelligence really is genuinely not fully understood, and the caveats of intelligence. Some people absolute will not be able to decipher and critically analyse and evaluate a subject, however them same people may be able to manipulate a football and place it on a pin head from 70 yards away on a consistent basis, no matter the weather. That evidences a high level of intelligence, including analytical skill... It just is not represented in the education system, and is not a skill that society desires so is not respected as much as it should be.
I just wanted to go back and pick up on this one briefly... Personally I'd say it's one of the major tragedies of modern Britain that being good with a football seems to be vastly more valued and considered an aspirational goal than having a decent level of critical thought.
endlesswaltz123 wrote: Also, intelligence really is genuinely not fully understood, and the caveats of intelligence. Some people absolute will not be able to decipher and critically analyse and evaluate a subject, however them same people may be able to manipulate a football and place it on a pin head from 70 yards away on a consistent basis, no matter the weather. That evidences a high level of intelligence, including analytical skill... It just is not represented in the education system, and is not a skill that society desires so is not respected as much as it should be.
I just wanted to go back and pick up on this one briefly... Personally I'd say it's one of the major tragedies of modern Britain that being good with a football seems to be vastly more valued and considered an aspirational goal than having a decent level of critical thought.
I see why you say that, and personally, I find it infuriating that footballers are used and called 'role models'.... There's no common sense in modelling yourself on a footballer, even if you have the skill, talent and countless other factors, the likelihood of you making it is very slim.
Anyway, going back to your point, that was just one brief example I used, there are many many many others outside of sport that suggest a high level of cognitive ability without it being demonstrated in an academic area, yet we would call this people unintelligent? I argue against that.
I’ve often told my creative friends, who at times get depressed about dead end jobs, that it’s just a chance of the time period we live in.
I’m a naturally academic person, with a knack for critical thinking. I’ve never been taught how, formally. But my career has brought that out, and let me hone it in a way I enjoy.
Had I been born earlier, and not by all that much, it would be me struggling in a world primarily driven by manual labour. It’s crazy how the world only ever tried to replicate what it feels it needs.
Look at the rise of “artisan” food. I put that word in quotes, because whilst I appreciate and respect the skills involved, I find it a bit pretentious. I’m not adverse to paying more for tastier, arguably healthier (fewer preservatives) food. I try to use my local Butcher, rather than the Supermarket for my meaty goodness, because it tastes better, and I can get specific cuts easier, and have it partially prepared for me.
I don’t frown upon food mass production, or those that make use of it (I have just stuffed my face with McDonalds). I just appreciate I’ve the option to choose.
I’m happy to say this new found, albeit (me included) slightly pretentious market for hand made stuff has enabled said creative friends to make at least some kind of living from their natural talents and developed skills. Sure, some still have a minimum wage job to provide stability, but they’re able to supplement that from their hobby.
I mean, I can take pretty much any of my friends in a debate, because that’s pretty close to my job. But ask me to build more than a flatpack whilst following the instructions, and I’m bollocksed.
And we need an education system better able to identify and nurture talents. As someone who went through the Comprehensive System, a lot of the Naughty Kids were, in actual fact, just bored out of their minds, because they were being taught things out of useful context.
Example? A kid may be a natural at woodwork and electrics. Those of course involve maths. But they way I was taught maths was overly abstract. Sure, I used to be able to do simultaneous and quadratic equations, and enjoyed doing so. But that knowledge withered, because it’s never, to this day, been of any relevance at all to my professional life. Little beyond relatively simple algebra has been.
This of course can lead to kids feeling disenfranchised and useless quite early on. That’s something very hard to turn around in an adult.
Or, you could set up the education system in a way as to theach them in, i do not know, apprentieceship system? Adding in additional systems to allow for entry into higher schooling in the specific realm of their job?
To do it effectively, you are going to have to accept you are paying a teacher a teaching salary to teach to only 4 students in some areas. This goes against the current break even point of needing 17 in each classroom at least, more in some areas...
Basically, either education needs limitless funding, or a bigger change is needed where students go to live away from family at specific institutes around the country to acquire their tailored education. This brings in even more issues and costing problems though...
I agree to the above, but I'm fundamentally unsure on how to implement it fully tbh.
To do it effectively, you are going to have to accept you are paying a teacher a teaching salary to teach to only 4 students in some areas. This goes against the current break even point of needing 17 in each classroom at least, more in some areas...
Basically, either education needs limitless funding, or a bigger change is needed where students go to live away from family at specific institutes around the country to acquire their tailored education. This brings in even more issues and costing problems though...
I agree to the above, but I'm fundamentally unsure on how to implement it fully tbh.
Erm, we run such a system, quite successfully infact.
it isn't that difficult, infact it is just medieval guild system left over adopted into industrial era with strengthened sylabus and in cooperation with the companies, which form groups to discern skills they need of future workers in such a way and either Pay into the system additionally or have apprentices in their companies to teach.
Intelligence is a skill; like other skills people are born with a talent for it, and they can nurture or squander what they have. And I will die on that hill.
To do it effectively, you are going to have to accept you are paying a teacher a teaching salary to teach to only 4 students in some areas. This goes against the current break even point of needing 17 in each classroom at least, more in some areas...
Basically, either education needs limitless funding, or a bigger change is needed where students go to live away from family at specific institutes around the country to acquire their tailored education. This brings in even more issues and costing problems though...
I agree to the above, but I'm fundamentally unsure on how to implement it fully tbh.
Erm, we run such a system, quite successfully infact.
it isn't that difficult, infact it is just medieval guild system left over adopted into industrial era with strengthened sylabus and in cooperation with the companies, which form groups to discern skills they need of future workers in such a way and either Pay into the system additionally or have apprentices in their companies to teach.
It isn't magic.
But it can be percieved as socialist, so here in the US it may as well be.
Socialist? When companies quite literally Form groups of Interests provide experts and work out according to their job what they (students) need for job x
At most it is corporatist?
Conspiracy Theories are done by people who are pure skeptics.
It's really that simple.
They ignore facts, assume knowledge is unknowable, and deny the senses. As a consequence, they don't know what the burden of proof is, or how evidence works, or how probable/possible/certainty work epistemologically.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Saw a claim that Q has been doxxed. Apparently it’s the founder of 8Chan?
Yeah. I mentioned it pages ago as a conspiracy theory about the conspiracy theory that the person posting as Q was actually the owner of 8Chan and his son, who also own Q's PAC. Is there some new information?
BuFFo wrote: Conspiracy Theories are done by people who are pure skeptics.
It's really that simple.
They ignore facts, assume knowledge is unknowable, and deny the senses. As a consequence, they don't know what the burden of proof is, or how evidence works, or how probable/possible/certainty work epistemologically.
That's not how skeptics behave- that doesn't even make any sense. A proper skeptic is all about proof, evidence and knowledge.
The word you're looking for is 'believer,' in the Fox Moulder sense. What they 'want to believe' overrides everything else.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Saw a claim that Q has been doxxed. Apparently it’s the founder of 8Chan?
Well that makes the obsession with pedo rings that the Qultists have even more ironic, as 8chan was/is rife with child porn and threads for paedophiles.
It's almost like being the scum that even 4chan doesn't want makes you a completely awful human being.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Saw a claim that Q has been doxxed. Apparently it’s the founder of 8Chan?
Well that makes the obsession with pedo rings that the Qultists have even more ironic, as 8chan was/is rife with child porn and threads for paedophiles.
It's almost like being the scum that even 4chan doesn't want makes you a completely awful human being.
Makes one wonder if that very fact is what kicked off the whole QAnon thing in the first place. Poster having either connections or inferences to those who are now accused by the CT...
In a thread about Conspiracy Theories, I never thought that abbreviating Conspiracy Theory into CT would cause confusion. So, yeah, I meant Conspiracy Theory.
In a thread about Conspiracy Theories, I never thought that abbreviating Conspiracy Theory into CT would cause confusion. So, yeah, I meant Conspiracy Theory.
Well, I guess you could use a colloquial notion of conspiracy theorists as "skeptics" but they aren't really coherent skeptics, because they "drink their own kool-aid" and fail to doubt their own positions or premises as consistency would dictate.
In this way, most might claim to be skeptics, but really their comportment has more in common with cynicism or contrarianism, than any sort of rigorous skepticism. Why make a call to skepticism then? Well, likely because it is the more "intellectually defensible" position, since many skeptical arguments are fairly hard to deal with from an epistemological standpoint.
The "key" though, I think, is that their entire epistemological paradigm lacks any sort of developed theory of what justification is, or should be. So, it isn't just doubt that is a problem, in-itself, it is doubt for the sake of being contrarian, or for self-serving interests like ideology and so on.
So, where a skeptic might express doubt as to what happened in a given case, or doubt that a supplied explanation is sufficient, the conspiracy theorist uses the epistemological gap there to insert all sort of personal bias, ideological rhetoric, economic interest, or just plain notions of intellectual superiority (among other possible things). The problem there is not doubt in-itself, but rather the incoherent way in which it is being used to "justify" the rest of the behavior.
H wrote: Well, I guess you could use a colloquial notion of conspiracy theorists as "skeptics" but they aren't really coherent skeptics
the difference is falsifiability: A skeptic can be convinced with enough evidence, a conspiracy theorist can't.
hmm
That is a bit iffy though especially in regards to religious conspiracy theories.
As noted in the article, astrology can be falsified, yet also be accurate, yet is considered Pseudo science.
Proof of god , /existence of god is quite similar.
H wrote: Well, I guess you could use a colloquial notion of conspiracy theorists as "skeptics" but they aren't really coherent skeptics, because they "drink their own kool-aid" and fail to doubt their own positions or premises as consistency would dictate.
In this way, most might claim to be skeptics, but really their comportment has more in common with cynicism or contrarianism, than any sort of rigorous skepticism. Why make a call to skepticism then? Well, likely because it is the more "intellectually defensible" position, since many skeptical arguments are fairly hard to deal with from an epistemological standpoint.
The "key" though, I think, is that their entire epistemological paradigm lacks any sort of developed theory of what justification is, or should be. So, it isn't just doubt that is a problem, in-itself, it is doubt for the sake of being contrarian, or for self-serving interests like ideology and so on.
So, where a skeptic might express doubt as to what happened in a given case, or doubt that a supplied explanation is sufficient, the conspiracy theorist uses the epistemological gap there to insert all sort of personal bias, ideological rhetoric, economic interest, or just plain notions of intellectual superiority (among other possible things). The problem there is not doubt in-itself, but rather the incoherent way in which it is being used to "justify" the rest of the behavior.
A very good explanation of the difference between a Wisdom-8 'skeptic' and a Wisdom-18 skeptic.
H wrote: Well, I guess you could use a colloquial notion of conspiracy theorists as "skeptics" but they aren't really coherent skeptics
the difference is falsifiability: A skeptic can be convinced with enough evidence, a conspiracy theorist can't.
hmm
That is a bit iffy though especially in regards to religious conspiracy theories.
As noted in the article, astrology can be falsified, yet also be accurate, yet is considered Pseudo science.
Proof of god , /existence of god is quite similar.
H wrote: Well, I guess you could use a colloquial notion of conspiracy theorists as "skeptics" but they aren't really coherent skeptics
the difference is falsifiability: A skeptic can be convinced with enough evidence, a conspiracy theorist can't.
hmm
That is a bit iffy though especially in regards to religious conspiracy theories.
As noted in the article, astrology can be falsified, yet also be accurate, yet is considered Pseudo science.
Proof of god , /existence of god is quite similar.
Astrology is not accurate, astrology is vague.
Meh, Kuhn did disagree with propper on astrology partially and considering that Debate and others still rage on ...
H wrote: Well, I guess you could use a colloquial notion of conspiracy theorists as "skeptics" but they aren't really coherent skeptics
the difference is falsifiability: A skeptic can be convinced with enough evidence, a conspiracy theorist can't.
hmm
That is a bit iffy though especially in regards to religious conspiracy theories.
As noted in the article, astrology can be falsified, yet also be accurate, yet is considered Pseudo science.
Proof of god , /existence of god is quite similar.
Oh man, astrology is a hoot. All of those humans have a component of their personality determined by blank are lots of fun to read about. Most of it is explainable by confirmation bias, or the personality archetypes being presented in ways that we want to believe we are.
My favorite is the blood typing personality theory
It's more seductive pseudo science than astrology because there is a genetic component to it.
The 16 personality type seems more effective because it doesn't try to claim where ti originates, just goes with types- but it's still very jarring when someone introduces themselves as an INFJ or whatnot.
I saw an interesting video, I think by James Randi, which talked about mediums. He said one interesting element is that many mediums will read a persons reaction to questions and comments and craft their replies around that. However the key wasn't that they'd have to make perfect guesses. In fact many times they'd get more guesses and information wrong than right. However the person undergoing the reading will often focus on the correct elements far more so and remember them. So walking away they remember the things the medium "got right" whilst forgetting or overlooking the bits they got wrong.
Of course some of this is in the personality of the medium and how they conduct the reading and such. There is indeed quite an art to it, but there's also an element of the person being read either being unaware of the art of cold-reading and/or having some belief before they go into the process.
The latter can be easily bolstered by confirmation bias through things like Television. There were loads of TV shows that were "real" in style that used mediums and such - heck almost every crime drama has at least one "medium helps find the criminal" episode. Throw in a few of the "ghost story" type shows and a person can get the impression that there IS something behind it all.
Overread wrote: I saw an interesting video, I think by James Randi, which talked about mediums. He said one interesting element is that many mediums will read a persons reaction to questions and comments and craft their replies around that.
On this point may I recommend a fiction book called "Attack of the unsinkable rubber ducks" which was written in homage to James Randi and his relentless persuit of conspiracy theorists, frauds, quacks and liars.
Overread wrote: I saw an interesting video, I think by James Randi, which talked about mediums. He said one interesting element is that many mediums will read a persons reaction to questions and comments and craft their replies around that.
On this point may I recommend a fiction book called "Attack of the unsinkable rubber ducks" which was written in homage to James Randi and his relentless persuit of conspiracy theorists, frauds, quacks and liars.
That sounds Like fun, will give it a go when i Find time.
Overread wrote: I saw an interesting video, I think by James Randi, which talked about mediums. He said one interesting element is that many mediums will read a persons reaction to questions and comments and craft their replies around that.
On this point may I recommend a fiction book called "Attack of the unsinkable rubber ducks" which was written in homage to James Randi and his relentless persuit of conspiracy theorists, frauds, quacks and liars.
On my "to read" list now. Thanks for the tip.
Also, Randi's account of how he unmasked whatshisface the faith healer is both entertaining (because he's a good storyteller) and rage-inducing.
Overread wrote: I saw an interesting video, I think by James Randi, which talked about mediums. He said one interesting element is that many mediums will read a persons reaction to questions and comments and craft their replies around that.
On this point may I recommend a fiction book called "Attack of the unsinkable rubber ducks" which was written in homage to James Randi and his relentless persuit of conspiracy theorists, frauds, quacks and liars.
On my "to read" list now. Thanks for the tip.
Also, Randi's account of how he unmasked whatshisface the faith healer is both entertaining (because he's a good storyteller) and rage-inducing.
It's worth reading the other Parlabane books first, though the first two aren't essential.
The nice thing about Randi is that he's fully willing to believe in magic and the supernatural. He's even quite respectful in how he conducts himself in general with the frauds.
However he's a calm, steady and logical approach to it. He doesn't have to froth at the mouth to denounce them, he just slowly and steadily proves that they are fakes. Either by showing how the trick is done and/or showing that they are unable to reproduce it when even really simple controls are put in place.
It makes it all the harder to actually fight against because there's no "fight" in a typical sense.
H wrote: Well, I guess you could use a colloquial notion of conspiracy theorists as "skeptics" but they aren't really coherent skeptics
the difference is falsifiability: A skeptic can be convinced with enough evidence, a conspiracy theorist can't.
hmm
That is a bit iffy though especially in regards to religious conspiracy theories.
As noted in the article, astrology can be falsified, yet also be accurate, yet is considered Pseudo science.
Proof of god , /existence of god is quite similar.
Overread wrote: The nice thing about Randi is that he's fully willing to believe in magic and the supernatural. He's even quite respectful in how he conducts himself in general with the frauds.
However he's a calm, steady and logical approach to it. He doesn't have to froth at the mouth to denounce them, he just slowly and steadily proves that they are fakes. Either by showing how the trick is done and/or showing that they are unable to reproduce it when even really simple controls are put in place.
It makes it all the harder to actually fight against because there's no "fight" in a typical sense.
Overread wrote: I saw an interesting video, I think by James Randi, which talked about mediums. He said one interesting element is that many mediums will read a persons reaction to questions and comments and craft their replies around that. However the key wasn't that they'd have to make perfect guesses. In fact many times they'd get more guesses and information wrong than right. However the person undergoing the reading will often focus on the correct elements far more so and remember them. So walking away they remember the things the medium "got right" whilst forgetting or overlooking the bits they got wrong.
Of course some of this is in the personality of the medium and how they conduct the reading and such. There is indeed quite an art to it, but there's also an element of the person being read either being unaware of the art of cold-reading and/or having some belief before they go into the process.
An interesting rundown, but I find myself wondering how it applies to the many smalls and larges out there.
People want to believe in an afterlife. Well, not one where they're burning in agony for eternity, but a lot seem to drool at the thought of it happening to 'others'.
Excuse the fairly nihilistic tone to this comment, but I don't see the point of not being blunt. People don't want to believe that when they die, that they only rot in the ground if buried or are nothing but ash if cremated... I view it as more of a lack of acceptance of death and fearing death than wanting there to be an afterlife/reincarnate.
Imagine the amount of people swirling about up there if there were an afterlife, the world already seems crowded with 7 billion, and a rough estimate is that there has been 107 billion humans so far. Not to mention animals etc.
Of all the reasons not to believe in an afterlife, the potentially-limited space in a utopia that exists beyond physics and that is (usually) only populated by select believers of a particular deity/pantheon seems a pretty generous one to highlight
Imagine the amount of people swirling about up there if there were an afterlife, the world already seems crowded with 7 billion, and a rough estimate is that there has been 107 billion humans so far. Not to mention animals etc.
Also, consider how many of those people died as babies/children.
You spend eternity surrounded by screaming infants.
Matt Swain wrote: People want to believe in an afterlife. Well, not one where they're burning in agony for eternity, but a lot seem to drool at the thought of it happening to 'others'.
So mediums and such will keep having audiences.
As the old joke goes, anyone can speak with the dead. It's getting them to respond that's the problem.
Matt Swain wrote: People want to believe in an afterlife. Well, not one where they're burning in agony for eternity, but a lot seem to drool at the thought of it happening to 'others'.
So mediums and such will keep having audiences.
As the old joke goes, anyone can speak with the dead. It's getting them to respond that's the problem.
Having seen plenty of movies about Ouija boards, I know for a fact it is very easy to get them to respond, they're just some stone cold bastards
Well it wouldn't be utopia. There is more than one religion that says you'll go to hell if you don't follow it, so we can safely assume everyone goes to hell. If hell has finite dimensions then we can assume it has been rendered quite hot by the addition of souls of the dammed plus thermodynamics. It has probably suffered a heat death at this point, explaining why people are more secular nowadays as compared to the middle ages when hell had yet to suffer such a fate.
endlesswaltz123 wrote: Excuse the fairly nihilistic tone to this comment, but I don't see the point of not being blunt. People don't want to believe that when they die, that they only rot in the ground if buried or are nothing but ash if cremated... I view it as more of a lack of acceptance of death and fearing death than wanting there to be an afterlife/reincarnate.
Imagine the amount of people swirling about up there if there were an afterlife, the world already seems crowded with 7 billion, and a rough estimate is that there has been 107 billion humans so far. Not to mention animals etc.
I always thought that it was essentially a tonne of separate pocket dimensions. Like the phrase, your own personal hell being linked to each person having their own little realm of torment. But being more pleasant, less torture. (I guess unless you end up in heaven and just so happen to have a fetish for that sort of thing.)
Alternatively after an eternity everyone just goes insane and loses all identity, becoming the amorphous wisps of cloud you always see in renditions of heaven.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Well it wouldn't be utopia. There is more than one religion that says you'll go to hell if you don't follow it, so we can safely assume everyone goes to hell. If hell has finite dimensions then we can assume it has been rendered quite hot by the addition of souls of the dammed plus thermodynamics. It has probably suffered a heat death at this point, explaining why people are more secular nowadays as compared to the middle ages when hell had yet to suffer such a fate.
LoL, well now you've got to consider- some religions heavens would be considered hell by others. Anyone who's dated can imagine that getting 72 virgins fighting over you isn't going to be very pleasant. Getting drunk, fighting and probably dying everyday, then being reborn to do it again sounds awful to many people. Eternal peace and rest is bloody boring. Standing vigil over the living until they forget you.... will you come away horribly depressed, or hating them? For many, even the idea of being reborn as something else is horrific- 'The Fly' is a horror movie about reincarnation. Most afterlives will probably have folks in them thinking it's heaven, and folks in them thinking it's hell.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Well it wouldn't be utopia. There is more than one religion that says you'll go to hell if you don't follow it, so we can safely assume everyone goes to hell. If hell has finite dimensions then we can assume it has been rendered quite hot by the addition of souls of the dammed plus thermodynamics. It has probably suffered a heat death at this point, explaining why people are more secular nowadays as compared to the middle ages when hell had yet to suffer such a fate.
LoL, well now you've got to consider- some religions heavens would be considered hell by others. Anyone who's dated can imagine that getting 72 virgins fighting over you isn't going to be very pleasant. Getting drunk, fighting and probably dying everyday, then being reborn to do it again sounds awful to many people. Eternal peace and rest is bloody boring. Standing vigil over the living until they forget you.... will you come away horribly depressed, or hating them? For many, even the idea of being reborn as something else is horrific- 'The Fly' is a horror movie about reincarnation. Most afterlives will probably have folks in them thinking it's heaven, and folks in them thinking it's hell.
i'd like to point out, that christians , jews and moslems still talk about the same god. we just don^t like each others way of worship, or did not, or still don't....
So technically, for all of these you'd have the same afterlife?
Henry wrote: If it wasn't for forum rule #1 we could apply that list to a bunch of topics that people hold dear. But somehow it's ok to point at conspiracy theorists and ask why do they believe crazy things, as though they are an exception.
Your drifting heavily into discussing religion and it is frowned upon in civilised society, as well as this forum, to associate the beliefs of conspiracy theorists and cultists with the religious.
We’ve walked that fine line quite well so far, so please let’s settle it down a bit.
Right. The next Conspiracy Theory?
Mud Fossil University. I’m not going to link, but they’ve a YouTube channel. Apparently, rock formations and striations are the remains of giant creatures.....
We’ve walked that fine line quite well so far, so please let’s settle it down a bit.
Right. The next Conspiracy Theory?
Mud Fossil University. I’m not going to link, but they’ve a YouTube channel. Apparently, rock formations and striations are the remains of giant creatures.....
Believable when you look at some formations. If you like to anthropomorphise Igneus rocks and the like.
As to a relative newcomer to the CT stage, some people are claiming that the covid is a 'plandemic' meant to force the world to go to a cashless society.
I find this just a little hard to swallow but not impossible, history proves the rich and powerful do what they want with no regard for the suffering of the masses.
Here's one look at how a cashless society would eliminate privacy and open the door to almost unlimited government and corporate control of your life.
So while I'm neutral on the idea covid was created to impose a cashless society, i'm fairly sure that some people would be willing to use it to accelerate plans for one.
The cashless society thing hits me personally as I've had a taste of what those unable or unwilling to assimilate into a cashless collective would suffer and i didn't like it at all.
I can remember the good old days before paypal, and i used ebay regularly. Then this paypal thing got started and suddenly ebay was nagging us to go to paypal. After several months there were still some holdouts, motivated possibly just by the feeling of being tired of opening wide and saying "Ahhh" for whatever new thing big biz wanted to stick in our mouths.
I refused to go paypal just on that principle, I'm tired of bigbiz essentially pushing, showing and nagging it'sSHINY NEW THING (C) on us.
Ebay essentially made it very difficult to not uyse paypal, and encoriaged stores to go paypal only.
I finally quit using ebay and went to amazon. My refusal to use paypal (which was strengthened by recent revelations about its creator) has made it nearly impossible to buy or sell stuff on 40k buying and selling pages, and i've been abused and harassed for not using it.
So yeah, i know how that cashless society could be, just imagine the 'paypal punch" to the face i get every time i want to get something and see the 'paypal only' sign waiting for me.
We’ve walked that fine line quite well so far, so please let’s settle it down a bit.
Right. The next Conspiracy Theory?
Mud Fossil University. I’m not going to link, but they’ve a YouTube channel. Apparently, rock formations and striations are the remains of giant creatures.....
Believable when you look at some formations. If you like to anthropomorphise Igneus rocks and the like.
5th Elephant springs to mind as well.
Okay, let's go the next step. Clouds are actually the emissions of fossil fuel powered machines, and the reason they so often look like animals is because that's what fuel was made of when it was alive. Thus clouds are actually the ghosts of ancient animals!
NinthMusketeer wrote: Well it wouldn't be utopia. There is more than one religion that says you'll go to hell if you don't follow it, so we can safely assume everyone goes to hell. If hell has finite dimensions then we can assume it has been rendered quite hot by the addition of souls of the dammed plus thermodynamics. It has probably suffered a heat death at this point, explaining why people are more secular nowadays as compared to the middle ages when hell had yet to suffer such a fate.
LoL, well now you've got to consider- some religions heavens would be considered hell by others. Anyone who's dated can imagine that getting 72 virgins fighting over you isn't going to be very pleasant. Getting drunk, fighting and probably dying everyday, then being reborn to do it again sounds awful to many people. Eternal peace and rest is bloody boring. Standing vigil over the living until they forget you.... will you come away horribly depressed, or hating them? For many, even the idea of being reborn as something else is horrific- 'The Fly' is a horror movie about reincarnation. Most afterlives will probably have folks in them thinking it's heaven, and folks in them thinking it's hell.
For some reason the last sentence made me think of this lovely little animation.
So while I'm neutral on the idea covid was created to impose a cashless society, i'm fairly sure that some people would be willing to use it to accelerate plans for one.
Thats what I think. COVID is a naturally occuring disease that people have simply opportunistically used to advance certain agendas. Thats not a CT, its just evil being evil. I don't think a cashless society conspiracy is involved, but there are plenty of other brazen attempts to limit other things.
There are enough real shady things being done without needing to worry about some made up cashless conspiracy.
So while I'm neutral on the idea covid was created to impose a cashless society, i'm fairly sure that some people would be willing to use it to accelerate plans for one.
Thats what I think. COVID is a naturally occuring disease that people have simply opportunistically used to advance certain agendas. Thats not a CT, its just evil being evil. I don't think a cashless society conspiracy is involved, but there are plenty of other brazen attempts to limit other things.
There are enough real shady things being done without needing to worry about some made up cashless conspiracy.
TBH i am at least 50% sure the cashless society bit isn't a theory but a real conspiracy.
So while I'm neutral on the idea covid was created to impose a cashless society, i'm fairly sure that some people would be willing to use it to accelerate plans for one.
Thats what I think. COVID is a naturally occuring disease that people have simply opportunistically used to advance certain agendas. Thats not a CT, its just evil being evil. I don't think a cashless society conspiracy is involved, but there are plenty of other brazen attempts to limit other things.
There are enough real shady things being done without needing to worry about some made up cashless conspiracy.
TBH i am at least 50% sure the cashless society bit isn't a theory but a real conspiracy.
Is this related to China stepping the Yuan down as it's primary currency for a bitcoin of some variety? (goodness knows if that will go forward proper)
So while I'm neutral on the idea covid was created to impose a cashless society, i'm fairly sure that some people would be willing to use it to accelerate plans for one.
Thats what I think. COVID is a naturally occuring disease that people have simply opportunistically used to advance certain agendas. Thats not a CT, its just evil being evil. I don't think a cashless society conspiracy is involved, but there are plenty of other brazen attempts to limit other things.
There are enough real shady things being done without needing to worry about some made up cashless conspiracy.
TBH i am at least 50% sure the cashless society bit isn't a theory but a real conspiracy.
Is this related to China stepping the Yuan down as it's primary currency for a bitcoin of some variety? (goodness knows if that will go forward proper)
Well, china is absolutely the most authoritarian, anti human rights society on earth now, a point i wont even debate anymore than i'd debate a flat earther. Their recent omniversal surveillance and judgement state proves that beyond any reasonable doubt. Then add in their persecution of ethnic minorities that simply maintain an identity asides from that of Chinese subjects, their persecution of religion and anything else that creates a sense of identity outside of being a good loyal little chinese government subjects and yes I would say that if the chinese government is doing it it must be bad.
But again, that article i linked to above shows what a cashless society would be like and it's awful.
As to a society where all your spending can be tracked, how would you like it if your corporate overlord asked you give them access to your spending data? Of course you would be free to choose not to let them, they could not legally force you to let them have it. Just check the box saying "No, I choose to terminate my employment and forfeit any severance and accumulated benefits.."
So you choose to give them access to your spending data. Then you make a donation to a group your owner doesn't like. 5 minutes later you get a pink slip text.
Some credit cards companies refuse to let you send donations to groups like wikileaks, for example. At least you can use a check or money order to send donations to groups the credit card CEO's don't like. In a cashless society, you couldn't.
So yeah, a cashless society would be the end of privacy and freedom.
The book "Towers of utopia" by Mack Reynolds explored this, how a true cashless society makes the individual essentially incapable of escaping the surveillance and therefore the power of the government's law enforcement. In the book the example was a murderer. But it woiulod also apoply to anyone who displeased the system in any way, by, say, having an opinion of his own, ceiling for change, etc.
One thing Reynolds got wrong tho. In his books he forsaw a lot accurately, the "phone tv credit card video camera" which really was just the modern smartphone and the "TV library booster" that was an internet termninal. He had people taking education courses on their tv libraries. He really forsaw the internet and smartphones pretty clearly.
The one thing he got wrong was the government having to make it illegal to be without your tv phone credit card video camera machine. he actually believed people would have to be forced by law to carry them, he never guessed people would do so so willingly as they do today.
Convenience, ah yes the sugar torwards authorithairian systems.
imagine how convenient the job for politicians would be if they allways could have their way without beeing forced to negotiate or voted out or voted on policy.
With someone taking a cut of every transaction, prices go up.
If one system is preferred, that's one hell of a powerful company.
Just think if the systems crashed, or were hacked....
It’s also far more secure, and comes with greater consumer protection.
I get real time updates on my bank account, so long as I’m on 4g5g/WiFi.
I can lock my debit card if I find it missing, and unlock it should I find it my wallet in the fridge again (true story!).
It also makes it harder for fraudsters, and easier to prosecute them.
Example? If I pinch £200 cash from your wallet? First, you’ll need CCTV of me actually taking it, to show it was me in the first place. Then you’ll have to reasonably prove you had said £200 in the first place. I can also take my time spending that cash, as I’ve already got it.
But, if I pinch your debit or credit card? Well, I’ll need to know your PIN. I’ve also got an indeterminate amount of time between pinching it, and you reporting it pinched. So I need to get going as soon as possible - and ideally avoid CCTV etc.
There is of course far more to it than that where cards are concerned, but those are trade secret type levels of knowledge.
But clearly, cashless is just Big Brother Big Brothering.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: It’s also far more secure, and comes with greater consumer protection.
debatable.
I get real time updates on my bank account, so long as I’m on 4g5g/WiFi.
debatable.
I can lock my debit card if I find it missing, and unlock it should I find it my wallet in the fridge again (true story!).
I don't even... WHY?
It also makes it harder for fraudsters, and easier to prosecute them.
Wirecard says hello...
Example? If I pinch £200 cash from your wallet? First, you’ll need CCTV of me actually taking it, to show it was me in the first place. Then you’ll have to reasonably prove you had said £200 in the first place. I can also take my time spending that cash, as I’ve already got it.
But, if I pinch your debit or credit card? Well, I’ll need to know your PIN. I’ve also got an indeterminate amount of time between pinching it, and you reporting it pinched. So I need to get going as soon as possible - and ideally avoid CCTV etc.
Au contraire, it actually makes it easier, to even wash the money.
Pinch credit card, buy f.e. game keys, resell on G2A. There, washed money. Further. in case of handys etc, any and all internet capable devices you open yourself up to a world of pain in regards to internet dangers.
There is of course far more to it than that where cards are concerned, but those are trade secret type levels of knowledge.
But clearly, cashless is just Big Brother Big Brothering.
Big brothers. There is also a gak town of knowledge going to companies which then will use said infor targeted marketing, not to mention that it can easily lead to some rather nasty issues for your privacy. But sure all that don't agree with it are just afraid of big brother, nvm people having issues with big coorperations barging into their privacy sphere, not to mention that certain suppliers for these devices come out of countries with active genocides going on.
Convenience, ah yes the sugar torwards authorithairian systems.
imagine how convenient the job for politicians would be if they allways could have their way without beeing forced to negotiate or voted out or voted on policy.
I was being facetious there. I abhor the idea of a compulsory cashless society too. I hate how much I use my card now...
ya, last century combined with foreign language use.
handy is used colloquially over here to include everything from the old nokia bricks of doom to smartphones of any kind.
Big brothers. There is also a shittown of knowledge going to companies which then will use said infor targeted marketing, not to mention that it can easily lead to some rather nasty issues for your privacy. But sure all that don't agree with it are just afraid of big brother, nvm people having issues with big coorperations barging into their privacy sphere, not to mention that certain suppliers for these devices come out of countries with active genocides going on.
This. I'd rather just lose the amount of hard cash I happened to have in my wallet than be subject to all those other things as a mandatory requirement.
And China accepts that as a fact? Or Secret services?
And frankly, the points I mentioned simply aren’t debatable. At all. They are simple (if simplified for sake of conversation) facts.
Chargeback, Section 75, all genuine protections.
You know that if you know what you have in a purse all the time you allways have oversight without accessing a seperate site which is doubly usefull if you have no electricity or internet access at that moment .
And sure, chargeback etc, exist, and yet we have stuff i brought up like wirecard, or the G2A key reseller money washing explode in recent years.
So yes, the postives are very much debatable, you puttung hands over your ears because it is addmittedly enormly convenient doesn't change that.
Oh and it goes a bit deeper, we now have our bloody gaming consoles hooked up with our cards, which then leads to such great things as child gambling etc. Because parents don't really teach their children how to handle money, respectively for utter lazyness lose controll of payment methods.
There are MASSIVE issues with wireless paying, beyond security of prviacy, the fact that online criminality has alone in switzerland from 2015 -2018 trippled should give you serious thought for pause. And that is not going into issues with malware.
Stores can also get a lot of data from cash purchases. Store cards let them track individual spending patterns for a start even if every transaction is cash.
Meanwhile behind the scenes large firms owning many smaller ones is an easy way to get around data exchange between different companies. You don't have to worry about trading laws if you already own multiple businesses which let you swap the data between them.
In the end tracking has always happened, its just shifting in scale. From "Old Ted" who runs the corner shop who knows you like to buy the odd beer on a weekend or whenever the wife is away visiting her mother; to now a guy in an office somewhere in a big city who knows that a portion of the population does this and thus targets them with advertising on the weekend.
The line is hard to draw and I'm sure that at some point we'll have some kind of automated data blocking system in place that starts to allow you to make digital purchases, whilst protecting your data. Most likely something that doesn't stop the data being harvested, but simply disallows its use/trade.
It is a concern for many. That said if someone in an office knows I spend my money on Warhammer and computer games and the odd book on birds/flies/moths I'm not really sure what they can do with that data that's nefarious save for showing me an add for a new book or game.
I do, however, care that a program exists that will determine my eligibility for a loan by how often I call my mother. I care if landlords are using tools to rank their tenants by compliant behaviour, to create a giant, shared platform of desirable tenants, who never complain about black mould and greet each rent increase with a basket of muffins. I care if the police in Durham are using Experian credit scores to influence their custodial decisions, an example – as you may have guessed by its specificity – that is already real. I care that the same credit-rating company has devised a Mosaic score, which splits households into comically bigoted stereotypes: if your name is Liam and you are an “avid texter”, that puts you in “disconnected youth”, while if you’re Asha you’re in “crowded kaleidoscope”. It’s not a privacy issue so much as a profiling one, although, as anyone who has ever been the repeated victim of police stop-and-search could have told me years ago, these are frequently the same thing.
Or this one?
In the US, algorithms have replaced nurses in determining how many hours of home care visits a patient is entitled to. In some places, funding dropped by as much as 42% as a result and when service users tried to understand why their hours had been cut, the state refused to share the algorithm’s decision-making process. Similar calculations sift through survey data to create a ranking of ‘deservingness’ for housing waiting lists in places like Los Angeles.
Both nice exemples allready.
Housing benefits are also tied to this over yonder.
Another area where technology is effectively crushing personal freedom and basically humanity is algorithmic employee control.
Why replace workers with robots when you can force them to work like robots by robotizing the management, eliminating and pesky, inefficient humanity that might get in the way of maximum profit?
ya, last century combined with foreign language use.
handy is used colloquially over here to include everything from the old nokia bricks of doom to smartphones of any kind.
And over here it would refer to certain services procured in a back alley.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I can lock my debit card if I find it missing, and unlock it should I find it my wallet in the fridge again (true story!).
I can't help but wonder why no-one has asked you to expand upon why your wallet has ended up in your fridge - and more than once, at that.
I mean, that was the key point of that post, right?
If he has a horizontal fridge he has to lean over to get stuff out of the bottom of his wallet could have fallen out into it as he leaned over if he puts it in his front pocket like i do.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I can lock my debit card if I find it missing, and unlock it should I find it my wallet in the fridge again (true story!).
I can't help but wonder why no-one has asked you to expand upon why your wallet has ended up in your fridge - and more than once, at that.
I mean, that was the key point of that post, right?
If he has a horizontal fridge he has to lean over to get stuff out of the bottom of his wallet could have fallen out into it as he leaned over if he puts it in his front pocket like i do.
Oddly unlikely. UK kitchens tend to be 'intimate' by design. As Nanny Ogg might say, not enough space to swing a cat, unless its a very patient cat that doesn't mind a few knocks on the head.
Unless he's got an odd custom build, a horizontal fridge seems unlikely, even if he could find one to put in it.
English Kitchens also depend if he's country or urban. Urban its snug; country in an old build it will be bigger with room to swing two cats.
Heck these days a lot of "flats" and some houses/apartments have kitchen/dining/living room combos where its basically a jumble of furniture in one room
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I can lock my debit card if I find it missing, and unlock it should I find it my wallet in the fridge again (true story!).
I can't help but wonder why no-one has asked you to expand upon why your wallet has ended up in your fridge - and more than once, at that.
I mean, that was the key point of that post, right?
About 20 years ago, I was home alone and really fancied a Pizza. Spent an hour hunting for my wallet, which is usually kept in my jeans pocket or next to my bed.
Couldn’t find it, so resigned to seeing what was to eat in the fridge. Opened the door, lo and behold, my wallet.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I can lock my debit card if I find it missing, and unlock it should I find it my wallet in the fridge again (true story!).
I can't help but wonder why no-one has asked you to expand upon why your wallet has ended up in your fridge - and more than once, at that.
I mean, that was the key point of that post, right?
About 20 years ago, I was home alone and really fancied a Pizza. Spent an hour hunting for my wallet, which is usually kept in my jeans pocket or next to my bed.
Couldn’t find it, so resigned to seeing what was to eat in the fridge. Opened the door, lo and behold, my wallet.
The illumaniti has allied with the space nazis and the lizard people, plus the gay chemtrail agents and have a central base of operations near MDG.
Realizing that MDG is a gamer and therefore likely to be of above average intelligence and perception and therefore likely to spot their nefarious activities unless distracted they took action.
So they have cyber ninjas smuggle martian chameleons into his house that were captured and trained by their child slave laborers on mars to hide his wallet in his fridge to make him doubt himself and prevent him uncovering their dastardly deeds, all of this in ran out of a Washington pizzaria that uses 5g wifi to control their global operations while spreading covid-19.
Matt Swain wrote: The illumaniti has allied with the space nazis and the lizard people, plus the gay chemtrail agents and have a central base of operations near MDG.
Realizing that MDG is a gamer and therefore likely to be of above average intelligence and perception and therefore likely to spot their nefarious activities unless distracted they took action.
So they have cyber ninjas smuggle martian chameleons into his house that were captured and trained by their child slave laborers on mars to hide his wallet in his fridge to make him doubt himself and prevent him uncovering their dastardly deeds, all of this in ran out of a Washington pizzaria that uses 5g wifi to control their global operations while spreading covid-19.
Oh, and Majestic 12.
See? It's so obvious! Wake up sheeple!
Please don't , someone will take this remove mdg (or not) decontextualise this and Run with it....
Matt Swain wrote: The illumaniti has allied with the space nazis and the lizard people, plus the gay chemtrail agents and have a central base of operations near MDG.
Realizing that MDG is a gamer and therefore likely to be of above average intelligence and perception and therefore likely to spot their nefarious activities unless distracted they took action.
So they have cyber ninjas smuggle martian chameleons into his house that were captured and trained by their child slave laborers on mars to hide his wallet in his fridge to make him doubt himself and prevent him uncovering their dastardly deeds, all of this in ran out of a Washington pizzaria that uses 5g wifi to control their global operations while spreading covid-19.
Oh, and Majestic 12.
See? It's so obvious! Wake up sheeple!
Please don't , someone will take this remove mdg (or not) decontextualise this and Run with it....
Wow, you thought my skit was so good some people might buy it? That almost felt like a compliment. Thanks.
He talks about the mindset behind Flat Earth and then covers how basically QAnon absorbs other conspiracies under a massive tent of a conspiracy.
the whole absorbition of conspiracy theories isn't something new, though personally, i think it has to do with the "believers" sharing similar traits and believes allready, generating alot of overlap, making their consumation into bigger conspiracies easier.
Unless there are diehard opponent ideological groups at work, which will not accept such formations.
I agree that people who believe one conspiracy theory are more likely to believe another, due to correlation of certain personality traits with believing a conspiracy in the first place. Assuming that it makes perfect sense there would be a decent degree of 'coagulation'.
One factor in conspiracy theories is that people simply and utterly refuse to accept any data that refutes the theory no matter how established it is.
I just today heard some anti mask conspiracy nuts almost robitically chanting the exploded theory that covid as a 99% survival rate. They just kept repeating covid has a 99% survival rate almost like a flat mechanical chant.
No you idiots it does not! Math, just simple math, you idiots! Have you ever heard of it?!
I took the cases of covid confirmed,. divided by the number of covid deaths and it worked out to over 300% more that the fictional "1% death rate". By the numbers covid was killing over 3% of the infected. All you need to do is look at the infections and the deaths and do some basic math. True, the numbers are regrettably large, i used a calculator. I have some large fancy ones but even a dollar store calculator can handle this.
My home state cases: 271,000.
Divide 271,000 by 100. 2710. This is one percent the number of cases.
Deaths of covid in my home state: 8643.
Divide the number of deaths by 1% of covid cases. 8643/2710. 3.18, rounded off to 2 decimals.
Actual covid death rate is thus 3.18% in my state. The survival rate is 96.82%.
That's the math. anyone with a functional calculator can check it.
But no, their handlers tell them 99% of people survive, they want to believe so basic, verifiable math is simply ignored. They want to believe the covid mask conspiracy and the false data it's based on, nothing can change their minds. But apparently those hwo accept conspiracy theories also reject facts that refute them.
Sorry if I seem mad here guys, this sort of willful stupidity gets to me.
Matt Swain wrote: One factor in conspiracy theories is that people simply and utterly refuse to accept any data that refutes the theory no matter how established it is.
That's the issue, establishment. Your average joe has pretty much either a mystified perspective at best a massive distrust at worst for data and academia.
I just today heard some anti mask conspiracy nuts almost robitically chanting the exploded theory that covid as a 99% survival rate. They just kept repeating covid has a 99% survival rate almost like a flat mechanical chant.
back to the cultlike behaviour something the average joe is often more familiar through religion.
No you idiots it does not! Math, just simple math, you idiots! Have you ever heard of it?!
They have heard of it, the application of it, as THE quasi legobrick of the universe respectively one of the most usefull tools if applied logically on the other hand, is a whole other skill, one sadly not well taught.
I took the cases of covid confirmed,. divided by the number of covid deaths and it worked out to over 300% more that the fictional "1% death rate". By the numbers covid was killing over 3% of the infected. All you need to do is look at the infections and the deaths and do some basic math. True, the numbers are regrettably large, i used a calculator. I have some large fancy ones but even a dollar store calculator can handle this.
It's called math, you idiots, can't you do it? Even with a calculator? You smartphone probably has one baked in.
Again, they KNOW, what maths is, they DON'T KNOW how to effectively use it. They fail at the skill of logic behind the math, the argumentative to figure out: that Numbers of cases / Deaths from covid = Result of rate, AND how to conotate that. They also fail to realize that 5% of 100 is not equal in effect then 5% of say 100'000'000 since the proportionality most people only know and use on relative small numbers, hence why the slightly higher then average Deathrate coupled with the huge ammount of people affected is vastly MORE devastating then at the first (and only for some) glance.
But no, their handlers tell them 99% of people survive, they want to believe so basic, verifiable math is simply ignored. They want to believe the covid mask conspiracy and the false data it's based on, nothing can change their minds.
it's cult like structures, taking advantage of the average lack of understanding of institutions AND logic AND numbers.
The remedy for such would be a dual pronged strategy of clear transparancy and consistency aswell as an educational system that not just relies of learning something to repeat but to understand.
The former , is one of the key factors, as to why certain countries resolved this crisis far better as of yet then others.
Matt Swain wrote: The illumaniti has allied with the space nazis and the lizard people, plus the gay chemtrail agents and have a central base of operations near MDG.
Realizing that MDG is a gamer and therefore likely to be of above average intelligence and perception and therefore likely to spot their nefarious activities unless distracted they took action.
So they have cyber ninjas smuggle martian chameleons into his house that were captured and trained by their child slave laborers on mars to hide his wallet in his fridge to make him doubt himself and prevent him uncovering their dastardly deeds, all of this in ran out of a Washington pizzaria that uses 5g wifi to control their global operations while spreading covid-19.
Oh, and Majestic 12.
See? It's so obvious! Wake up sheeple!
Please don't , someone will take this remove mdg (or not) decontextualise this and Run with it....
Wow, you thought my skit was so good some people might buy it? That almost felt like a compliment. Thanks.
You find that funny, i point torwards the artificial figure of Titania McGraths which was clear satire and yet was put in a bookshop next to an ernest book about the same matter. Not even academia is secure from docmatic thought nowadays.
Matt Swain wrote: One factor in conspiracy theories is that people simply and utterly refuse to accept any data that refutes the theory no matter how established it is.
That's the issue, establishment. Your average joe has pretty much either a mystified perspective at best a massive distrust at worst for data and academia.
I just today heard some anti mask conspiracy nuts almost robitically chanting the exploded theory that covid as a 99% survival rate. They just kept repeating covid has a 99% survival rate almost like a flat mechanical chant.
back to the cultlike behaviour something the average joe is often more familiar through religion.
No you idiots it does not! Math, just simple math, you idiots! Have you ever heard of it?!
They have heard of it, the application of it, as THE quasi legobrick of the universe respectively one of the most usefull tools if applied logically on the other hand, is a whole other skill, one sadly not well taught.
I took the cases of covid confirmed,. divided by the number of covid deaths and it worked out to over 300% more that the fictional "1% death rate". By the numbers covid was killing over 3% of the infected. All you need to do is look at the infections and the deaths and do some basic math. True, the numbers are regrettably large, i used a calculator. I have some large fancy ones but even a dollar store calculator can handle this.
It's called math, you idiots, can't you do it? Even with a calculator? You smartphone probably has one baked in.
Again, they KNOW, what maths is, they DON'T KNOW how to effectively use it. They fail at the skill of logic behind the math, the argumentative to figure out: that Numbers of cases / Deaths from covid = Result of rate, AND how to conotate that. They also fail to realize that 5% of 100 is not equal in effect then 5% of say 100'000'000 since the proportionality most people only know and use on relative small numbers, hence why the slightly higher then average Deathrate coupled with the huge ammount of people affected is vastly MORE devastating then at the first (and only for some) glance.
But no, their handlers tell them 99% of people survive, they want to believe so basic, verifiable math is simply ignored. They want to believe the covid mask conspiracy and the false data it's based on, nothing can change their minds.
it's cult like structures, taking advantage of the average lack of understanding of institutions AND logic AND numbers.
The remedy for such would be a dual pronged strategy of clear transparancy and consistency aswell as an educational system that not just relies of learning something to repeat but to understand.
The former , is one of the key factors, as to why certain countries resolved this crisis far better as of yet then others.
You're right, this sort of intentional, willful ignorance of visible facts just gets to me.
I edited in the numbers and steps needed to determine actual covid death rates in my state as an example.
Like i said, academia is also full of this dogmatic thinking at the moment.
there have been nigh 0 consequences from the "grievance studies" incident in regards to publishing and controll mechanisms to even just attempt an somewhat close to objective standard.
Also intentional and willfull ignorance.
Let's be honest here, when your baseline education system fails at teaching critical thinking and baseline logic, regardless if it is in one of the richest countries on this planet or somewhere in the nowhere of the third world, then you can hardly blame the people that went through it for not having learnt critical thinking to an for societal development needed standard.
I swear that's the difference between some people here and the conspiracy theory nuts.
If someone says that a unit in wh40k is slightly better than another, similar unit, he'd better be able to back it up with solid numbers.
And yes, I've seen people in the 40k community practically use fourth order differential equations and tensor calculus to prove that one close combat unit in an army is 0.000008% better than another. (Come on, we've all met those mathhammer types, right?)
The c-nuts hear that "covid has a 99% survival rate!" and they began chanting it like a mantra.
At times i wonder if the world would be better off if hardcore gamers ran it. We get math, probabilities, data, facts, etc...
I won't blame a teenager for not having a good grasp on logic or critical thinking, because that would be the result of them not being taught. But at some point things cross over to where an adult is responsible for the state of their reasoning capacity, or lack thereof. Failing to allocate personal responsibility at all would be just as foolish as ignoring the role education plays.
NinthMusketeer wrote: I won't blame a teenager for not having a good grasp on logic or critical thinking, because that would be the result of them not being taught. But at some point things cross over to where an adult is responsible for the state of their reasoning capacity, or lack thereof. Failing to allocate personal responsibility at all would be just as foolish as ignoring the role education plays.
Not entirely wrong, but I can see both sides there. You can lead a horse to water and all, as the saying goes.
On the other hand, even those that would drink, can't if they're never led to it in the first place.
NinthMusketeer wrote: I won't blame a teenager for not having a good grasp on logic or critical thinking, because that would be the result of them not being taught. But at some point things cross over to where an adult is responsible for the state of their reasoning capacity, or lack thereof. Failing to allocate personal responsibility at all would be just as foolish as ignoring the role education plays.
Not entirely wrong, but I can see both sides there. You can lead a horse to water and all, as the saying goes.
On the other hand, even those that would drink, can't if they're never led to it in the first place.
the first is individual failure and not able to be remedied, regardless on how you school and educate people, without going into a direct of the free will of individuals.
When a state fails however, at providing an education, for those that would drink,by simply missleading them, then the onus is not anymore on the individual but it has to be regarded as a failure of the system of state in place.
I think if a horse was dehydrated while having open access to water, people would conclude there was something wrong with the horse. The metaphorical water here is not hidden, it is not difficult to find.
NinthMusketeer wrote: I think if a horse was dehydrated while having open access to water, people would conclude there was something wrong with the horse. The metaphorical water here is not hidden, it is not difficult to find.
I think the water has to be information/knowledge here and education/critical thinking is what happens before the horse selects its source of "water" for it to make sense.
Maybe the horse is drinking Coke or Fanta (preference, tastes better, whatever) while thinking it's as good as water? The horse is not dehydrated but unhealthy in other ways (and probably feeling really hydrated and healthy). Conspiracy theorists think they know the truth, they found new/better/secret evidence and made conclusions. They know even better.
You might be able to lead the horse to water but it might simply prefer the bucket with sugar water or beer that's next to the actual water. Or the bad stuff might be more accessible, confirm their biases (that always feels good), or be the preferred bucket for other reasons. Water is not the only option.
The tragic thing is watching a horse slowing die of dehydration because it has been taught and conditioned to believe from childhood that any and all water not approved by those conditioning it is poisonous or diseased and will harm it it it drinks it, and the water they gave it was badly tainted.
NinthMusketeer wrote: I think if a horse was dehydrated while having open access to water, people would conclude there was something wrong with the horse. The metaphorical water here is not hidden, it is not difficult to find.
I think the water has to be information/knowledge here and education/critical thinking is what happens before the horse selects its source of "water" for it to make sense.
Maybe the horse is drinking Coke or Fanta (preference, tastes better, whatever) while thinking it's as good as water? The horse is not dehydrated but unhealthy in other ways (and probably feeling really hydrated and healthy). Conspiracy theorists think they know the truth, they found new/better/secret evidence and made conclusions. They know even better.
You might be able to lead the horse to water but it might simply prefer the bucket with sugar water or beer that's next to the actual water. Or the bad stuff might be more accessible, confirm their biases (that always feels good), or be the preferred bucket for other reasons. Water is not the only option.
Now I am having trouble bending my head around the analogy... At any rate, the point was that people are ultimately responsible for their own reasoning be it good or poor. Putting out a contributing outside factor as if it absolves a person of responsibility is a piece of faulty logic that ends up removing all responsibility from everyone, because there are always contributing factors.
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Argive wrote: Chupacabra - Real beast/animal or a Dog that has contracted mange?
A good chunk of the descriptions do fit a dog with mange, enough that I am relatively sure at least *some* of alleged chupacabra sightings were such. I suspect there is more than one thing being called a chupacabra though.
Cryptids! A very interesting subject, as whilst largely a pseudo science at worst, and a fringe science at best? The fun is in exploring the likely, then the possible, explanation.
Example? This video. Offers a rational, and likely explanation. Then a ‘what if’ explanation.
But, you take what you wish from the following video.
He talks about the mindset behind Flat Earth and then covers how basically QAnon absorbs other conspiracies under a massive tent of a conspiracy.
It's a very good point that a big reason for all the ridiculous stuff is to test loyalty. It isn't actually about doubting science or being unable to understand mathematics or w/e, it's that they claim to believe the things that would have to be true in order for what they want done to be justifiable. It's simply an extension of classic antisemitism.
He talks about the mindset behind Flat Earth and then covers how basically QAnon absorbs other conspiracies under a massive tent of a conspiracy.
It's a very good point that a big reason for all the ridiculous stuff is to test loyalty. It isn't actually about doubting science or being unable to understand mathematics or w/e, it's that they claim to believe the things that would have to be true in order for what they want done to be justifiable. It's simply an extension of classic antisemitism.
That raises and interesting thought.
The rise of the conspiracy theory coincides with the decline in the social acceptability of various forms of bigotry. There are studies out there researching the connections between some conspiracy theories and white power and ultra-nationalism. It makes sense that there is probably some degree at least that conspiracy theories fit into a network of coded belief and identifying traits for such groups.
Far-right groups love dogwhistles so it wouldn't be surprising if some of them decided to latch onto existing conspiracy theories for that purpose. If some people already believe the planet is flat, you might not need to do much work to just change why it's flat.
Rinse and repeat for lizardmen or whatever else and suddenly you have a big net to draw people in with that seems like it's just silly. Something that's ignored in plain sight is the perfect recruitment tool.
Rosebuddy wrote: Far-right groups love dogwhistles so it wouldn't be surprising if some of them decided to latch onto existing conspiracy theories for that purpose. If some people already believe the planet is flat, you might not need to do much work to just change why it's flat.
Rinse and repeat for lizardmen or whatever else and suddenly you have a big net to draw people in with that seems like it's just silly. Something that's ignored in plain sight is the perfect recruitment tool.
Funny, over here it's the broad coalition of nutjobs that has rallied and is attempting a Referendum against corona virus meassures...
It's pretty broad here too, but current events that shall not be discusses lest they go to the forbidden realm I think call attention to particular elements while others have gone without much recognition.
Cryptids! A very interesting subject, as whilst largely a pseudo science at worst, and a fringe science at best? The fun is in exploring the likely, then the possible, explanation.
Example? This video. Offers a rational, and likely explanation. Then a ‘what if’ explanation.
But, you take what you wish from the following video.
Hate to say it But to me its all absolute bullgak peddling and putting "science" anywhere near cryptids is very detrimental to science and thus humanity moving forward IMO
However... It is SO FUN to talk about!! The corfu thing is most certainly a bad shot of some sort of whale/dolphin IMO. I actually really buy into Umbepe Membe (or however you spell it) being either some sort of pigmy sauropod dinosaur as possibly deep jungle climate could potoentialy have rich enough O2 content atmosphere in some deep pocket maybe? But far more likely its some sort of ice age remnant like Macrauchenia (however AFAIK these were south american). But it is fascinating because the deep congo is so unexplorable to outsiders we will probably never know. But if I was betting man.. Id bet what the local people are describing is a giraffe.. howerver explainign how it got there is a whole other kettle of cryptid
Okay, time to really get to grips with some serious conspiracy.
Socks. We all know what they are and I'm willing to bet we've all had them mysteriously vanish, to be left with a lone sock from a pair.
Now I'd previously subscribed to the simple Eater of Socks theory proposed by Sir Terry Pratchett in his seminal work examining the origins of folklore, Hogfather.
But I have just found a video which, I believe, reopens the whole argument:
I took the cases of covid confirmed,. divided by the number of covid deaths and it worked out to over 300% more that the fictional "1% death rate". By the numbers covid was killing over 3% of the infected. All you need to do is look at the infections and the deaths and do some basic math. True, the numbers are regrettably large, i used a calculator. I have some large fancy ones but even a dollar store calculator can handle this.
My home state cases: 271,000.
Divide 271,000 by 100. 2710. This is one percent the number of cases.
Deaths of covid in my home state: 8643.
Divide the number of deaths by 1% of covid cases. 8643/2710. 3.18, rounded off to 2 decimals.
Actual covid death rate is thus 3.18% in my state. The survival rate is 96.82%.
That's the math. anyone with a functional calculator can check it.
I had pretty much this exact conversation in the now locked corona thread back in February...
So this came up in the Coronavirus thread and made for interesting exchanges. To prevent derailing, started this thread.
What is it I’m looking to discuss? Well, not so much a specific a conspiracy theory. And this isn’t an effort to ‘name and shame’ or point and laugh at specific individuals. Rather, I want to discuss the far more interesting question of why people can come to believe in even the most insane of conspiracy theories. For example, Flat Earth. We know beyond the shadow of any doubt at all that’s utter bobbins. The earth is round, we’ve been to space, and have the pictures to prove it.
Yet, not all conspiracy theories are completely mental - and some even turn out to have more than just a grain of truth, but to have been absolutely on the money. And that’s what makes them an interesting topic of discussion in my book.
Example? Well, the readily findable examples may be a bit too political to be kicking off with. So I’ll trust you to Google them yourself rather than me start the thread off on the wrong foot and hamstring the discussion. But they do exist, 100%.
Turns out, there are those with a recognised, psychological predilection to believe in conspiracy theories. In essence, it causes an inherent distrust of any research and opinion other than one’s own. And in some cases, an absolute unshakeable faith that You Are Right, regardless of any actual knowledge on a given subject. Their opinion is the Be All And End All.
And for the avoidance of rank hypocrisy on my behalf - this is just my own, loose understanding that has been garnered having had a casual interest. I am perfectly happy to be educated, and who knows depending on need, re-educated about this!
Now to get into more interesting things. For many (not all) conspiracy theories, a common strand is Selective Evidence. The conspiracy theorist discounts any and all evidence against their take. The reasons given will vary - it’s a lie, its a shill, the person questioning them is working for The Man etc.
Let’s take a common bit of long debunked tripe. Jet Fuel doesn’t burn hot enough to melt steel. Ultimately, correct. But it’s application ignores entirely that it need only burn hot enough to damage structural integrity. And that a building collapsing in any given way will depend up its method of construction. It also completely discounts any prior physical damage to the structure.
They also often struggle to provide a solid, rational answer to ‘yeah.....but why?’. Example here? Those that believe Kurt Cobain was murdered. Sure, the evidence there far from rules it out. The ‘yeah, but why?’ element in this case is that it implies a cover up. What’s the point? If as some would have you believe Courtney Love murdered him, what’s the reason for Police protecting her? What’s the motivation to get her off Scot Free? Compare to Conspiracies proven true - those typically had a clear advantage to be had from them.
They also tend to be implausible in execution. Some of the more bizarre ones would require a huge number of people to be complicit, and seemingly utterly without qualms or morals. Even more so when it’s a widely accepted fact that most/all Governments have shown absolutely nowhere near the competence required to pull such things off.
So that’s my opener. Before I hit submit, please remember this is a discussion, and intended to be friendly and open minded. If you feel things getting a bit heated, please give yourself a breather before your next post.
It is clearly not a safe conflation to put all "conspiracy theorists" in the same psychological profile. Think about this, a "conspiracy theorist" is just the new word for "heretic" and from the point of view of the orthodox all heresies are the same but objectively they are not because the orthodox is also a heresy from another perspective. Like it or not but during the Wars of Religion both Catholics and Protestants each considered their own team to be the true orthodox and the other to be the heretics. So it is simply lazy to say flat earthers share some kind of brain gene with a 9/11 truther or someone suspicious of the freemasons or someone that imagines the oil companies are trying to cover up climate change or whatever else is the heresy of the day.
My theory for Flat Earthers is that some portion of the brain just does not have an adequate model of spatial awareness for conceiving of a spherical earth, because they can't model the proposition or imagine it they are forced to reject it and create a alternative model that better fits what their mind is wired to do. You might as well ask why can't women park or why men drive too fast. Our conception of reality is limited by what our brains can do. We ALL of us live in a world generated by our own mind out of exceedingly slight and scrappy perceptual data. In a way the flat earthers are no more wrong than us who cannot conceive of the earth in 5 dimensions. Some physicist could come out with a funky model of the earth with 10 stringy dimensions and you would just have to accept it as orthodoxy without understanding it or trust in your own flawed perception of it being 3 dimensional, just like a flat earther trusts his flawed perception of it being flat.
That's my theory but clearly it can't be translated to "9/11 truthers" or to those weirdos that believe in "late capitalism". Something else is going on with them.
Late-stage capitalism. I find the wiki article kind of meh. The basic idea is that there is a limit to capitalism's ability to grow wealth, that capitalism as a system is inherently unjust/unequeal, and that Marx was mostly correct about how capitalism would end. All using present examples as arguments in favor of the position.
It's very en vogue at the moment, especially online among anarchists. I'm not sure why it would fall into the same category as 9/11 truthers though. Late capitalism is an old model that tried to reconcile classical Marxism with the post-world war economic boom and its found a new lease on life among some subcultures who are critical of shallow defenses of capitalism (stuff like the good old bootstrap argument). It doesn't really posit any conspiracy (though I guess the phrase probably would be popular among conspiracy nuts).
LordofHats wrote: I'm not sure why it would fall into the same category as 9/11 truthers though.
Maybe the fact that the poster in question also threw climate change into that same pile will give some insight into the thought processes going on here.
Surely 'late-stage capitalism' is really just a recognition that the Fukuyama theory of "the end of history" never came to fruition at all?
Additionally, it kind of confronts that a significant number of the current pervasive theories about economics are fatally flawed because of their unsustainable approach to the environment, mixed in with cynicism about how alienating the experience of existing in the post-industrial, semi/totally digital retail-centric, debt-reliant economies of the West is?
Like, it's not so much a conspiracy theory as it is an interpretation of current events and society.
Almost anyone actually saying the phrase "late-stage capitalism" is usually joking, outside of an academic context, but it's popularity in the popular imagination (particulary among young adults) does reflect a growing anxiety about the sustainability of contemporary economic and sociopolitical norms. I certanily wouldn't call it a conspiracy theory at all really.
Laughing Man wrote:Maybe the fact that the poster in question also threw climate change into that same pile will give some insight into the thought processes going on here.
That... Tracks. Yes.
posermcbogus wrote:Surely 'late-stage capitalism' is really just a recognition that the Fukuyama theory of "the end of history" never came to fruition at all?
I mean, I'd consider it an acknowledgement that capitalism isn't some magic hand ready to solve all ills like shallow armchair economists with political agendas like to pretend it is going hand in hand with mocking said armchair economists and their flimsy justifications of the status quo inequities of present society. But yea, it's probably more polite to just say it's an interpretation of current events and there's nothing particularly conspiratorial about it.
Frankly, it is not so much that capitalism couldn't be infinite growth, assuming the universe is infinite, but reaching the required ressources would be a whole other debate and issue now wouldn't it. (or getting even to the societal development level where we reach travel capacity before we blow each other up...)
Alas we don't even manage to keep childgambling down and out of videogames and still have countries use slave labour en masse... (china f.e.)
Ha, so we have some orthodox believers of Late Capitalism here. How orthodox are you though? Do you reject the heretic? Obviously not everyone in the world accepts this story as gospel. What about those people? Are they not obviously crazy, stupid or even a bit evil? Surely there is something wrong with them, no? Something has to be done about them.
SolarCross wrote: Ha, so we have some orthodox believers of Late Capitalism here. How orthodox are you though? Do you reject the heretic? Obviously not everyone in the world accepts this story as gospel. What about those people? Are they not obviously crazy, stupid or even a bit evil? Surely there is something wrong with them, no? Something has to be done about them.
I am not a native english speaker but i fail to see any kind of utterance in this regard to warrant such a response.
Matt Swain wrote: Well, late capitalism seems to explain what it happening in modern america so can it be called a conspiracy theory when it seems to fit the facts?
The truth is the facts always suits the requirements of the Orthodox and the facts that don't fit are ignored or treated as falsehood or insanity if they can't be ignored. For those that don't believe in the story the facts refute the story of Late Capitalism.
Here is a fun thought for you. When you fly in a plane and look out the window you see a curved earth, yes? So do I. Who could blame us for believing in a ball shaped earth when that is what the evidence of our senses show? The trouble is flat earthers ALSO ride in planes and look out of the window.. would it really surprise you if when they look out the window they literally see a flat earth? If they did how could you blame them for believing it is flat and rejecting those deny the facts as liars or dupes or whatever? If that is what they see... Think of that internet sensation where there was a picture of a dress that some people swore was it was black and blue and others that swore it was white and gold.
I would put it even this strongly: we don't actually experience the world as it is at all, our "brains" generate EVERYTHING and everything it generates is to suit a personal agenda. The agenda can be generalised as "survival" in darwinian terms at the base, but I would tend to expect that the entirety of Maslow's heirarchy has its shaping effect too.
i don't think you want to enter the "cogito ergo sum " level.
Further so far even if you were to accept that alot of people interpret the world more via context given to them via agendas, that doesn't absolve them of falsifyablilty f.e.
nor do visual imputs and their various shortcomings alone verify that we allways simulate everything with our brains. think of abstract concepts. Classification, etc.
Not Online!!! wrote: i don't think you want to enter the "cogito ergo sum " level.
Further so far even if you were to accept that alot of people interpret the world more via context given to them via agendas, that doesn't absolve them of falsifyablilty f.e.
nor do visual imputs and their various shortcomings alone verify that we allways simulate everything with our brains. think of abstract concepts. Classification, etc.
Believe what you want then. I would not expect any different.
Not Online!!! wrote: i don't think you want to enter the "cogito ergo sum " level.
Further so far even if you were to accept that alot of people interpret the world more via context given to them via agendas, that doesn't absolve them of falsifyablilty f.e.
nor do visual imputs and their various shortcomings alone verify that we allways simulate everything with our brains. think of abstract concepts. Classification, etc.
Believe what you want then. I would not expect any different.
so you have no answer, to a contradiction brought forth torwards your claim that we simulate everything... and answer that with a relativistic stance upon which you will defend yourself with an arguably over inflated individualistic position with a sole basis of subjectivism.
Tell me, since you clearly know how the concioussness works preciscly then, (a question debated since what now 2500 years), what is the answer of the philosophy of mind?
'i don't think you want to enter the "cogito ergo sum " level.'
You don't and can't know what I want but you have to pretend you do because of your need to keep a narrative so you "think" a reality up to project on me... You are just unwittingly confirming my proposition.
you postulated that you had deeper understanding of how human concioussness works, by extrapulating a position which can be quite easily pointed to a form of cogito ergo sum, as in a dualistic split approach to concioussness, a philosophical question debated since 2500 years with no clear answer as off now, neither provided by neurology nor psychology as of yet.
A position which got delibarated and has far reaching issues in itself like virtually any position of any concept of the same philosophy of mind.
It is a highly and easily doubtable position as are all concepts based upon how the concioussness actually works.
Pointing that out to you for it is an easily attackable position has nothing to do with any type of narrative.
Not Online!!! wrote: you postulated that you had deeper understanding of how human concioussness works, by extrapulating a position which can be quite easily pointed to a form of cogito ergo sum, as in a dualistic split approach to concioussness, a philosophical question debated since 2500 years with no clear answer as off now, neither provided by neurology nor psychology as of yet.
A position which got delibarated and has far reaching issues in itself like virtually any position of any concept of the same philosophy of mind.
It is a highly and easily doubtable position as are all concepts based upon how the concioussness actually works.
Pointing that out to you for it is an easily attackable position has nothing to do with any type of narrative.
No I am not postulating anything dualistic. You are projecting again.
Not Online!!! wrote: you postulated that you had deeper understanding of how human concioussness works, by extrapulating a position which can be quite easily pointed to a form of cogito ergo sum, as in a dualistic split approach to concioussness, a philosophical question debated since 2500 years with no clear answer as off now, neither provided by neurology nor psychology as of yet.
A position which got delibarated and has far reaching issues in itself like virtually any position of any concept of the same philosophy of mind.
It is a highly and easily doubtable position as are all concepts based upon how the concioussness actually works.
Pointing that out to you for it is an easily attackable position has nothing to do with any type of narrative.
No I am not postulating anything dualistic. You are projecting again.
I would put it even this strongly: we don't actually experience the world as it is at all, our "brains" generate EVERYTHING and everything it generates is to suit a personal agenda. The agenda can be generalised as "survival" in darwinian terms at the base, but I would tend to expect that the entirety of Maslow's heirarchy has its shaping effect too.
it seems to me that you are stating that we experience somehow but that the actuall experience we are aware off is generated by the brain.
So we seem to have an physical world and a mental world , ergo a dualism.
Unless of course you are insisting that we are solely in a monistic mental world via discounting reality. Which then begs the question as to how do we get the experience for the brain to simulate something at all.
So even if i misunderstood your position as dualistic, as is possible, you'd still have to provide me an answer as to how conciousness works, as of now you didn't provide anything. And the same issues still remain, all positions so far are neither proveable nor disproven as of right now.
it seems to me that you are stating that we experience somehow but that the actuall experience we are aware off is generated by the brain.
So we seem to have an physical world and a mental world , ergo a dualism.
Unless of course you are insisting that we are solely in a monistic mental world via discounting reality. Which then begs the question as to how do we get the experience for the brain to simulate something at all.
So even if i misunderstood your position as dualistic, as is possible, you'd still have to provide me an answer as to how conciousness works, as of now you didn't provide anything. And the same issues still remain, all positions so far are neither proveable nor disproven as of right now.
No, I am saying that an individual's experience of the world is 100% subjective and does not and can not represent an objective picture representation of whatever objective reality may exist. Even to the extent that our experience of time and 3d space is an illusion (as the physicists are now exploring!). I am making no claims about whatever objective reality may exist under our (diverse) perceptions. I am not claiming dualism and I am not claiming monism. Whatever the underlying reality is, it is practically unknowable.
I have said that the subjective experience is heavily driven by the individual's needs such as survival, self-esteem etc. I don't think that has any dualistic or monistic implications.
You implicitly do by stating that our brains have an agenda ( our concioussness) you state that the concioussness of us works in a pureley mental capacity. A subjective but purely mental capacity.
and yes that has implications torwards concioussness. Because it would assume that , as stated, reality seems to be an illusion, it would mean that we are a monotheistic mental all alone concioussness, ergo Cogito ergo sum beeing the only correct answer .
Not Online!!! wrote: You implicitly do by stating that our brains have an agenda ( our concioussness) you state that the concioussness of us works in a pureley mental capacity. A subjective but purely mental capacity.
and yes that has implications torwards concioussness. Because it would assume that , as stated, reality seems to be an illusion, it would mean that we are a monotheistic mental all alone concioussness, ergo Cogito ergo sum beeing the only correct answer .
With all the issues that that brings,
You are shifting from projecting dualism on me to projecting monism on me here. Perhaps you would like to work a little harder at generating a consistently false narrative over reality?
Not Online!!! wrote: You implicitly do by stating that our brains have an agenda ( our concioussness) you state that the concioussness of us works in a pureley mental capacity. A subjective but purely mental capacity.
and yes that has implications torwards concioussness. Because it would assume that , as stated, reality seems to be an illusion, it would mean that we are a monotheistic mental all alone concioussness, ergo Cogito ergo sum beeing the only correct answer .
With all the issues that that brings,
You are shifting from projecting dualism on me to projecting monism on me here. Perhaps you would like to work a little harder at generating a consistently false narrative over reality?
I am not the one stating that all experience is simulated upon the basis of our brains seemingly along the line of laws of nature or economy, or do i need to quote you again.
I would put it even this strongly: we don't actually experience the world as it is at all, our "brains" generate EVERYTHING and everything it generates is to suit a personal agenda. The agenda can be generalised as "survival" in darwinian terms at the base, but I would tend to expect that the entirety of Maslow's heirarchy has its shaping effect too.
maybee that is only the simulated response afterall of my brain...
So again, if you like it or not THIS IS an claim in regards to how our concioussness works and how it interacts with the world.
I have put some words down but you have read something else because that something else is what you want to see for your own interests, self-esteem etc.
SolarCross wrote: I have put some words down but you have read something else because that something else is what you want to see for your own interests, self-esteem etc.
which you claim, yet what is stopping this interpretation of an interpretation beeing nothing more then your own interest beeing laid bare?
Well not to interrupt this vital POLITICAL debate about Late Stage Capitalism.... I ran across a new Conspiracy Theory that has to do with history! That is many of our favorite subjects!
Basically, the theory is that due to flaws in the calendar and interpretations of the Calendar, we are actual 297 years off the true date. Okay.
Now it gets weird. It also posits that the early Dark Ages never really existed. Instead, they were "filled" in by Holy Roman Emperor Otto to place his reign near 1000 AD.
I ran across this while glancing at a coffee table book about Historically significant numbers. Just a fluff book really.
SolarCross wrote: I have put some words down but you have read something else because that something else is what you want to see for your own interests, self-esteem etc.
which you claim, yet what is stopping this interpretation of an interpretation beeing nothing more then your own interest beeing laid bare?
Naturally it is. My interest is to call out your deliberate misunderstanding as I perceive it. I have self-esteem too and I am not claiming immunity from subjectivity.
Aye?
The debate about concioussness , interaction of it with reality (if it exists) can be at the core of the fundamental understaing of HOW we as a species form epistemical knowledge, if that is even possible at all, is rather decisive in our understanding of right and wrong.
And by extension of that our understanding of if something is a conspiracy theory or not.
SolarCross wrote: Ha, so we have some orthodox believers of Late Capitalism here. How orthodox are you though? Do you reject the heretic? Obviously not everyone in the world accepts this story as gospel. What about those people? Are they not obviously crazy, stupid or even a bit evil? Surely there is something wrong with them, no? Something has to be done about them.
And this response is frankly more conspiracy theorist than anything I've ever heard from someone using the words late capitalism. I seriously think you're overestimating things here.
Have you considered that you're just not as smart or informed as you think you are? Most instances I've seen of the phrase are for memes mocking <politics> or memes mocking <politics>. The craziest I've seen are fringe anarchists and such, and while they are nutters, I wouldn't qualify them per se as subscribing to any particular conspiracy theory. They're mostly just garden variety hipsters who consider referencing an old idea clever.
Yeah this is one of my more favorite wacky 'I'm not a historian but' ideas. Especially all the wacky ways people try to use it to justify other pseudo-historical nonsense that just doesn't make any sense.
Borrowing from another thread (and also not quite a conspiracy theory) there's all the controversy coming at historians from the LGBTQ community. Namely the accusations that historians are refusing to acknowledge LGBTQ persons in history and historians have done a generally gak job of explaining their position. Go back 2000 years, and I doubt you'd find anyone who really understood the distinction. Rigid ideas of sexual preference and identity are very new for humans, historically speaking, and very western. It's not something a 1st century Roman would subscribe to at all. Historians don't deny that people had gay sex in the past, or engaged in transitive behaviors, but to retroactively qualify such people as 'gay' or 'trans' violates numerous precepts of present historical practice. Namely, a harsh taboo against presentism/anachronism (the juxtaposition of modern ideas onto past persons, places, and things).
I've seen things get pretty heated up to and including people accusing historians of trying to culturally genocide LGBTQ people from history.
SolarCross wrote: Ha, so we have some orthodox believers of Late Capitalism here. How orthodox are you though? Do you reject the heretic? Obviously not everyone in the world accepts this story as gospel. What about those people? Are they not obviously crazy, stupid or even a bit evil? Surely there is something wrong with them, no? Something has to be done about them.
And this response is frankly more conspiracy theorist than anything I've ever heard from someone using the words late capitalism. I seriously think you're overestimating things here.
Have you considered that you're just not as smart or informed as you think you are? Most instances I've seen of the phrase are for memes mocking <politics> or memes mocking <politics>. The craziest I've seen are fringe anarchists and such, and while they are nutters, I wouldn't qualify them per se as subscribing to any particular conspiracy theory. They're mostly just garden variety hipsters who consider referencing an old idea clever.
If it makes you feel superior do keep that narrative; that is a completely conventional purpose for a narrative.
People prefer to see the world according to what they want it to be rather than how it is. It's pretty simple.
Deep down, we all want something. We all want one big explanation that will make sense of it. And we already have a desired answer in our head. Thus we collect and acknoledge anything than can satisfy the truth that we desperatly want to believe in.
Religious people will interpret anything as a proof of the existence of God, because deep down they want a God that created this world for them and will save them from the inescapable dread of the grave.
Flat earthers want the Earth to be flat, because they want a world-wide lie to exist, showing that all along they knew better than everyone else.
Conservatives, antisemites, etc. Dream of a big world wide New Order conspiracy involving Soros, reptilians, liberals, jews and / or etc. because it would give them an excuse to justify their bigotry towards these damn pedo-satanist jew elite reptilians.
In sort, people believe in things that they want to believe in.
A smart person is someone that recognize that even if he want's to believe in something, that thing might be false, non-existent, etc. And therefore he should move on and take care of more srious matters at hand.
Just imagine how the world would be better if instead of praying to a God to make everything alright, people would actually act to make thing better. But that would mean that there is a possibility that there is no God or that God doesn't give a damn about any of us, and thus that would break the dream of these poor fools. Thus they don't act and keep waiting for the one and only event that will prove that God exist and love them.
And yes, I have the nerve to say it : God is just an hypothesis, one that is as well proven than any conspiracy theory. Sorry for the admin, I know we aren't supposed to talk about politics and religions, but hey, you just can't talk about conspiracy theory without talking about religion. Both are the shame, but with a different shade.
SolarCross wrote: f it makes you feel superior do keep that narrative; that is a completely conventional purpose for a narrative.
If it makes you feel superior to be kind of an ass, that's pretty conventional for a narcissist who thinks too much of themselves. Just don't be surprised when everyone else gets bored of listening to you thinly praise yourself while talking down to everyone around you.
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Khornate25 wrote: Just imagine how the world would be better if instead of praying to a God to make everything alright, people would actually act to make thing better.
I mean, if we're going there I'd say after the last decade especially, I'm mostly over this 'what are the right answers' pseudo-philosophical nonsense most of society is playing. I'd be happy to see more people get over themselves and behave with more compassion. It's especially rough being a god believing type watching other believers behave in general like total ass clowns. I'm going with Ecclesiastes on this one. The answers people want don't exist, probably don't matter even if they did, and we'd all be better off if we treated each other like the greatest dramady duo of all time. Which is probably a bit hypocritical coming from me cause I'm generally 100% on board with treating people like crap when they're being donkey-caves but I'm not making the argument that I'm perfect here XD
SolarCross wrote: f it makes you feel superior do keep that narrative; that is a completely conventional purpose for a narrative.
If it makes you feel superior to be kind of an ass, that's pretty conventional for a narcissist who thinks too much of themselves. Just don't be surprised when everyone else gets bored of listening to you thinly praise yourself while talking down to everyone around you.
That's the perception you have chosen because it suits your purpose. You don't know me at all and never will and nothing I could say on an internet forum could ever convey it to you even if I knew it myself which I probably don't and you certainly would not want to know it either because it would not be useful enough for own narcissism. It's all projection.
SolarCross wrote: That's the perception you have chosen because it suits your purpose.
The purpose of being on a discussion board where someone says something kind of weird, and instead of explaining the position goes into a deep dive word soup while talking down to everyone else in the thread?
You don't know me at all and never will and nothing I could say on an internet forum could ever convey it to you even if I knew it myself which I probably don't.
Like this.
Seriously. In a conspiracy theory thread, you said late stage capitalism was a conspiracy theory and a few people got question marks about what that means or how it even qualifies. Instead of responding to that, you responded with a non-response that was basically just talking down to everyone from some imaginary pedestal and meandering your way through some philosophy 101 spiel.
It's all projection.
For you, maybe. Namely self-projection cause I'm not making judgements about you as a person. I'm making judgements about you as a poster and I guess you can call that judgement a projection, but welcome to the world. How you act around them is all anyone has to go on in making judgements about you. Suppose the bright side is that if you decide their judgement doesn't matter, you can be as gak a poster as you please so A plus, but that's all some text book assholery to me so...
SolarCross wrote: That's the perception you have chosen because it suits your purpose.
The purpose of being on a discussion board where someone says something kind of weird, and instead of explaining the position goes into a deep dive word soup while talking down to everyone else in the thread?
I can't defend your misperceptions. You will just have to live it, but most people get by just fine that way. It probably doesn't matter anyway.
It is human nature to enjoy having a secret, or discovering something that most people don't know. It's why you see so much success out of documentaries showing what REALLY happened, and the shocking tell all. We're more likely to believe a complicated, well concealed conspiracy than a plain old boring truth because it's more exciting.
Isn't it more interesting to think that there's a nationwide conspiracy of vote rigging and influence of counters, rather than just accept the dull reality that counting millions of votes with any sort of accuracy does take days?
Solarcross is kind of serving as a great example of the conspiracy theorist in miniature. He knows something you don't know (whatever Solarcross's actual opinions are) and refuses to explain them, instead smugly pointing out that you don't know what you're talking about- but he does.
I'd disagree about the quasireligious breakdown between orthodoxy and heresy- instead I'd say you have the difference between open knowledge and hidden knowledge. Conspiracy theories don't work with open knowledge- then they just become a different theory of events. Many people have differing views of events without the need for complicated overarching conspiracies.
Conspiracy theories thrive in the shadows, where you can't google the answers, but if you follow me into these private facebook groups, subreddits, or parlers then I can show the guys who really know what's going on! Once you accept this secretive source as more accurate than widely available, open knowledge, you become a conspiracy theorist, and believe in the unverifiable. The fact that something can be verified means that those responsible want you to know it!
So I'd say your typical conspiracy theorists just starts off with favoring certain sources of information over others, then runs into some fact they don't want to accept- and if a questionable source disputes that fact, then it's often easier to accept the questionable source might be right about this. Then they might be right about other things- and gradually they reject all readily available knowledge in favor of their special sources.
SolarCross wrote: That's the perception you have chosen because it suits your purpose.
The purpose of being on a discussion board where someone says something kind of weird, and instead of explaining the position goes into a deep dive word soup while talking down to everyone else in the thread?
I can't defend your misperceptions. You will just have to live it, but most people get by just fine that way. It probably doesn't matter anyway.
So true. After all, your experience of Lordofhats is just a depiction of your experience as derived from the subjective facets of the constructivist homogenisation of cultural neo-relativistic empiricism. Or rationalism. Whichever one means people can't argue with me.
I have read all the pages over the life of this thread but can't recall seeing my two pet hates. If they have been addressed it's obviously the lizard people's mind rays working because I forgot.
Tartaria and mud floods.
I legitimately thought they were troll CS when I first heard them, poor attempts at comedy but it seems like the idiots who spout them *believe* them. I can't even.
I honestly blame the internet. That may be my own CS I know but I've seen a couple of memes get taken way too seriously by fringe elements, like the Boogaloo Boys. That started out as dark humour and has now become a racist political movement (with around 1500 actual members the last time I looked I to it)
Because of the ease of communication the Internet has given us the fringe elements can congregate in their own echo chambers and pick up momentum.
"Oh you want to dress in Hawaiian shirts and rig Roombas with claymores for the Alphabet Boys? Haha, good one crazy uncle Bob. What do you mean the meeting is next Thursday? The password is Swordfish?!?!"
Kayback wrote: I have read all the pages over the life of this thread but can't recall seeing my two pet hates. If they have been addressed it's obviously the lizard people's mind rays working because I forgot.
Tartaria and mud floods.
I legitimately thought they were troll CS when I first heard them, poor attempts at comedy but it seems like the idiots who spout them *believe* them. I can't even.
I honestly blame the internet. That may be my own CS I know but I've seen a couple of memes get taken way too seriously by fringe elements, like the Boogaloo Boys. That started out as dark humour and has now become a racist political movement (with around 1500 actual members the last time I looked I to it)
Because of the ease of communication the Internet has given us the fringe elements can congregate in their own echo chambers and pick up momentum.
"Oh you want to dress in Hawaiian shirts and rig Roombas with claymores for the Alphabet Boys? Haha, good one crazy uncle Bob. What do you mean the meeting is next Thursday? The password is Swordfish?!?!"
Mud floods has been brought up by old man grotsnik. Quite early actually, as for the Later yeah those Lot are somewhere between ridicoulus and dangerous, and the shortened communication is quite likely a key component
I would like everyone to remember the first rule of the Internet: Do Not Feed The Trolls.
Then recall the first rule of Dakka: Be Nice.
After that, the Baltic Undersea object is a fun one. This huge unknown shape picked up on sonar under the Baltic sea that looks vaguely like the Millennium Falcon.
I also am interested in the "underwater Pyramids" in the Caribbean and off the coast of Japan. Not enough to know much about them, but just enough to know they exist as a conspiracy theory.
But are they pyramids though? If its just topography we could be looking at reefs, natural geography hills.
If its a sub marine discovery then we should have footage and therefore no longer a conspiracy.
I have to admit I don't know much about these. I do recall the story about strange object in the Baltic but I thought it was deemed a WW2 ship wreck ?
@ Easy E RE: calendar - Im not sure how much of "the phantom time" is an issue. Modern day calendar aka the gregorian calendar was in 15th century by *drum roll* pope Gregory. But is in fact a slightly adapted Julian Calendar which the Byzantines/romans were using since "the" ceasar in 45 BC. Basically the only thing that changed is they worked out the leap year a bit different because the earth wobbles so we loose a day here and there...
And we know the Romans really loved their admin and we have records going back all the way back for various things so if a drastic change like 200 ytears beign taken off the clander would be have to be agreed across the entire chrisendom/latin world.
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What is on the moon ?
Did Murica really go to the moon?
Was it exactly like we know?
Officialy there were 6 sucessfull moon landings between 69-72
If we accept they have what about the subsequent missions and logs getting redacted?
A timely reminder about on Andrew Wakefield, the god father of anti-vaccination.
As the U.K. has approved the Pfizer vaccine, let’s look at the origin of the anti-vaccine movement.
It’s true that Andrew Wakefield published a (now thoroughly debunked, discredited and withdrawn) paper, claiming the Combined Measles, Mumps, Rubella (MMR) vaccine had a link to rising rates of autism.
But, he was not claiming all vaccines did the same. Like. At all. Oh no. It’s dodgier than that.
See, his paper (remember, debunked, discredited, withdrawn) was in support of three separate jabs for Measles, Mumps and Rubella. He also failed to disclose a pretty significant grant from a legal firm, representing parents that claimed their children were “vaccine injured”.
So the man is a total fraud, his claims probably baseless. And his claims have been wildly misinterpreted ever since. Sad, isn’t it?
Historians don't deny that people had gay sex in the past, or engaged in transitive behaviors, but to retroactively qualify such people as 'gay' or 'trans' violates numerous precepts of present historical practice
On the other hand, it is *amusing* when you have burials of male skeletons with feminine burial goods, or female skeletons with weapons and male goods, and they can't just say "burial of a trans person". Seeing as those types of burials are very rare and not cultural norm, it seems to be the obvious conclusion. They might've not thought of themselves as "trans", but by gods what makes more sense, that it's a burial of a trangender person or some bizarre, one-off burial of a cis woman that just happened to be buried with male decorations even though no other woman in the same site was?
Likewise with gay people in history. There is a very strong tendency to go "oh, they're just gals being pals". Or if you have two male "lifelong friends" who left a whole lot of passionate letters, it's just "such good friends".
LGBTQ+ people get a bit miffed cause this is exactly the same behavior they tend to encounter IRL, so it's really easy to spot. Some historians will tie themselves into pretzels before admit gay people existed before the '60s...
As I recall regarding the underwater pyramids, they don't exist. They're what you get when you zoom in on only the y-axis of a sonar image of a slight incline of the seabed while traveling onto and then off it at constant speed - which the sonar equipment used to make those images is programmed to automatically do.
As for Wakefield's study, IIRC, it wasn't even against three jabs in general, it was against a specific brand of vaccination, and the study was paid for by a competitor, not a bunch of parents. And on top of the paper being retracted, Wakefield lost his medical license over tge whole affair.
He also had a financial stake in a rival Measles vaccine.... but as science writers Ben Goldacre and Stuart Ritchie have pointed out, the way that science journals publish papers (or don't, as the case may be) has to shoulder some responsibility.
But yeah, the harm that Wakefield has caused is almost incalculable and anyone who cites him as a champion of some sorts need to be calmly shown where they sit on a Dunning-Kruger graph.
Cronch wrote: Seeing as those types of burials are very rare and not cultural norm, it seems to be the obvious conclusion. They might've not thought of themselves as "trans", but by gods what makes more sense,
That's kind of the thing though.
Does it? It is easy to say it is, but historians (and in this vein, Archeologists as well), maintain a principle that past persons are still persons and there's a general norm that such persons must be given due respect. Archeologists and anthropologists can be quite reverent when it comes to human remains, even those that are tens of thousands of years old. Those people lived their own lives and while we can comparatively easily uncover material goods, uncovering their opinions is borderline impossible.
There's little reason to assume a person buried with gender atypical goods was gay or trans (or other). That's a huge leap in logic. They might have been, maybe. Hard to say. Celtic and Nordic cultures had traditions of women warriors that carried down to us, so a woman buried with weapons seems more like physical evidence that such figures weren't simply stories but that the stories were derived from a tradition and such goods may in fact not be atypical at all to the culture from which they hail. They only appear atypical to us because our cultural expectations are different and we will only ever uncover a fraction of what graves once existed.
It's also not really that strange to find men with typical female goods. Drag queens actually have an extremely long history in human civilization, and depending on where and when we're talking about they could probably be called trans. They also might not. In ancient Greece, men in drag who had sex with other men was a profession and while men having sex with men was very common in Greek culture the Greeks never embraced a 'gay' identity as we would recognize it. I'd actually consider calling such figures 'gay' or 'cis' to be equally egregious and disrespectful of the persons in question. That's not how they viewed their own lives and we're lucky in having a large body of written works about such things in Greek culture from the men who lived those lives. Nothing in our modern debate over sexual identity is actually very applicable to them, because there wasn't much debate. Past cultures could be pretty blaise about sex (the Sumerians were basically anything goes and no one cared).
For must cultures we aren't so lucky. They didn't write anything or their works have largely been lost to the ages.
Likewise with gay people in history. There is a very strong tendency to go "oh, they're just gals being pals". Or if you have two male "lifelong friends" who left a whole lot of passionate letters, it's just "such good friends".
There is a bit of this, but I think it's still complicated. One example is Anne Frank and another is Debroah Sampson. Both have been pushed as women who were secretly gay or bisexual, completely ignoring the context of the evidence used to support that claim (not entirely unlike how conspiracy theorists selective exaggerate single data points) and contrary evidence that suggests otherwise. On the other hand, we have a pair of men in the 19th century whose names I can't remember but who have been talked about in this controversy, and the LGBTQ community is angry that they're called 'lifelong friends' by all of one historian whose opinion isn't shared by the rest of the field. Most historians are of the opinion 'we don't know' and we don't know because their relationship has unusual points that point a particular way, but isn't so unusual for the time in which they lived. The 19th century isn't the ancient world. We aren't hurting for evidence of opinions or thoughts, but some things are still very hard to track.
LGBTQ+ people get a bit miffed cause this is exactly the same behavior they tend to encounter IRL, so it's really easy to spot.
And I think there's a lot of sympathy for that, but it doesn't change the inherent anachronism in the claims. The past is like a different country. People did things differently there and those people had their own identities and lives. It's not anymore respectful of them to demand they be treated as LGBTQ than it is when people today deny the dignity of LGBTQ persons. It's not that historians deny homosexual people existed before the sixties. I mean, some do. Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben was some kind of badass, and I don't doubt that ignorance of his life today stems somewhat from how he lived it. I'm pretty convinced he was gay. There's too much circumstantial evidence for a 'there's nothing definitive' to really dismiss, but of course there are historians who cling to 'there's nothing definitive' well past the point of stretching credulity. It happens and I'm not gonna say it doesn't.
At the same time though, 'We don't know' is an acceptable answer in academic history (and one the public often doesn't like), especially when it comes to the history of sexuality and identity where we struggle with finding definitive evidence more than you'd think.
There's a heavy trend among modern groups to make claims that reach beyond what the evidence supports. This isn't just true of the LGBTQ community. It's also true of certain pan-ethnic and ultra-national claims, as well as conspiracy theories. Most historians are even too cautious in making those comparisons, because they don't want to make a bad situation worse.
EDIT: This whole controversy gives me flashbacks to the one time I tried to be a Wikipedia editor XD Saladin's article circa 2007 was an insane time. Still is sort of but competing claims of his identity (in this case ethnic) are nowhere near as intense now as they were then. Not on English wikipedia anyway.
Archeologists and anthropologists can be quite reverent when it comes to human remains
I do have a masters' in archaeology, just to be clear. I don't practice it, but there is a definite bias towards sticking to heteronormative answers whenever something unusual crops up.
As for "gay and trans" labels being inapplicable, i'd agree if we also agree that we shouldn't call any figure in history straight. Just because we know someone was in a lifelong cishet relationship doesn't let us say they were straight. Just because a male body was found with male burial goods doesn't let us say that person was a man. Except it's done all the time, or at least was back when I was getting my degree.
By the same token, being attracted to own gender and "transness" are very much part of human species, they didn't suddenly appear in XIXc with "modern" western expression of gender norms, they most likely existed as long as the species have, and having X body with Y artifacts would fit into that pattern of behaviors displayed by trans people worldwide, even if different cultures treat it differently.
My point is, it's always "we don't know" when behavior displayed would fit within LGBT narrative, whereas there's absolutely no such qualms when it comes to "straight" finds in far too many cases.
Though this is kind of completely off-topic, there is no hidden conspiracy here, just biases (and yes, I recognize my own position is also biased by my experience)
Cronch, as someone of actual knowledge (respect to your Masters!), where do you stand on the “if white Europeans couldn’t do it, it must’ve been aliens” trope?
Historians don't deny that people had gay sex in the past, or engaged in transitive behaviors, but to retroactively qualify such people as 'gay' or 'trans' violates numerous precepts of present historical practice
On the other hand, it is *amusing* when you have burials of male skeletons with feminine burial goods, or female skeletons with weapons and male goods, and they can't just say "burial of a trans person". Seeing as those types of burials are very rare and not cultural norm, it seems to be the obvious conclusion. They might've not thought of themselves as "trans", but by gods what makes more sense, that it's a burial of a trangender person or some bizarre, one-off burial of a cis woman that just happened to be buried with male decorations even though no other woman in the same site was?
Likewise with gay people in history. There is a very strong tendency to go "oh, they're just gals being pals". Or if you have two male "lifelong friends" who left a whole lot of passionate letters, it's just "such good friends".
LGBTQ+ people get a bit miffed cause this is exactly the same behavior they tend to encounter IRL, so it's really easy to spot. Some historians will tie themselves into pretzels before admit gay people existed before the '60s...
Historians don't go out and identify historical figures as straight, either. And it is often impossible to tell. Was that woman buried with goods from a traditionally male role trans, or just a woman that happened to take up that trade in defiance of cultural norms? Were those 'lifelong friends' gay, or actually just lifelong friends? And consider that in many societies those were things people would try to keep hidden, which makes building a strong basis of evidence even harder. Sometimes there is enough evidence to reasonably assume, in which case we can see that historians do. But jumping to a conclusion without a solid basis of evidence would just be the same problem from the opposite angle.
Cronch wrote: Just because we know someone was in a lifelong cishet relationship doesn't let us say they were straight.
To be honest, I've never gotten the impression anyone actually does this (even those who deny what looks like strong evidence on non-cis orientations). The bulk of academic history is generally unconcerned with the topic of sexual orientations and researchers with an interest in studying that tend to come into history from the outside. Saying 'we don't know someone was gay' isn't the same thing as 'he was definitely straight.' At the same time, as unfair as it may be, I think you're asking researchers to work against evidence simply in the name of fairness.
By the same token, being attracted to own gender and "transness" are very much part of human species, they didn't suddenly appear in XIXc with "modern" western expression of gender norms
They don't, but even today you can get a dozen in a room and you'll get a dozen answers on what it means to be gay, trans, bi, pan, etc. People cannot now define clear lines between these behaviors and it's natural that we can't do the same with the past when lots of ideas about gender and identity were different or didn't exist. That's just going back to the original problem; assuming facts not in evidence and fallacious projection of the present onto the past. I've seen no historian who denies that humanity has always engaged in homosexual and non-binary sexual/gender practices, but that reality is very different from claiming X was trans.
And that is a fascinating line of talk fyi. Maybe better served by spinning it into it's own thread? We're more in methods, theory, and philosophy here than conspiracy at this point.
To bring this thread back to conspiracy because I remembered it after my last post; Anne Frank. There's a conspiracy theory that claims her diary is fake because it's written in ballpoint pens and ballpoint pens were invented after WWII. This is wrong because 1) ballpoint pens were invented in the 1880s and commercially available in the 1890s, and 2) Anne Franks 'diary' is not written in ball point. It was predominantly written with a fountain pen. There are ball point markings on some pages. These were put on loose leaf pages by scholars in the 50s and 60s who were trying to order the 'diary' which isn't really a single diary but a collection of notebooks, letters, and loose sheets of paper Anne wrote on.
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Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Cronch, as someone of actual knowledge (respect to your Masters!), where do you stand on the “if white Europeans couldn’t do it, it must’ve been aliens” trope?
Oh, I'll tackle that too.
I think it's definitely a distant thread born of racist cultural trends, but it's also kind of diffused and I think the primary motivator for such beliefs is less racism but more general ignorance. There's really no mystery to how many ancient superstructures were built. We have good ideas/theories for all of them. The biggest mystery is typically how materials were transported but even that isn't a huge mystery so much as something for which many hypothesis exist but no one is really sure of the specifics cause we have no evidence of how it exactly happened.
I think it isn't racism, but rather... technologyism? The sentiment is 'if we can't figure out how they did X with their technology, they could not figure out how to do X with their technology ' which is plainly ridiculous. It is a confusion where the technologically advanced are assumed to be inherently smarter. An evolution of the old white man's burden in a way. That racism almost certainly does play a part, but ancient aliens also goes right into ancient Europeans without pause.
NinthMusketeer wrote: I think it isn't racism, but rather... technologyism? The sentiment is 'if we can't figure out how they did X with their technology, they could not figure out how to do X with their technology ' which is plainly ridiculous. It is a confusion where the technologically advanced are assumed to be inherently smarter. An evolution of the old white man's burden in a way. That racism almost certainly does play a part, but ancient aliens also goes right into ancient Europeans without pause.
I'd also say that its one of those things along with hypnosis, sublimible messaging, bending spoons and a host of other powers/magics that were very popular in TV shows (both drama and documentary) for quite a long span of time on the TV. Even sensible/serious dramas would present some of those elements with a "ring of truth" aspect to them. When you couple that to documentary style programs which present ideas as actual fact in the same style as actual documentaries then people who have limited education or education that only focused on certain areas; then there's a high chance that they simply cannot sift fact from fiction.
So they easily get led down the garden path of lies.
And since things like believing aliens built the pyramids doesn't generally harm anyone, those people are allowed to continue that belief. So you get a culture built up around it.
I'm sure there are many other aspects that attach onto it from other groups as well, so what I've posted there is perhaps but one vector into this conspiracy.
We can also add that history as its presented to the public is often a decade or more behind the actual developments in the field and that many times a TV show might choose to present a story rather than report on the actual current information. So there's not only a time lag but also a general choice factor in what gets shown. So many of these things can be presented as mysteries, when actual researches already know the answer. Or they know three or four or more possible answers, each of which might be possible but isn't proven. Or, for say something like Egypt and Pyramids, the period of time covered is so great that there is no one method and it varies over time depending on which dynasty and which construction team is working on what monument etc...
Weirdly enough, most modern people also have no frame of reference for what a mass of humans can really accomplish. There's a picture circulating of 300 Amish men lifting a barn.
Spoiler:
Prior to seeing it, if you had asked me how to move a barn my first instinct would have been a trailer and truck, or one of those enormous helicopters. I can't recall ever seeing several hundred people working at any task together. I'm aware that it happens, like building dams when floods are coming, or digging out disaster sites... but I haven't seen the results. I can't really wrap my head around how much material several hundred people could clear with hand tools in a day, or what they can accomplish. The closest I've seen are strawberry pickers going through the fields, and trucks overflowing with strawberries moving away. Extrapolating from there to a year of sustained effort- I couldn't even begin to guess how much could be accomplished. Speaking for myself, I do not know what manpower really represents at that scale. Because of that it's easier to chock it up to magic than simple patience and perseverance. Aren't humans weird?
To continue the theme, if you ask 300 people to say, level a field, for whatever reason.
They can do it, because of course they can. But get it organised? Be it shifts, specific roles etc? Efficiency increases.
Even in the U.K., well specifically England? Various and sundry ancient monuments, such as henges and mounds. And come 1066, the Domesday book - which is essentially a mass stock-take of country, village by village, listing the assets.
It's no surprise. Modern life for many people just doesn't involve large numbers of people working in coordination like that. Essentially its a "lost skill" set in a sense of what can be achieved and what mechanics you have to introduce to make it functional and safe to work.
Modern life we'd use machines to achieve that because the machine is cheaper to rent than it is to pay 300 people - heck even just finding 300 people to perform a task like that would be a fairly big undertaking for many.
It's not just labour, we see it in many other areas of life too. There's a project (in France I think) to build a castle using archaeological evidence to emulate the old building practice. What it fast shows is that there's a lot of unwritten/recorded methods (even ignoring the patchy details of historical preservation) and processes that are needed in order to achieve things. Some can be quite complicated and technical.
Then again you're talking about method refined over generations by people who often grew up in a trade. They might not have had worldly knowledge, but they'd have known their trade and craft to a high standard.
My father regularly talks about how the British Steel and metalworks industry likely lost a lot of subtle recipes and mixes for different compounds and metals simply through the whole industry collapsing and shifting overseas (and also a big shift in focus from quality to bulk).
Again skill loss is a big issue and even today with all our methods of recording information its not abnormal that highly skilled individuals can take some skills to the grave with them.
That said never ignore the ability of people to hyperbol. Remember when Crop Circles were all the rage and there would be "experts" saying that circles of this nature and precise patterns could not be made by humans on the ground. Yet farmers (or others) with some plant killer or a blade/cutter did create those patterns on the ground quite easily. Selective reporting and reporting with an agenda created the myth that it was impossible in the lay persons mind (and a lay person who doesn't cut long grasses would likely make a total mess if they tried and thus might consider the perfect circle skill impossible.
There is a certain amusement factor in someone saying humans could not create such precise patterns, in the middle of a perfectly geometrical field of long exactly parallel lines.
NinthMusketeer wrote: There is a certain amusement factor in someone saying humans could not create such precise patterns, in the middle of a perfectly geometrical field of long exactly parallel lines.
My favourite take on that trope was crop circles basically being made with the super tech of sticks and a few lengths of rope
Gitzbitah wrote: Weirdly enough, most modern people also have no frame of reference for what a mass of humans can really accomplish. There's a picture circulating of 300 Amish men lifting a barn.
Spoiler:
Prior to seeing it, if you had asked me how to move a barn my first instinct would have been a trailer and truck, or one of those enormous helicopters.
None of the above. When ours (its mid/late 19th century) was moved, the foundation was cut away to insert steel beams, which were then jacked. Then the rest of the foundation was removed and the beams were lowered onto a couple tracked cargo haulers, which crept up the hill in unison, and then lowered onto a new foundation.
Basically we wanted it usable, which meant moving it away from the road.
Neat picture though. I've seen barn raising by hand, but not moving the shell like that.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Cronch, as someone of actual knowledge (respect to your Masters!), where do you stand on the “if white Europeans couldn’t do it, it must’ve been aliens” trope?
Isn't it a standard MO of humanity and what religion has been doing for millenia? If we don't know something, instead of saying "we don't know" we make something up ?
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Cronch, as someone of actual knowledge (respect to your Masters!), where do you stand on the “if white Europeans couldn’t do it, it must’ve been aliens” trope?
Isn't it a standard MO of humanity and what religion has been doing for millenia? If we don't know something, instead of saying "we don't know" we make something up ?
That’s my general understanding of it - but that’s not to say my understanding is by any means correct. The dubious joy of a trope.
If we watch say, Ancient Aliens, that trope is all over the shop, every episode. But that show strikes me as a very, very poor touchstone for professional, qualified opinions etc.
My understanding on the “if my ancestors didn’t do it, it can’t be done” is that it mostly stems from the imperialist Europe era. Egypt, South America, Cambodia et al. All seem to be judged through a rather racist lens.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Were those 'lifelong friends' gay, or actually just lifelong friends?
Depends on how many of their letters included lines like "oh my beloved, for whom I yearn like the wheat does the sun" or if they write poems about how they can't do their chores because they were overcome with longing for a girl.
For those whom it might interest in the historical gay people discussion, the oldest known written sentence in (medieval) Dutch is thought to be a gay love poem by some people. Or at least, so my highschool Dutch language teacher claimed. Possibly in jest, possibly not. He was the kind of person where it's hard to tell when he was joking.
It's a scribble in the margins of a prayer book, which roughly translates to "all the birds have already built their nest except us, what are we waiting for?" (Hebban olla vogala nestas hagunnan hinase hic anda thu, wat unbidan we nu?) Since in those days the only people liable to be able to read and write (never mind do those things with prayer books) were monks, and there's not a whole lot of women in a monastery, odds are it was written by one monk for another. At least that's the theory.
Edit: If true, our vaunted tolerance goes back a long way :p.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Cronch, as someone of actual knowledge (respect to your Masters!), where do you stand on the “if white Europeans couldn’t do it, it must’ve been aliens” trope?
Isn't it a standard MO of humanity and what religion has been doing for millenia? If we don't know something, instead of saying "we don't know" we make something up ?
It's one of the more annoying recurring arguments in my discussions with religious people elsewhere that they a) tend to argue "you don't know so my claim "wins" by default" and b) don't seem to understand that "I don't know" can be a perfectly viable answer in the face of lack of evidence one way or the other.
With regards to historical revisionism of people who don't fit the heteronormative viewpoint upheld through much of history, we must be thankful of those who managed to lead such incredibly outrageously flamboyant lifestyles that they were not able to be erased.
A personal favourite is Julie d'Aubigny, an openly bi woman who dressed as a man, had a long list of relationships with both men and women, was a renowned duellist, opera singer, fistfighter and diss song writer. She basically lived the life of a rock star in Louis XIV France. Possibly the closest a person has come to being a player's D&D Bard in real life.
Bran Dawri wrote: For those whom it might interest in the historical gay people discussion, the oldest known written sentence in (medieval) Dutch is thought to be a gay love poem by some people. Or at least, so my highschool Dutch language teacher claimed. Possibly in jest, possibly not. He was the kind of person where it's hard to tell when he was joking.
It's a scribble in the margins of a prayer book, which roughly translates to "all the birds have already built their nest except us, what are we waiting for?" (Hebban olla vogala nestas hagunnan hinase hic anda thu, wat unbidan we nu?) Since in those days the only people liable to be able to read and write (never mind do those things with prayer books) were monks, and there's not a whole lot of women in a monastery, odds are it was written by one monk for another. At least that's the theory.
I think it may surprise people to know the Church could be pretty laissez faire about homosexuality at various points in its history
A personal favourite is Julie d'Aubigny, an openly bi woman who dressed as a man, had a long list of relationships with both men and women, was a renowned duellist, opera singer, fistfighter and diss song writer. She basically lived the life of a rock star in Louis XIV France. Possibly the closest a person has come to being a player's D&D Bard in real life.
I'm honestly surprised Chevalier D'Eon isn't a more famous historical figure. They were basically the Mata Hari before the Matahari, and had a far more Hollywood worthy life XD I mean, I only learned about them playing Fate/Grand Order (which this guy/gal might as well have lived to featured in XD)
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Cronch, as someone of actual knowledge (respect to your Masters!), where do you stand on the “if white Europeans couldn’t do it, it must’ve been aliens” trope?
Isn't it a standard MO of humanity and what religion has been doing for millenia? If we don't know something, instead of saying "we don't know" we make something up ?
That’s my general understanding of it - but that’s not to say my understanding is by any means correct. The dubious joy of a trope.
If we watch say, Ancient Aliens, that trope is all over the shop, every episode. But that show strikes me as a very, very poor touchstone for professional, qualified opinions etc.
My understanding on the “if my ancestors didn’t do it, it can’t be done” is that it mostly stems from the imperialist Europe era. Egypt, South America, Cambodia et al. All seem to be judged through a rather racist lens.
The "lost" city of Angkor Wat is the best example. It sure as heck wasn't lost to the locals who knew exactly where it was, even if they didn't remember who built it. Hence the WILD ideas like "it's been settled by Alexander the Great or one of his generals" because clearly the locals, living in bamboo huts, couldn't do it.
There's always been a healthy mix of unconscious racism whenever it came to non-european civilizations, and while part of it might come from actual racism, a lot of it is from West's love of linear time, and by extension, linear everything. HIstory is a simple line from A to B, from first mud brick cities of Mesopotamia to Rome to London and Berlin. Whereas quite clearly history is a dozen separate timelines converging and splitting that is just as messy as everything today. We love to have clear-cut information like "Edison invented electric light" which is both true and untrue in fact, he invented a type of it. When things require thinking outside of straight lines, some people just go "can't be done, nonsense" and come up with greek generals in south east asia or aliens building pyramids, because that fits the view that things get invented in one place and spread around, not that there would be separate equally valid points of technology.
There's always been a healthy mix of unconscious racism whenever it came to non-european civilizations, and while part of it might come from actual racism, a lot of it is from West's love of linear time, and by extension, linear everything.
It isn't particularly unconscious. There is a central narrative to western historiography that runs from Orosius to Marx and most everyone in between (and beyond, sadly enough, Anthropologist Eric Wolf used it as part of a title in 1982, though he was trying (somewhat) to subvert it).
The 'People Without History' is a long running concept- non-Christians exist to be tools of the divine to punish the faithful, but they have no agency or autonomy. Marx continued this in a different context, but non-westerners were something history happened to, they didn't create it. Hence the USSSR was a perversion that couldn't work to Marxist historians- the revolution should have happened in Germany or Britain, Russia was too backwards.
It's not even confined to humanities, don't forget theories of evolution and such have long been dogged (even today) with the fact that many people refused to admit to humanities "animal" origins due to religious and other influences.
Heck we are only now coming to terms with the idea that humanity isn't the only species with a highly evolved and developed concept of language.
I think what really gets my goat when it comes to “Aliens doned it” is that in many cases, as I think was confirmed earlier, is that we very much do know how it was done.
If memory serves, and I’m again not being taken in by another wild claim, archaeologists have found and recorded hieroglyphics which literally show how the Pyramids etc were built?
There’s also other things to consider. Let’s look at the Agricultural and Industrial revolutions in Europe - certainly in Britain.
The Agricultural Revolution of course came first. This ensured stronger harvests, and involved fewer people. For the land owners, this meant higher profits, to the point previously distinctly Middle class folk became very, very wealthy.
This meant their sons (possibly daughters, but given the time, probably not) went off to University etc, or otherwise gained an education. As that knowledge spread and was improved up, the same thing happened. Greater efficiency. Greater profits.
This ultimately lead to the Industrial Revolution, which eventually became the Digital Revolution, as people obsessed over ever greater efficiency (no I am not touching on the political theories there. Not on Dakka).
In short, a hierarchal society saw wealth and learning spread ever further. Who’s to say that South American civilisations didn’t have something similar? Those stones you can’t get a cigarette paper between? That takes a lot of skill, and learning. But, if successive generations of stone masons only ever had to worry about being stonemasons, and not sowing, growing and harvesting? You would see a significant increase in the skill level.
Example out of my bum for purely explanatory reasons....
Let’s say that to become a master Stone Mason takes something like 2,000 hours of work.
First, you’re limited to daylight hours, as one suspects doing it by candle, rush or whatever light is far from ideal.
Now, if masonry is more a hobby than a specific role? You may end up with just an hour or two a day to dedicate to it, as you have other necessary tasks (hunting, animal husbandry, crop sowing/growing/harvesting, food preparation etc etc).
But...if your immediate society has a certain structure to it, where specific tasks have specialist workers? You’re more likely to be able to dedicate your working day to it entirely.
So where someone in a hodge-podge affair, where they only have an hour two? 1,000 days would be needed to get to master level.
But, if you can dedicate 8 hours a day? 250 days - less than a year. And that’s not taking into account the “rinse and repeat, find a cheat” benefit which may reduce that time, or possibly more likely, increase the time someone only doing it now and again would take to master it.
Sorry. Bit word salad, for which I apologise.
TL/DR? History appears to have a tendency to treat a snapshot of a culture as a universal constant.
Someone smart said it takes 10K hours to learn a skill. I forget who it was, but its a value I've heard repeated around so if not true it might at least give some idea as to timescale.s
Also don't forget today we live in a very diferent time when it comes to trades and skills. In the past you'd likely start your skill and trade learning much earlier in life. If it was a stable time with children inheriting from their parents then chances are you'd be training from a very young age informally; moving into formal quite quickly. So by the time you hit 20 you'd already have years of skill behind you. Whereas today we might start at 18 to muddle around; but might not even settle on a trade till much later in life and that assumes stable work (a lot of people have lost jobs; retrained and wound up in totally different trades several times).
So yep in ancient times there was generally more stability for a lot of work and often a lot more parent to child passing on of skills. Of course there were downsides - lack of internet; easy access to books and easy travel meant that even if you did learn all your parents had to know; you might be a local master; but lack a more worldly view. So you might just not think of some ideas. It would also mean that some local masters might well discover things that get lost once they die because they never passed it on in person, or those they did pass it onto never used that knowledge or passed it on themselves etc... The lack of formal documentation and the easy exchange of it likely meant many discoveries were made and lost over time.
today we can accelerate some of the learning because we can exchange ideas so freely. Heck if we want we can exchange them in near real time over the whole world.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I think what really gets my goat when it comes to “Aliens doned it” is that in many cases, as I think was confirmed earlier, is that we very much do know how it was done.
IKR?
In short, a hierarchal society saw wealth and learning spread ever further. Who’s to say that South American civilisations didn’t have something similar?
They did; several booms (and busts) before European colonization. But then history of civilization in general very much a history of booms and busts.
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Overread wrote: Heck we are only now coming to terms with the idea that humanity isn't the only species with a highly evolved and developed concept of language.
I think that is a bit of an unfair criticism given that we are and have been for all of recorded history. The technology and knowledge to even figure something like that out in our context has not even existed until recently.
Slightly related fun fact: Humans (Homo sapiens) did not invent the use of fire, we inherited it.
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A Town Called Malus wrote: With regards to historical revisionism of people who don't fit the heteronormative viewpoint upheld through much of history, we must be thankful of those who managed to lead such incredibly outrageously flamboyant lifestyles that they were not able to be erased.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I think what really gets my goat when it comes to “Aliens doned it” is that in many cases, as I think was confirmed earlier, is that we very much do know how it was done.
Slightly related fun fact: Humans (Homo sapiens) did not invent the use of fire, we inherited it.
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A Town Called Malus wrote: With regards to historical revisionism of people who don't fit the heteronormative viewpoint upheld through much of history, we must be thankful of those who managed to lead such incredibly outrageously flamboyant lifestyles that they were not able to be erased.
Dam straight!
Very true. In fact modern science believes that homo sapiens would not exist if our ancestor had not discovered the use of fire and began cooking raw meat with it.
Basically, cooking meat breaks down some of the proteins, making it easier for the hominid digestive system to assimilate it. While the hominid omnivorous digestive system is versatile and has some advantages, it is also inefficient. It can handle raw meat but doesn't get as much useful protein out of it.
Cooking meat made it easier for our ancestors digestive systems to get much more protein out of it and this lead to the expansion of the cerebral cortex due to more useful protein being available in the formative years, plus it lead to an increase in height and overall physical health and strength.
Plus cooked meat it far easier to chew and swallow, meaning you didn't send all that time chewing it.
On the ideas that some peat bog bodies were homosexuals executed for their deviance, heinrich himmler believed that and stated it as fact during his time in power. Many refuted this after he was no longer able to retaliate against them.
I find the alarming thing which ties into flat earth and all other similiar nonsense is its a business. A fairly lucrative business and its reeling people in.
For example I came across a channel called "Gaia". Which masquerades garbage nonsense things like "Ancient Aliens did it/ Earth flat/Atlantis is real magic" etc. as well produced fact based documentary because science guy#1 is in a white lab coat...
Unfortunately it seems large segments of the populations are kinda roped in and believe because its said by an important smart looking "science person" on TV.
Argive wrote: I find the alarming thing which ties into flat earth and all other similiar nonsense is its a business. A fairly lucrative business and its reeling people in.
For example I came across a channel called "Gaia". Which masquerades garbage nonsense things like "Ancient Aliens did it/ Earth flat/Atlantis is real magic" etc. as well produced fact based documentary because science guy#1 is in a white lab coat...
Unfortunately it seems large segments of the populations are kinda roped in and believe because its said by an important smart looking "science person" on TV.
Indeed it can be very big business indeed if you land the right setup. Often as not when you look into some of these groups you can often find someone behind them who is promoting them and pushing the agenda who is also profiting off them - sometimes making money into the millions. Flat Earth might not be there yet, but each supporter joining a group and such expands the sphere of influence and the earning potential.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Somehow I don't have much sympathy for the 'victims' of such unscrupulous business.
Eh yes and no.
It's easy to have no sympathies until you realise that many of those looking to make money through these schemes will specifically target more vulnerable people more easily misled.
When its Flat Earth its basically harmless since in the grand scheme of things what shape you think the Earth is doesn't really matter. It's one that only becomes a risk if it gets large scale since it goes beyond just ignorance and well into distrust of science - which in itself can bleed into other areas that are more serious.
However when it starts becoming something like Homeopathy* targeting those with serious/life threatening/changing sickness then it can become far more serious. Then you've got a situation where people are desperate/fearful and can suffer life long and life ending harm.
*The original kind where its "water memory" curing and such. I'm aware that in latter years Homeopathy has branched out to include a lot of herbal remedies in order to give itself some chance to survive beyond placebo effect.
Separate issue. We tell businesses 'your sole purpose is to make money and morals are secondary' then are somehow surprised by the result. Are they going to capitalize and encourage conspiracy theories to take money from fools? You bet. They are targeting the easiest demographic to take money from.
It maybe their behavior toward conspiracies is part of a larger conspiracy...?
When it comes to Woo peddlers such as David “Avocado*” Wolfe and his ilk, what really brings me down is their whole “big pharma only want munneh”.....whilst peddling and charging through the nose for all sorts of mumbo jumbo drivel and nonsense.
How can people not see straight through that?
I mean, if you want to do Yoga, use “crystal salt lamps” and other stuff, cool, go for it. Ain’t gonna harm anyone.
But when absolute crap like “Jilly Juice” is promoted, it’s actively harmful. It won’t.....
1. “Cure” homosexuality
2. Regenerate lost limbs
3. “Cure” autism**
4. Cure cancer
5. Reverse ageing
But it absolutely can kill you, due to the ridiculous level of salt.
And when a cancer patient stopped all other treatment and consumption in favour of Jilly Juice? She. Doubled. Down
Wiki snippet (yes, I know. But it’s cited! wrote: Death of Bruce Wilmot[edit]
In the summer of 2017, Bruce Wilmot, who was diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic cancer, began taking Jilly Juice.[5] Wilmot's daughter Taylor described him as "emaciated", and stated that he "was drinking so much of it, he was basically starving himself. It was all coming out as diarrhea."[1]
On July 20, 2017, about a month after he began drinking Jilly Juice, Bruce Wilmot died.[1][5] Epperly responded to his death in a video by saying that Wilmot did not consume enough Jilly Juice, stating that he "really should have kept going", and that his medications, his consumption of pineapple juice, or the medical industry may have contributed to his death.[1][5] Epperly later wrote that she "can't be held accountable" for deaths resulting from her product, and that "correlation does not mean causation."[5]
That folks, is a total lack of morals. And she is not alone in such shameless, victim blaming quackery.
And don’t get me started on “miracle mineral solution” (or bleach, as I like to call it, BECAUSE IT IS BLEACH AND THAT IS ITS CORRECT NAME).
*Given where the Avocado got its name from (it resembles a nad bag, as is named so in the local language), I’m eternally unsure if Mr Wolfe chose that especially, given we know he talks absolute and utter bollocks all of the time. Such as “chocolate is an octave of sun energy.....
**Autism is not a disease that can be cured. I’ve even read suggestions that it might simply be a form of brain evolution. Unsure on that claims validity though.
She’s been bollocked for lying about it’s health benefits by the FTA, but so far as I can see, never prosecuted.
As for MMS?
Wiki, I still know, and again this is cited wrote: Miracle Mineral Supplement, often referred to as Miracle Mineral Solution, Master Mineral Solution, MMS or the CD protocol,[1] is chlorine dioxide, an industrial bleach. It is made by mixing aqueous sodium chlorite with an acid (such as the juices of citrus fruits or vinegar). This mixture produces chlorine dioxide, a toxic chemical that can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and life-threatening low blood pressure due to dehydration.[2]
Mmm-mmm, love that industrial bleach. And no, squirting it up your khyber won’t cure anything - except maybe any lingering common sense.
She’s been bollocked for lying about it’s health benefits by the FTA, but so far as I can see, never prosecuted.
As for MMS?
Wiki, I still know, and again this is cited wrote: Miracle Mineral Supplement, often referred to as Miracle Mineral Solution, Master Mineral Solution, MMS or the CD protocol,[1] is chlorine dioxide, an industrial bleach. It is made by mixing aqueous sodium chlorite with an acid (such as the juices of citrus fruits or vinegar). This mixture produces chlorine dioxide, a toxic chemical that can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and life-threatening low blood pressure due to dehydration.[2]
Mmm-mmm, love that industrial bleach. And no, squirting it up your khyber won’t cure anything - except maybe any lingering common sense.
Darwinaward level of idiocracy.
As for the above, ... i once again have lowered my expectations for humanity as a species.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: The worst bit? It’s now being targeted at people in developing countries, because this nonsense is rightly being stamped down on hard in the west.
And again, we see snake oil being sold under the cloak of religion. Which is utterly despicable.
Wellp...
that sounds like something i missed entirely?
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: When it comes to Woo peddlers such as David “Avocado*” Wolfe and his ilk, what really brings me down is their whole “big pharma only want munneh”.....whilst peddling and charging through the nose for all sorts of mumbo jumbo drivel and nonsense.
How can people not see straight through that?
That's probably because you're in the UK like myself - we have national health.
My impression about the "Big Pharma only want money" view comes from the USA where that very much is an element. Though its split between the pharmaceuticals and the insurance groups, the net result is people see medicine as charging a lot. Remember its a country where an ambulance ride can cost hundreds to thousands and where there might be many ways around it to pay less for those on lower income, but they are often not aware of those "tricks/methods" to take advantage of them.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: It’s them preying on the poor and the vulnerable that pisses me off.
neither absolves of responsibility, though.
But responsibility also applies to "products" peddled so imo, jail time and some serious work with psychiatric institutions, especially for the "reverend" are high time.
but then again maybee that is just me, that thinks that way.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: When it comes to Woo peddlers such as David “Avocado*” Wolfe and his ilk, what really brings me down is their whole “big pharma only want munneh”.....whilst peddling and charging through the nose for all sorts of mumbo jumbo drivel and nonsense.
How can people not see straight through that?
That's probably because you're in the UK like myself - we have national health.
My impression about the "Big Pharma only want money" view comes from the USA where that very much is an element. Though its split between the pharmaceuticals and the insurance groups, the net result is people see medicine as charging a lot. Remember its a country where an ambulance ride can cost hundreds to thousands and where there might be many ways around it to pay less for those on lower income, but they are often not aware of those "tricks/methods" to take advantage of them.
Pharma wanting money is natural, afterall it's a company, however something Europe has that the USA hasn't is a somewhat wierd inheritance from social democratic structures , meaning that there is a counterplayer to unmigitated greed. The USA only ever really had one phase under teddy , where big buissness was confronted with a counterweight that could and would hold them to task.
That is something that should not be underestimated.
I’m always cautious when a matter boils down to a lack of education.
Yes, some folk do squander their learning, and need to wise up. But yet more folk receive little to no education at all, let alone one of half decent quality.
This is of course particularly prevalent in developing countries, where these woo peddlars seem intent on targeting their BS and misinformation.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I’m always cautious when a matter boils down to a lack of education.
We had that discussion quite early on.
It's frankly shamefull how much desinvestment in some "developped" countries happened in regards to education, however when the stuff leads to diharea i am sorry but selfpreservation is also a thing that should work for most functional human beeings...
Yes, some folk do squander their learning, and need to wise up. But yet more folk receive little to no education at all, let alone one of half decent quality.
This is of course particularly prevalent in developing countries, where these woo peddlars seem intent on targeting their BS and misinformation.
Frankly and let's be real here, a lot of developping countries squander ressources on non necessary things aswell... cue venezuela f.e.
The targetted people are basically victims of their own government AND the snake oil peddler.
Which still makes them susceptible in regards to consequences.
Guys, as i said months ago, when people believe that 5g cellphone towers are, somehow, causing on spreading covid what can you do or say?
I mean has anyone engaged these people to ask how they think EM transceiver sites would spread a physical object like a virus?
I'm afraid to, i mean i might ask them and they'd say that covid can be spread by these new super antennas like EM transmissions because its invisible, "just like radio waves are! So it can be spread like radio waves because it's like radio waves!"
Or it might be "Well i got a virus on muh phone thru them transmitters an' if'n they can spread one virus they can spread 'em all!"
Yes, i am honestly afraid some people believe this.
They probably believe it because it justifies some other, more central belief they already had.
It's wrong to view it as like
cellphones give you covid -> so that's how They get you! -> we need to get rid of Them
because it's actually
I want to get rid of Them -> what do I accuse Them of to justify this? -> spreading plague!
and besides, for many conspiracy groups it's a good thing that the specifics and mechanics of their claims are absurd because it weeds out everyone who isn't fully dedicated to the group. If your reaction to bs is to ask what? why? instead of bullshitting even harder then you're not fully useful to the cult.
Matt Swain wrote: Guys, as i said months ago, when people believe that 5g cellphone towers are, somehow, causing on spreading covid what can you do or say?
I mean has anyone engaged these people to ask how they think EM transceiver sites would spread a physical object like a virus?
I'm afraid to, i mean i might ask them and they'd say that covid can be spread by these new super antennas like EM transmissions because its invisible, "just like radio waves are! So it can be spread like radio waves because it's like radio waves!"
Or it might be "Well i got a virus on muh phone thru them transmitters an' if'n they can spread one virus they can spread 'em all!"
Yes, i am honestly afraid some people believe this.
As I understand it the fundamental problem is these kinds of people have big gaps in their understanding of how the world works. They don't really know what a virus is as such, neither the computer kind nor the physical kind. They don't really know what or how radio or other waves work; they don't know how viruses really transmit. Furthermore because they are so ignorant they are well into the scale of not knowing what it is they don't know. Furthermore they are often in segments of society who have poor self learning skills.
This means even when they can see a gap in their understanding, they can't sift the answers they google/find to sort fact from fiction at a basic level.
The huge gaps in their understanding mean that they make false conclusions that appear to make no sense what so ever, because they are only working with a fraction of the understanding. It's often reasonably logical thinking, its just they've got so many key gaps that the logical conclusions they reach sound exceptionally illogical to those with a greater understanding. It creates a huge barrier between the two groups and its very hard for them to communicate with each other because the more ignorant group really needs classes and regular lessons on a lot of early subjects to build up and fill in the missing gaps.
Of course if they've joined a group of others promoting the same misunderstanding its likely some of those gaps have been filled with false information. Or were taught in a way that leads one down to the wrong conclusions. Another trick is to play on the fact that school level science isn't "real" and is sometimes an artificial construct that allows a teacher to teach the basics of one theory. However its not designed to go further than that basic concept, but when it is taken further it can be twisted and such.
Another thing to keep in mind is that many of these people might well not have exactly squandered their education and might have been reasonably attentive at school. It's just that since school they've not had any reason to use that knowledge. So just like many of us can do trigonometry during school and then 20 years later not have a clue save that there's a rhyme with socks in it; because we've not had to do it in 20 years. The same is true for those people who were taught what a virus was and how it worked and then never had reason to recall or use that information.
Matt Swain wrote: Guys, as i said months ago, when people believe that 5g cellphone towers are, somehow, causing on spreading covid what can you do or say?
I mean has anyone engaged these people to ask how they think EM transceiver sites would spread a physical object like a virus?
I'm afraid to, i mean i might ask them and they'd say that covid can be spread by these new super antennas like EM transmissions because its invisible, "just like radio waves are! So it can be spread like radio waves because it's like radio waves!"
Or it might be "Well i got a virus on muh phone thru them transmitters an' if'n they can spread one virus they can spread 'em all!"
Yes, i am honestly afraid some people believe this.
That's a nice story but David Icke is a proponent of the 5g celltowers causes covid "theory" and his story is none of those that you are putting in his mouth. His story is that the 5g towers cause health adverse effects somewhat like how mobile phone masts and microwave ovens were supposed to back in the day. His story is that the virus was just a cover story to blame a rise in deaths and sickness coinciding with the roll out on something else. It might be wrong or paranoid but it is not as implausible as your strawman stories.
Why are you defending a guy who believes in lizardmen and who wasn't actually mentioned in the post you are quoting? There are in fact people who claim that 5g spreads the disease.
Rosebuddy wrote: Why are you defending a guy who believes in lizardmen and who wasn't actually mentioned in the post you are quoting? There are in fact people who claim that 5g spreads the disease.
I don't like to see anyone misrepresented, it doesn't help anyone. Some people do that just to make themselves sound clever at the expense of someone else, in this case "conspiracy theorists". All I have seen suggests they think it causes radiation damage. Radiation damage is a dis-ease, it is just not one caused by virii, or bacteria.
You are thinking disease means "infectious disease" implying a biological vector. The meaning of disease is more general than that. If it helps read it as symptoms of disease.
Here is a defintion from the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Disease, any harmful deviation from the normal structural or functional state of an organism, generally associated with certain signs and symptoms and differing in nature from physical injury. A diseased organism commonly exhibits signs or symptoms indicative of its abnormal state. Thus, the normal condition of an organism must be understood in order to recognize the hallmarks of disease. Nevertheless, a sharp demarcation between disease and health is not always apparent.
The generally accepted definition of disease (that used among average everyday people) does not include radiation or other poisoning.
If some people perceive radiation poisoning or radiological damage to cells and DNA as disease its not because they understand an encyclopaedia Britannica reference.
Automatically Appended Next Post: We should remember as well that the previous few years has seen experts being demonised downplayed and outright being said to be untrustworthy.
No wonder David Icke and his ilk are still around.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: The worst bit? It’s now being targeted at people in developing countries, because this nonsense is rightly being stamped down on hard in the west.
And again, we see snake oil being sold under the cloak of religion. Which is utterly despicable.
Has it made its way into telenovela yet? That seems to be the way a lot of this junk infiltrates culture in places like South America, where you have characters espousing the benefits of stuff like Herbalife and other pyramid schemes.
You could interpret it that way if it suits you. Is liver cirrhosis a disease? For consistency within this conversation you will have to say no in order to preserve your narrative here. On any other day you would say it is. So that is how it goes.
Let's stay in perspectives here: a great number of people in developing countries like many of the sub-Saharan African nations, have extremely low personal income and "enjoys" terrible standards of living compared to the west and even much of the east. Meanwhile, medicines costs are only raising higher and higher. How do you expect a family with an average median household income of ~$2,000 to afford medications and professional treatments for life-threatening conditions? (For comparison, the average median household income in the U.S. is above 43K, according to worldpopulationreview.com. source).
Not to mention many of these nations have traditional medical remedies derived from thousands of years of trial and error with a good amount of traditionalism and superstitions. When their life's hanging by a thread, it's just a bit arrogant to say that these people are responsible for grasping for straws. When the missionaries and pastors come and tell them something would save their lives, they'd try it because, for them, what else is there to lose? How many people these same victims of MMS in Africa are misled by those missionaries because they were seeking help in the first place?
You could interpret it that way if it suits you. Is liver cirrhosis a disease? For consistency within this conversation you will have to say no in order to preserve your narrative here. On any other day you would say it is. So that is how it goes.
Depends entirely AS to why?
alcohol vs hepatitis f.e.
further inherited version vs obesity.
I just found out that there is a Malala conspiracy. You may recall her as the girl that was shot in the face by the Taliban for going to school. Since, she has become an international sensation.
The conspiracy theory is that her family worked with the CIA to co-ordinate her getting shot in the face to discredit the Taliban. It also includes Robert De Niro in disguise as an Uzbeck, so maybe there is an upcoming movie buried in this theory somewhere?
Something that comes to my mind in all of this is how, in the 21st century, policy regarding free speech has been rendered woefully underdeveloped. There is little to no accountability for peddling complete lies, let alone bending the truth. In the Age of Misinformation this does not cut it, and we see society suffer as a result. But there are two sides to that coin; society does not value honesty, which makes me see the circumstances others have outlined on the last page as self-inflicted almost as much as they are victims. It does not take an education to be reasonable, to say 'prove it' or 'why should we believe you?'
Naw its more that several leaders suggested rebuilding and instilling some economic moves toward longer term sustainability and such and some are jumping on it and bundling it with Covid ideas that the whole pandemic was created to basically allow the rich to instil a world wide military style form of governing.
With such terrible things as mandatory vaccinations - anti-vax camps - military on the streets and other such things.
Basically its a mess of Covid stuff bundled against what is, from what I can tell, a bid to encourage sustainable and longer term investment and attempts to curb some of the short term max yield economics that big business often focuses upon.
Naw its more that several leaders suggested rebuilding and instilling some economic moves toward longer term sustainability and such and some are jumping on it and bundling it with Covid ideas that the whole pandemic was created to basically allow the rich to instil a world wide military style form of governing.
With such terrible things as mandatory vaccinations - anti-vax camps - military on the streets and other such things.
Basically its a mess of Covid stuff bundled against what is, from what I can tell, a bid to encourage sustainable and longer term investment and attempts to curb some of the short term max yield economics that big business often focuses upon.
Looked it up, thanks.
Where do i sign?
seriously, sometimes a disaster gives people the chance to rebuild better. Hell, after rome burned (an event Nero certainly did not play the fiddle at, and most likely didn't cause) it was rebuilt better in every way, with the world's first fire codes (Very sensible laws written by Nero, who is largely uncredited for creating them) as a guideline for it's rebuilding. The romans had a saying "Rome burned as a city of wood and rose from the ashes as a city of stone."
After WW2 both japan and europe, especially germany, has to rebuild and generally built well planned, laid out cities that were better planned and built than the cities devastated in the war.
So I say "FETH YEAH!" we should do a reset of our economic systems after covid. I'd like to see ones that are more attuned to the needs of the many, so it might be a little hard to do. But if building a better, stronger, more survivable economy better able to survive disasters makes you a 'conspirator" just hand me an Illuminati membership card and I'll sign my name on it! Go ahead and start my Majestic 12 members monthly magazine too.
Naw its more that several leaders suggested rebuilding and instilling some economic moves toward longer term sustainability and such and some are jumping on it and bundling it with Covid ideas that the whole pandemic was created to basically allow the rich to instil a world wide military style form of governing.
With such terrible things as mandatory vaccinations - anti-vax camps - military on the streets and other such things.
Basically its a mess of Covid stuff bundled against what is, from what I can tell, a bid to encourage sustainable and longer term investment and attempts to curb some of the short term max yield economics that big business often focuses upon.
But like... the ones putting military on the streets are the same ones who kicked off the Covid-conspiracy. Ugh.
The conspiracy theory alleges that "global financial elites" and world leaders have planned a pandemic, deliberately letting loose the coronavirus to cause the conditions that will allow a restructuring of the world's governments. It alleges that the main goals of the Great Reset are to take global political and economic control by instating a Marxist totalitarian regime and by extension, the New World Order.[2][7][17] It is claimed that such a regime would abolish personal ownership and property rights, send the military into cities, impose mandatory vaccination, and create isolation camps for people who resist.[14][18] Various examples which proponents claim are evidence of a conspiracy include a 2016 WEF piece describing what life might be like in 2030, Joe Biden's campaign slogan "Build Back Better", and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's September 2020 speech. According to The Daily Dot, this is merely discourse illustrating how to create a more just and sustainable world.[19][17] In some variations of the theory, US President Donald Trump is the only world leader keeping the scheme from happening, based on a video from August 2020 which has been viewed over three million times.[2][3]
BINGO?
I mean that's 6 in a row , in the first paragraf: Plandemic, the "financial elites", Marxism new order, Camps for anti vax, sublime messaging and Trump vs the "deepstate".
Naw its more that several leaders suggested rebuilding and instilling some economic moves toward longer term sustainability and such and some are jumping on it and bundling it with Covid ideas that the whole pandemic was created to basically allow the rich to instil a world wide military style form of governing.
With such terrible things as mandatory vaccinations - anti-vax camps - military on the streets and other such things.
Basically its a mess of Covid stuff bundled against what is, from what I can tell, a bid to encourage sustainable and longer term investment and attempts to curb some of the short term max yield economics that big business often focuses upon.
But like... the ones putting military on the streets are the same ones who kicked off the Covid-conspiracy. Ugh.
Welcome to conservatism 101, where you project all your wet dreams onto the other side of the political divide.
What ratio of Believers to Sheeple needs to be attained in order for the nefarious schemes of the Zionists/Lizard People/FEMA/Deepstate to be over thrown?
Has any conspiracist actually given a manifesto pledge of what we should aspire to after the overthrow?
Automatically Appended Next Post:
MarkNorfolk wrote: And the world leaders are planning this reset so they can take control?
The guys in charge have hatched a far reaching, complicated plot.... so they can be in charge?
With 'man of the people' Donny keeping them all in check?
.
Give it time, its just a baby. It's still got to find its feet and its own identity. Right now its just developing and experimenting with any old conspiracies it can attach itself too. Given time and a proper crib of tin foil it might well grow into its own mature style of conspiracy.
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Give it time, its just a baby. It's still got to find its feet and its own identity. Right now its just developing and experimenting with any old conspiracies it can attach itself too. Given time and a proper crib of tin foil it might well grow into its own mature style of conspiracy.
it's clearly a diverse group of propagaters (from the alt medical branch to anti vax to those special paranoid people to to to etc.), therefore it will never be as conciesce.
And yes MDG most conspiracy theories as have most cults, do have alot of contradictory beliefs. Further the connection is old , 20th and 19th century old from an angry austrian little man with constant shoutitis old.
As an aside though, considering how the elite lived in communist countries (like the DDR in resorts f.e.) it might not even be as completly absurd. But then really all totalitarian systems are absurd by design.
I mean, I work in the finance industry. And I am the sort of dirty lefty known to cause the Daily Mail to clutch their pearls at 50 paces....
But....I’m also predominantly a tosspot? And my professional reach is strictly limited.
If I am this financial elite, and being a dirty lefty known to cause the Daily Mail to clutch their pearls at 50 paces......where’s my sodding cheque?
I wants my Soros money, dammit! And though the pubs are shut, it better at least be worth a night out.
you don't get the cheque because you are not those kind of financial elite, aka jewish and not left enough aka judeo bolschewist.
Where do you think the whole nonsense comes from, it's the same absurd shouty mac shout style.
Heck you can even read that nonsense in a certain abuse of german language.
Great Reset is surely related to the daddy of all current “pants on head hatstand insane drivel” Qanon?
Maybe in an attempt to morph from a load of old cobblers where nothing actually came true?
Qanon is well known, but sweet summer child it is not even the pinacle of it, just a hitchhiker to latch onto it. Chances are certain countries are involved (cue russia, china or any other irregular mediawarfare yes that exists as a separate assymetrical form of warfare) or others like venezuela and North korea which maintain their population under an iron heel with a mixture of nonsense conspiracy and military force.
Not even going torwards organised religious fringes which are just as likely to propagate more of them.
I wonder how long it'll take for those monoliths that have been popping up to be included in those conspiracy theories.
I'm certain they'll spawn some of their own at least.
Conspiracy theorists are not a new thing, famous 19th century conspiracy theorist Mikhail Bakunin said as much himself.
Himself a Jew, Marx has around him, in London and France, but especially in Germany, a multitude of more or less clever, intriguing, mobile, speculating Jews, such as Jews are every where: commercial or banking agents, writers, politicians, correspondents for newspapers of all shades, with one foot in the bank, the other in the socialist movement, and with their behinds sitting on the German daily press — they have taken possession of all the newspapers — and you can imagine what kind of sickening literature they produce. Now, this entire Jewish world, which forms a single profiteering sect, a people of blooksuckers, a single gluttonnous parasite, closely and intimately united not only across national borders but across all differences of political opinion — this Jewish world today stands for the most part at the disposal of Marx and at the same time at the disposal of Rothschild. I am certain that Rothschild for his part greatly values the merits of Marx, and that Marx for his part feels instinctive attraction and great respect for Rothschild.
This may seem strange. What can there be in common between Communism and the large banks? Oh! The Communism of Marx seeks enormous centralization in the state, and where such exists, there must inevitably be a central state bank, and where such a bank exists, the parasitic Jewish nation, which. speculates on the work of the people, will always find a way to prevail ....
- Mikhail Bakunin - Source: Michael Bakunin, 1871, Personliche Beziehungen zu Marx. In: Gesammelte Werke. Band 3. Berlin 1924. P. 204-216.
Powerful states can maintain themselves only by crime, little states are virtuous only by weakness.
- Bakunin
The privilege of ruling would be in the hands of the skilled and the learned, with a wide scope left for profitable crooked deals carried on by the Jews, who would be attracted by the enormous extension of the international speculations of the national banks.
-Bakunin
It sounds bit like synthesizing and repackaging a lot of old Conspiracy Theories into a new, more modern package. Take good ol' fashion anti-semiticism, classic anti-communism, and add on a gloss of "Plandemic". I suppose there is nothing new under the sun.....
Art Bell and the Coast-to-Coast crew would have loved it!
Nobody has claimed CT’s to be a particularly modern invention?
Indeed, anti-Semitic CT’s are very, very old, long predating 1903’s “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”
Bakunin may well be the point of origin for a lot modern conspiracy theories, especially the ones that revolve around a secret cabal controlling the world. I just thought the quotes were a nice find for a historical context. It has to be said that dark imaginings about jews is more or less a standard conspiracy theory for Christians going back a millennia or more. Google the Blood Libels of medieval europe. Rothschilde of course is still to the day a name frequently pulled out in modern conspiracy theories. Nothing new under the Sun, I suppose.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Anyway to go back to my favourite hobby horse. Conspiracy theorists are in no way intellectually inferior to circlejerk internet normies. Everything that everyone believes is false, but at least the conspiracy theorists are daring enough to defy the narratives of authority and are creative enough to entertain unconventional narratives. Moreover much of what they pull into their narratives comes from sources that any internet normie would regard as an authority anyway. What normie would say the Jerusalem Post was a fringe rag? Is it not at least as respectable as the BBC or CNN (snigger)?
Wouldn't an retired Israeli General and professor count as an authority figure for normies as well as conspiracy believers? So what would a normie make of an article in the Jersalem Post claiming that an Israeli General has revealed that a "Galactic Federation" has been in contact with humanity for ages but it was all hushed up because the aliens thought all the normies would freak out (they probably would too in fairness). A story which happens to align 100% with the Men in Black covered up alien contact conspiracy theory that has been around since at least Roswell.
Now it may be fair to say that taking this story as read is not safe (because even respectable authorities goof up) but it is hardly makes someone who does a literal crazy person or a moron. And a normie who just blanks it out because he can't process it is not the superior intellect he thinks he is.
If you believe everything is false..... then anything can be true. If you believe nothing, you can believe anything.
That is part of the problem on why Conspiracy Theory's multiply. There is a shocking number of people in the world who are Nihilists that believe in Nothing.
Also, a interesting one I ran across today was called Project: Bright Beam. Basically, NASA was using some New Age religion via technology to trigger the Second Coming. I had not heard of this one before either..... but I ran across it in the wild related to the Utah Monolith.
Easy E wrote: If you believe everything is false..... then anything can be true. If you believe nothing, you can believe anything.
That is part of the problem on why Conspiracy Theory's multiply. There is a shocking number of people in the world who are Nihilists that believe in Nothing.
Also, a interesting one I ran across today was called Project: Bright Beam. Basically, NASA was using some New Age religion via technology to trigger the Second Coming. I had not heard of this one before either..... but I ran across it in the wild related to the Utah Monolith.
I think I heard of that one, or something like that, but instead of triggering the second coming, it's to fool the world into thinking there's a second coming, by projecting deities on the skies across the globe into thinking all the gods have merged into one so everyone will conform to a single, world-wide government a.k.a. the NWO. It's more like a Ragnork scenario really, as it is speculated Storri wrote Ragnork specifically to link the Old Norse faith to Christianity for a Christianized Scandinavia, by killing off all but a few Norse gods with the suggestion they are servants to the God with a captial G.
Nevermind there are relgion where there isn't a second coming equivalent. Nevermind even if all world relgions merged there's going to be massive theological conflicts in the new faith. etc.
And I don't believe it's the Nihilists that believe in nothing are conspiracy theorists. Take QAnon-ism for example, the vocal majority in the U.S.A. anyway appears largely to be christian fundamentalists. These people want to react to changes in a fast-changing globalizing world by fanatically supporting a man actively opposed to globalization, who vowed to bring jobs back to the U.S., by restoring U.S. presence in the world, by making her great again. None of those things, by themselves, are bad; it's what they perceive the greatness to be like: no gays, no socialists, no healthcare, possibly not even jews. And that's why it's spreading, because the fear of globlization is also global.
It would be interesting to look at a group like the Mahdi in the Sudan, the Chinese Boxers, and other similar militant "conservative" groups and see what beliefs and belief structures they shared and how much "Globalization" impacted their rise?
That’s sounding more like a spin-off thread to be honest.
Wariness of globalisation is ultimately understandable - especially in areas where industry has been moved overseas.
But it’s also an inherently political topic, as none of it happened in a vacuum, and I fear a lot of finger pointing and squabbling over who did (or didn’t do) what and when and so on and so forth.
Conspiracy Theories get a bit more leeway there. As sure, Qanon is solidly pro-Trump, but we can still pick out their actual claims whilst not criticising their choice in political leanings.
I again urge people posting to be very careful when contributing for that very reason. So far we again all appear to be on the right side of “don’t get political”, but it’s always worth reminding folk
To be frank I believe its all nonsense. There are no "people in charge" at some sort of global coherent scale in the form of the "illuminati". Its giving people too much credit.
I believe this nonsense is peddled so that the people in charge of stuff, who are terrified of no longer being in charge, make them seem way more in charge and powerful than they actually are.
They might huge number of digital 0s of wealth and position. But all of that is pretty meaningless if society breaks down and it goes to every man for himself in large scale anarchy. French revolution showed us that it just didint matter who you or what you own when the chips went down.
Like if society is coming crashing down and money no longer matters, what's the leverage you have on making people do what you want them to do and protect you? When a mob of random angry, hungry desperate dregs of society descend on your land and decide they want your mansion are you going to offer them money to go away? Assume your private army is no longer getting paid because money doesnt matter would they not simply leave to go be with their families ?
All people who have stuff are afraid to loose said stuff.. I think its all a bunch of opportunists terrified of their countries respective "the people" realising they are just people who got to be in charge by chance. So it's in their benefit to be held up as some sort of "elite cabal of rich people" that will come get you and know what's going on and pull string. Where in reality they are just along for a ride trying to eat as much pie as possible before they are exposed...
Humans can be vicious creatures. I like to think the world is one coin toss away from devolving into madness at any stage. The current pandemic exposed us to some nasty things. Mainly that the people in charge don't really know what they are doing and they are making stuff up as they go along.
