Conspiracy Theories a Sign of Sane Thinking Study Shows

[norton ash]

Virus that 'makes humans more stupid' discovered

Obviously, those hungry, stupid, poor people will swallow anything to survive.

It's an old shape-shifting virus called 'language.'

[minime]

But seriously...

Say the right word just the right way and those viruses will head for the nearest herd of swine.

[MacCruiskeen]

In the olden days, or so I'm told, some oldskool people used to do totally dumbass things like stealing food -- even though they knew they could lose an eye or a hand or their LIFE for it! And yet they still stole!! Stuff as cheap as food!!! Or they like poached and stuff!!!! WTF???

What could possibly explain such deficiency in basic life-skills? Didn't they understand that actions have consquences? They must have been genetically deficient.]

Or desperate. Smart people do stupid stuff too.

Not OT: When did it become usual for grown-ups to talk and think like seven-year-olds? It's been unignorable at least since 9/11 and it's become an absolute plague since the launching of Obama. Cool dude. Smart people. Dumb stuff. Bad guys. Bad guys. Bad guys. (They suck.)


Please all stand for the national anthem.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

Not OT: When did it become usual for grown-ups to talk and think like seven-year-olds? It's been unignorable at least since 9/11 and it's become an absolute plague since the launching of Obama. Cool dude. Smart people. Dumb stuff. Bad guys. Bad guys. Bad guys. (They suck.)


Please all stand for the national anthem.

Not OT at all! From my perspective, this wades into the realm of the prevalence and popularity of social media. Twitterverse is probably the most appropriate name for our reductio ad absurdum immature culture, i.e. the realm of twits! But that's not to say that Facebook and Twitter and all the rest are incapable of containing pockets of intelligence (am I reopening a can of worms using that word?) where genuine inquiry can preside. So while I think social media has been one of the largest contributors to the type of immature talking and thinking you illustrate, there are particular pools of deep state probing there.

Which pools do the NSA wade in? Something tells me it's not the pools where people 'like' Milkybar to their heart's content. But who knows whether my thinking is sane or not.

[DrEvil]

^^Seems to me language has been going downhill since the internet came along.
It's more convenient to write "stupid people" than "people with diminished cognitive abilities".

Edit: beaten by srb

Extra edit: One more thing. Before the internet came along the written word was more formal, now a large chunk of it consists of what would previously be said face to face.

[MacCruiskeen]

Making the people stupid is part of the same ongoing project as making them frightened of the wrong things and compliant in their own dispossession. These goals are congruent, and are achieved in the same way(s) and using the same tools, still primarily TV.

[MacCruiskeen]

As Russell Brand said, a few months back: "They don't want you talking about fracking, they want you talking about twerking." Twerking was so last summer? Right, that's the very point.

[Searcher08]

As Russell Brand said, a few months back: "They don't want you talking about fracking, they want you talking about twerking." Twerking was so last summer? Right, that's the very point.

And there has been an interesting reaction to Brand's in yer face approach,which is the Blur 'Parklife' meme, which is fascinating in itself - seeking to attach a semantic grenade to whatever he says on the web - yet this too has backfired because Brand is now recording a single with former Blur 'rivals' Oasis...
'Roll with it'

[stillrobertpaulsen]

Making the people stupid is part of the same ongoing project as making them frightened of the wrong things and compliant in their own dispossession. These goals are congruent, and are achieved in the same way(s) and using the same tools, still primarily TV.

Absolutely. George Carlin nailed it down about nine or ten years ago with this bit:

"There's a reason education sucks and it's the same reason it will never, ever, ever be fixed. It's never going to get any better, don't look for it, be happy with what you got. Because the owners of this country don't want that.

I'm talking about the real owners now. The big, wealthy...The real owners, the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets, and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They've got you by the balls! They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying – lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else.

But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that! That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. That's right! You know something? They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don't want that! You know what they want? They want Obedient Workers – Obedient Workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they're coming for your Social Security money. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all from you, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It's a big club - and you ain't in it! You and I are not in the big club.

By the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long and they tell you what to believe...All day long, beating you over the head in the media, what to believe, what to think and what to buy...The table is tilted, folks! The game is rigged! And nobody seems to notice, and nobody seems to care! Good honest, hard-working people! White collar, blue collar... Doesn't matter what color shirt you have on! Good honest, hard-working people continue...These are people of modest means!...continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don't give a fuck about them! They don't give a fuck about you! They don't give a fuck about you! They don't care about you! At all! At all! At all! Yeah! You know? And nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care. That's what the owners count on. The fact that Americans probably will remain willfully ignorant of the big red white and blue dick that's being jammed up their assholes every day! Because the owners of this country know the truth - it's called the American Dream: because you have to be asleep to believe it."

[stillrobertpaulsen]

Here's some more words of wisdom from George Carlin that I think might be pertinent to this thread topic:

"The limits of debate in this country are established before the debate even begins.

And everyone else is marginalized and made to seem either to be communists, or some sort of a disloyal person; or 'kook' - there's a word - and now its 'conspiracy', see.

They've made that something that should not be even entertained for a minute! That powerful people might get together and have a plan! 'Doesn't happen! You're a kook! You're a conspiracy buff'!"

[stillrobertpaulsen]

Is there a collection of most effective responses to conspiracy theorist accusations, dismissals or attacks on this board?

One of my favorites is to ask the person to define what precisely they mean by the phrase "Conspiracy Theorist." Ask for a clear definition. That will usually stop it there.

Another favorite is something Mr. Wells said somewhere on here, if I remember correctly: "Conspiracy is the hypothesis. The theory is the deep state." This will also generally stop things, as most people couldn't correctly define the scientific method if their life depended on it, nor do they generally want to hear about the 'deep state.'

If someone cares to engage after that, they generally seem to me to have more of an open mind.

I was searching for the exact Jeff Wells quote and I believe I found it: "conspiracy is a hypothesis, doc; deep politics is the theory". This whole essay does a wonderful job illustrating how we are the real skeptics, it is the debunkers who are operating on the circular logic of a closed mind.

Sunday, July 17, 2005

The Disease of Conceit


Ain't nothing too discreet / About the disease of conceit - Bob Dylan

Language, being the virus that it is, often makes me sick. These days, not so much from the perpetual misdiagnosis of "conspiracy theory" (conspiracy is a hypothesis, doc; deep politics is the theory), as at the gatekeeping virologists' nerve to call what they do "skepticism."

The Skeptics Society, which claims ownership of the term, defines it as "the application of reason to any and all ideas.... When we say we are 'skeptical,' we mean that we must see compelling evidence before we believe."

Right there we can see the argumentative circularity, and the richness and the weirdness of life that must forever lie beyond the pale for such people. "Show me," they say. Yet evidence compelling to them must necessarily conform to "reason" (in other words, to a trumped-up rationality with control issues), and so all evidence that transgresses reason (or more accurately, puts rationality in its place) is invalidated. In this manner, the paranormal and much of what we call the parapolitical can never be proven to such people. "Show me," they say, and yet these same people are more likely than not to accept official narratives of controversial history without having been shown anything. Rather, it's us, the "conspiracy theorists," who are saying "show me," and meaning it. We're the ones withholding judgement. We're the true skeptics, and I want us to stake a claim on the word.

The society adds that "modern skepticism is embodied in the scientific method, that involves gathering data to formulate and test naturalistic explanations for natural phenomena."

Here the problem narrows, and sharpens, to the reduction of skepticism to scientific method. But much of our experience of the world, even of the "natural" world, cannot be subjected to a scientific method and still retain its meaning for us.

Just last week, scientist Richard Dawkins opened a conference with the caution that the Universe is to weird to understand, and that there is a "narrow range of reality that we judge to be normal." Scientific method is moving uncomfortably beyond the "skeptic," who seems a hide-bound Newtonian from the perspective of our quantum politics.

Have you ever browsed the Skeptic's Dictionary? A word that comes to mind to describe the intellects at play there is credulous. Virtually all that is offered is assurance to those who don't want such things to be true that they needn't worry, and need inquire no further.

For instance, the complete entry for "Xenoglossy" is the "alleged speaking or writing in a language entirely unknown to the speaker. The probability of this happening is about zero." Well, he said, brushing off his hands, that takes care of that.

Under "Mind control," we read that:

...a common complaint from the mind-controlled is that they can't get therapists to take them seriously. That is, they say they can only find therapists who want to treat them for their delusions, not help them prove they're being controlled by their government. Thus, it is not likely that the 'mind-controlled CIA zombies' will be accused of having delusions planted in them by therapists, as alien abductees have, since they claim they cannot get therapists to take their delusions seriously.

Either the author did not respect the subject enough to seriously research it, or he did and hopes the reader won't, because it's an absolute fabrication.

I'll let just one example stand for many. (And let's note this: these kind of skeptics must paint with the broadest of brushes, because if only one contrary fact is admitted, everything crumbles.) Dr Valerie Wolf, testifying before the Presidential Commission on Radiation Experiments in 1995, said that:

...in preparation for my testimony at these hearings, I called nearly 40 therapists across the country to find out what they knew about the link between radiation and mind control and to get what other therapists were seeing in clients who had been used in mind control experiments.... Generally, it appears that therapists across the country are finding clients who have been subjected to mind control techniques. The consistency of their stories about the purpose of the mind control and torture techniques such as electric shock, use of hallucinogens, sensory deprivation, spinning, hypnosis, dislocation of limbs and sexual abuse is remarkable. There is almost nothing published on this aspect of mind control used with children and these clients come from all over the country, having had no contact with each other.

In its debunking of "alien abductions," the dictionary never strays from the ET hypothesis, arguing against the probability of travelling interplanetary distances without raising the theoretical likelihood of parallel worlds.

Regarding the late Harvard psychiatrist, Dr John Mack, who took seriously the abduction phenomenon, the dictionary sneers:

...until the good doctor or one of his patients produces physical evidence that abductions have occurred, it seems ore reasonable to believe that he and his patients are deluded or frauds. Of course, the good doctor can hide behind academic freedom and the doctor/patient privacy privilege. He can make all the claims he wants and refuse to back any of them up on the grounds that to do so would be to violate his patients' rights. He can then publish his stories and dare anyone to take away his academic freedom. He is in the position any con person would envy: he can lie without fear of being caught.

Again, the broadest brush is employed - the "good doctor" is a con man - because if they are wrong once, their world slips away.

And there is ample physical evidence for both UFOs and abductions. Another solitary example to stand for many: The case of "Dr X," the French health professional Jacques Vallee introduced to us in Confrontations. When attending to his crying toddler early morning November 2, 1968, he noticed a light outside the child's window. He didn't pay it much attention until his son was asleep again, and then he stepped out on the balcony and observed two large disks moving slowly over neighbouring homes. The objects merged, and a white beam was directed toward the ground below. "Finally the disk made a movement that brought it to a vertical position, and the white beam caught the doctor squarely on the balcony. He heard a bang and the object vanished, leaving only a whitish form like cotton candy."

Afterwards he experienced abdominal pain, and a red, equalateral triangle with sides of six inches in length appeared around his navel. His doctor believed it to be a psychosomatic reaction to his "dream" of an object which was somehow associated with a triangle. "But when the same shape appeared on the abdomen of the child, and when the same phenomena recurred in successive years, the psychosomatic explanation had to be discounted." (A thermographic examination in 1984 found "intense cutaneous erythema of triangular shape, centered over the umbilicus; absence of visible superficial vessel.... resistant to cooling.")

The encounter also accompanied spontaneous healing of a permanent disability on the right side of his body he had incurred ten years before from a mine explosion while in the French army. And this just scratches the weirdness, as Dr X and his wife were subsequently "plagued by poltergeist activity" and by visitations "so fantastic as to stretch credulity, yet they appear to be verifiable by other family members." But let's not invite the rolled eyes of the "skeptic" with such episodes. But it's too late for that. Even the medical records of Dr X and his son are inadmissable as evidence because they do not conform to "reason," and so will not be seriously considered.

Cocksureity seems the hallmark contradiction of such skeptics. Stage magician Penn Jillette is such a one. He says that people should "learn to carry their intelligence the way James Dean carried his cigarette." In other words, as an affectation.

Jillette could have said the way Peabody carried his bowtie, but it wouldn't have been as cool.

So if we're the real skeptics what do we call the affectatious assholes sucking up for the system? I call them septics.

[semper occultus]

Does Self-Love or Self-Hate Predict Conspiracy Beliefs? Narcissism, Self-Esteem, and the Endorsement of Conspiracy Theories

http://spp.sagepub.com/content/7/2/157.abstract

Aleksandra Cichocka1⇑
Marta Marchlewska2
Agnieszka Golec de Zavala3,4,5
1School of Psychology, University of Kent, Canterbury, United Kingdom
2Institute for Social Studies, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland
3Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, London, United Kingdom
4Department of Psychology, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Poznań, Poland
5Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL)/CIS-IUL, Lisbon, Portugal
Aleksandra Cichocka, School of Psychology, Keynes College, University of Kent, Canterbury CT2 7NZ, UK. Email: a.k.cichocka@kent.ac.uk
Abstract

Across three studies, we examined the role of self-evaluation in predicting conspiracy beliefs. Previous research linked the endorsement of conspiracy theories to low self-esteem. We propose that conspiracy theories should rather be appealing to individuals with exaggerated feelings of self-love, such as narcissists, due to their paranoid tendencies.

In Study 1, general conspiracist beliefs were predicted by high individual narcissism but low self-esteem.

Study 2 demonstrated that these effects were differentially mediated by paranoid thoughts, and independent of the effects of collective narcissism. Individual narcissism predicted generalized conspiracist beliefs, regardless of the conspiracy theories implicating in-group or out-group members, while collective narcissism predicted belief in out-group but not in-group conspiracies.

Study 3 replicated the effects of individual narcissism and self-esteem on the endorsement of various specific conspiracy theories and demonstrated that the negative effect of self-esteem was largely accounted for by the general negativity toward humans associated with low self-esteem.

[norton ash]

What the hell else could any sane person think these days? 50 magicians on the stage are doing something with the other hand... in the midst of a live sex show... next to a lion vs bear cage match... while pickpockets roam the aisles of the theatre... a cloud of fentanyl gas is descending... and a big cop has his arm clamped around your shoulder and he's telling you with bad whisky breath what really pisses him off. And now I smell smoke.