rigorousintuition.ca

On Edit: Rephrased the question & thread-title v. slightly. (Last time I'll do so.)

Jeff, drew, Mods: Could we please have a sticky at the top of General Discussion, headed (something like) "The term 'Conspiracy Theory' in the Media"? As a container. As a single, front-page Data Dump, just for this stuff. (Where comments would of course also be permissible and welcome.)

See this thread as just the most recent of innumerable examples of why I ask. And I want to emphasise really strongly that this is not any kind of criticism or put-down of the poster who started that thread (whom I like and respect), nor of anyone who contributed to it. In fact I was just about to post that very article myself - as a new thread! - because there is as yet no sticky, no container, And, as coffin-dodger said, these articles cannot just be completely ignored, (Can they?)

Thanks. And please let's leave the poll up for, say, one week, and then respect & go with the results of that poll, whatever they turn out to be. Direct democracy.

sounds good to me

Btw, when I was posting the poll i gave pollers the option of changing their vote. (I hope that's visible on everyone's computer.) It would be worth debating the pros & cons of the 'sticky' idea here while that poll's still up.

I voted Yes, obviously. I guess I'm about 90% convinced it's a good idea. But I can also see how it might annoy anyone (e.g.,me, imaginably) who thought some particular new example was worth the board's particularly urgent attention.

There's no hurry for anyone to vote.

Since this burning topic has seen posts in several threads yet bumping them individually in response will, inequitably, only contribute to the digital chagrin, allow me the briefest of moments here.

JackRiddler » Sun Oct 27, 2013 7:09 am wrote:It's important to get past celebrity worship, I'd say. Chomsky's 9/11 opinion is not of special interest, especially given how evidently ill-informed it is. Why does this guy bother to pester him about demolitions in particular (as if he had special authority), why is it an article from some moron named Eugene, why does it get reposted here as if it matters, etc. etc.

Disagree that his take is not of interest and substantive, and I don't feel that an explicated defense thereof is necessary. Disagree strongly that it's celebrity worship and I consider the accusation disingenuous. I found Chomsky's response thought-provoking, if wrongheaded, and I appreciated the discussion that was generated here. Puzzled by the absence of similarly strident condemnations of the various Russell Brand threads, however.

Regarding the copypasta of titles, and article's authors. Framing is powerful stuff, certainly, and of course that's precisely why its examination is such a key part of the milieu here, as I hardly need point out. Are we researching deadly pathogens or playing children's games? As pathologists we'd do well to build up a little immunity to our subject. And come on, thoughtful OPs sink here all the time. Provocational titles gain responses, some of which are even interesting. The same goes for pithy, if pissy, blog pieces which succinctly present their take.

On the subject of stickies. I hate 'em. I hate going to a forum and seeing all the stale stickies that no one reads, that haven't been responded to in years, and which occlude the threads actually seeing discussion. Nothing wrong with a normal thread for the purpose of aggregation, however. Call it the "reposted here as if it matters" thread.

Joao wrote:Puzzled by the absence of similarly strident condemnations of the various Russell Brand threads, however

There is only one (in figures:1) "Russell Brand thread". I went into pedantic detail explaining precisely that at the top of page 1 in the new thread I started: "The Revolution-Now Thread (Russell B. & others)".- the second thread-title in RI history that even refers to him at all.

You might as well complain that there are umpteen "Peter Dale Scott threads" or "NYT threads" or "corporate kleptocracy threads" because they get referred to and talked about in umpteen different threads. That is not the point. The point is to prevent exactly the same points having to be made & rehashed again and again and again and again and again and again and again.

Analogy: It's as if we had about six threads a month with titles like these:

Wet Droplets Falling From Sky 'Not Rain' Says Expert

Aaronovitch: Why Do People Believe in Rain?

Guardian Claims Weather Is Always Sunny

New Study Investigates Rain Paranoia

Blair Condemns 'Rain' Talk as 'Irresponsible'

Farmer Claims 'Field Got Wet'

Randi: The [B]Rain Drain!

etc.

- Or, even worse. you get thread titles that give no source or author and just state things baldly as if they were the poster's own honest conviction:

The weather is always sunny

Why this 'rain' babble is so annoying

Scientists prove rain does not exist

etc.

I take your points, at least the ones that were made before you edited. (I edit a lot, too.) We're arguing to subtly different ends, of course, since I'm put in the position of defending my single Chomsky post, while the accusation is of engendering herd-behavior and contributing to rehashery. By defending my post I'm seen a proponent for collective fatuousness. Framing, indeed, but I think I've said my piece.

As an academic point of order, however, Brand was mentioned specifically in response to the accusation of celebrity worship and there have been two threads recently appearing at the top of GD:

• The Revolution-Now Thread (Russell B. & others).
• Comedian Actor Russel Brand dismantles MSNBC show

Joao wrote:As an academic point of order, however:

* The Revolution-Now Thread (Russell B. & others).
* Comedian Actor Russel Brand dismantles MSNBC show

At the risk of sounding pedantic: Did you even read my post? - On Edit: So you've just read this post, gone back and edited your own, not bothered to reply to me - and (correct me if I'm wrong about this) slyly cast a No vote.

That's not cricket, sir, that's not cricket.

lol we're both furious editors and I doubt there's much else to that story. I take your point on Brand threads to be that accusations of celebrity worship are cheap and unwarranted. We are in agreement.

To the overall topic, OK so there's too many Mainstream Conspiracy Hatred threads. I don't agree with every detail raised and feel the point could have been made more artfully, but so be it. I'll go pout for a while and shall never post such an OP again, or at least for a week.

I didn't cast a vote; not sure if I'm correcting you or not on that. Let a guy have his protest.

How's the weather in Germany these days? It's starting to get cold and overcast in San Francisco, alas.

The weather is beautiful, my good man. Goldener Oktober. The current Indian Summer is forecast to continue for a few days more. Then it'll be grim until January, when it'll become ferociously cold until April, unless we're really lucky and global temperatures increase by 7°C on average in the meantime. - Wait a minute, news just in:

Berliner Morgenpost: Wissenschaftler beweisen: Der Herbst existiert nicht (Scientists Prove Autumn Does Not Exist)

Süddeutsche Zeitung: Merkel missbilligt 'Laub'-Verschwörungstheorien (Merkel Condemns 'Fallen Leaves' Conspiracy Theories)

ARD Sondersendung, 21 Uhr: Warum glauben soviele Menschen an 'Jahreszeiten'? (ARD Special, 9pm: Why Do So Many People Believe in 'Seasons'?)

- And it's over to our correspondent in Paris: Jacques, bonsoir...

I'm searching for some of the other threads to collate into the most recent, if we collectively decide to go that route.

"In Defense of Conspiracy Theory" might be one.

I voted yes after chewing it over: I think it would be a good collective decision to make, a statement about key Latin theorems like tempus fugit, memento mori, and my personal favorite, nihil novi sub sole.

2 cents: I don't like a bunch of stickies up front. At the same time some consolidation would be very nice. Sometime... a lot of times, scanning the front page here is like scanning a news aggregator.

Maybe not sticky, but this is an obvious example where a single thread would have put all the miscreants in one place without the need to repeat the same deconstruction of the same arguments every time. That's assuming this thread would have also had a title that rendered it recognizable, and didn't succumb to flooding.

Thread consolidation is a form of group memory. That's my favorite thing here, other than the people: threads with a clear subject that run two, three, five, six years and more. They turn encyclopedic, like giant research files or chronicles (e.g. the Egypt thread). Someday some grad student will go into the 130-page OBL death thread (e.g.) and make use of the blow-by-blow coverage it provides of an unfolding event. This would never happen if the same material were spread out among 14 different threads. When a threads becomes relevant again and is revived, the prior research doesn't go lost (and needn't be repeated in less complete fashion).

Of course nothing stops anyone from starting a new thread anyway. You may want to take a new angle, or feel some other urgent need. That's legit. Take it to the market, if you want. At times I've started new threads on running topics for no better reason than that I wanted a more comprehensible thread title. I'm a snob that way. (Well no, it's just I've noticed that the thread title is one of the main factors determining whether a thread will stick around, stick to topic, and grow with the subject.)

So it's not a crime to start a new thread, but it's often a loss to the overall potential (and an invitation to double, triple posts). By which I mean a new thread on e.g. Egypt might run for two weeks, but a year later the monster Egypt thread will be back on top. The two-week thread will be forgotten, but the monster thread will be lacking material from those two weeks.

Finally, I obviously have my opinions on all this but just as clearly, it won't work if it involves a lot of policing or cajoling. That's also a waste of potential. It has to happen organically. So I'm proselytizing, yes, in the hope that more topic discipline follows just because more people become aware of its benefits.

Good points from everyone re: the inherent offensiveness of the sticky.

I don't share your strong feelings, but I respect 'em!