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I'm trying to cure my father of bone-headed thinking.
I'm
hoping that by sending him the most hair-brained
conservative conspiracy site that even he will start
to see
the nonsense that it is.
Send me your worst. Beyond infowars. Beyond
Breitbart.
Maybe if QAnon has an emailer list, that
would be
perfect...
Deus Ex (videogame) conspiracy theory highlight reel
https://www.youtube...watch?v=C8kZ3HfeqtA
From the year 2000 [sninctown, Jan 13 2020]
The New Order of Barbarians (pdf) conspiracy theory
http://uscl.info/ed...id=89&action=inline
"Everything is in place and nobody can stop us now..." [sninctown, Jan 13 2020]
The Unabomber Manifesto (pdf) conspiracy theory
http://editions-hac.../pdf/kaczynski2.pdf
"The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race..." [sninctown, Jan 13 2020]
r/The_Donald
https://www.reddit....top/?sort=top&t=all
Online forum that's a never-ending political rally for the Stable Genius [sninctown, Jan 13 2020]
Philosophers
https://www.youtube...watch?v=wf91tX7G7I8
[theircompetitor, Jan 18 2020]
The Authoritarian Personality
https://www.researc...itarian_Personality
A good idea at the time, by Adorno and friends [pertinax, Jan 19 2020]
Negative Dialectic
https://www.researc...thodological_Status
Adorno's again, understandable in context, but regrettable in its effects [pertinax, Jan 19 2020]
Construction of the Aesthetic
https://www.google....QwrLqsVIy8PdcBc1XMP
Adorno on Kierkegaard [pertinax, Jan 19 2020]
Either / Or
https://archive.org...2015.504967/page/n5
Kierkegaard vs Kierkegaard [pertinax, Jan 19 2020]
Negative Dialectic - again
https://libcom.org/...tics-theodor-adorno
I just realised the previous link was to a paper *about* Adorno's Negative Dialectic. This is [a translation of] the original [pertinax, Jan 20 2020]
The Internet of Beefs
https://www.ribbonf...-internet-of-beefs/
[theircompetitor, Jan 20 2020]
/r/flatearther - the flat Earth debate subreddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/flatearther
Mentioned in my anno. Unlike other flat Earth subreddits, nobody gets banned from this one for arguing in favor of a round Earth. [notexactly, Jan 20 2020]
A real one?
https://en.wikipedi...ly_(weapons_expert)
It's unnerving if facts don't sit right. [wjt, Jan 21 2020]
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I'll help you out but I think you'd have better luck posting
this in the comments section of one of those sites you
mentioned. Tell them that you think they have some good
ideas but their content is "too
moderate" and you want a website where people talk about
what's really going on. |
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// Find me the most egregiously moronic conservative trash site.. // |
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"Bring me the head of Andrew Lloyd Webber... " |
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Conspiracy ? But [Ray], don't you realze that it's all true... ? |
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You're attempting to use thinking and logic to solve a problem that was developed without using those tools. |
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Somebody said words to the effect that "you can't reason somebody out of a position that they didn't use reason to get into" |
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Would one that says Bush went to Iraq to take their oil
qualify? Or something closer in time, like promoting the
Steele dossier? |
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In the end it all comes down to one thing -- it is
extremely inconvenient that people that don't hold your
opinion, or (if you like) are completely wrong about
everything, get to vote. |
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Stephenson's latest book, Dodge, proposes some sort of
seminal event after which any media that does not have a
corresponding group trust rating would be considered
deep fake. |
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But there's no magical way to cure magical thinking. It's
just a flaw in the brain's algorithm, cannot be fixed. |
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Good luck with that -- you probably have as much chance as the world
has to explain to millenials that socialism doesn't work, and they've seen it fail multiple
times in their lifetime. |
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//I'm hoping that by sending him the most hair-brained conservative conspiracy site that even he will start to see the nonsense that it is.// - so you want to send him to websites that will make the websites that he's currently looking at appear rational and moderate? I'm not sure that's exactly the outcome you're after. |
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The Whitehouse must have its own site. I'd start with that one. |
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Ah yes, good old Mary ... always good for a bit of the ol' uninformed bigotry and prejudice... |
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But I thought she was dead? please tell me they didn't keep
her brain in a jar! |
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There is considerable doubt if she was ever in any meaningful sense alive; if she was, it was an exceptionally bleak and joyless existance. |
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It's very like chemical weapons; the toxic residues can linger for years... |
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It might be worth asking [2fries] what it was that led him to
so perceptively reject conspiracy theories. |
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Probably the lack of evidence; it's just as if someone has come along and painstakingly erased all the traces... |
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// It's just a flaw in the brain's algorithm, cannot be fixed. // |
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Join us and find out just how wrong that is. |
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// explain to millenials that socialism doesn't work, and they've seen it fail multiple times in their lifetime. // |
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That's a sad consequence of "optimism" - a mistaken belief that things can be better. It's a fault of a flawed educational system that is consistently failing to hammer kids into cynical, bitter, distrustful emotional cripples by their mid teens. Never mind- they soon get trimmed into shape on the Lathe of Heaven. |
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We blame that on the shortage of truly sociopathic geography teachers. All the old skills are being lost... |
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-All possibilities exist until disproven.
-Keep whatever works. |
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Now hand me that roll of tape would you, all these Epstein didn't kill himself posters aren't going to hang themselves you know... |
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yeah, who knew the prison video system would be using
snapchat? |
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You mean apart from the Illuminati, the Masons, Majestic-7, the National Enquirer and the Lizard People...? |
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My dad is one of those rare birds who is quite logical
in most things except when it comes to politics and
religion. He knows we landed on the moon as he
lived through it. He trusts basic physics. He just
doesn't buy some bits of science, like the bit about
evolution and such. He's demonstrably malleable if
you know what buttons to push, which I do. He is
still quite capable of being shamed into rationality.
So, I get
him hooked, point out the obvious flaws, and he
recognizes that an error in judgment has occurred.
What could possibly go wrong... |
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//What could possibly go wrong...?// |
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He finds a logical way to explain those flaws ... then, knowing
which buttons to push on you ... turns it around & converts
you ... you spend the next 40 years of your life waiting for the
spaceship to take you away & trying to join the illuminati. |
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// you spend the next 40 years of your life waiting for the spaceship to take you away // |
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No need to wait. We can beam you up right now. |
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// & trying to join the illuminati. // |
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You don't have to try. They find you. |
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// He knows we landed on the moon as he lived through it. // |
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Respect ... that narrows his identity down a bot though. Did he actually land, or stay in the command module ? |
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He knows he can't convert me and he has no idea
that my buttons have been relocated and replaced
with Otis 'Door Close' ones. He doesn't even try,
relegating me to a lost cause who will not listen to
Limbaugh no matter what. |
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When I reminded him that Glen Beck was a Mormon,
that was enough to sour him on that particular
knuckle-dragger, to the relief of much of the family. |
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As far as the moon landing, he was in an
observation deck in a lounge chair showing up on
NASA's radar as a casual asteroid of course. |
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Yeah, right... that's just what *They* want you to believe. |
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That's what the pan-dimensional beings want you to
think . |
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Those would be the ones hanging in my kitchen right.. no
wait! they've gone .. hmm ... probably just out on a date with
Layla Moran, I'm sure they'll be back later. |
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// egregiously moronic // |
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// the most hair-brained conservative conspiracy site
// |
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If you are truly serious in your desire to find the
worst politics site on the internet.... I must warn you,
you don't understand what you're asking for. I have
heard of an imageboard which combines the most
extreme far-right conspiracy theories with the most
extreme fandom for the 'my little pony' children's
cartoon...which is very not safe for work or for
anyone. As Lovecraft said, "The most merciful thing
in the world is the inability of the human mind to
correlate its contents", so I cannot tell you more. The
Internet is meant for human betterment, not to
expose oneself to the mad dreams of demon-
haunted men. Please, reconsider your quest and
seek common ground with your dear father. |
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//all these Epstein didn't kill himself posters aren't going to hang
themselves you know...// |
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No no no. Not the most unattractive. Think target
audience, people. Social conservative, religious,
Facebook-gullible, but supportive of vaccines, space
science, and such. |
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If you chuck people in at the deep end, they either monkey their way out, swim, get saved or drown. That Welsh guy, Kelly, drowned. The Sun should never be a select group. |
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Qanon is too tame for voat.co |
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//
Somebody said words to the effect that "you can't reason
somebody out of a position that they didn't use reason to get
into"
// |
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Probably someone who hadn't read Kierkegaard. |
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That's a very large cohort, [pert]. |
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Considering the population: |
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Number of people in the general population who have heard of Kierkegaard: not many - perhaps 10%
Number of people who have not only heard of Kierkegaard, but actually read his work: very few; maybe 5% of the above, so 0.5%
Number of people who have heard of Kierkegaard, read his work, and understood its meaning: a very small number; 0.1% of the total population
Number of people who have heard of Kierkegaard, read his work, understood its meaning, and are capable of explaining it to someone who has no prior understanding of philosophy and metaphysics: 0.01% of the population.
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<Notes that this is reading more and more like a rather depressing version of the Drake equation/> |
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Going back to your point, it's probably a reasonable approximation that over 99% of the general population haven't read Kierkegaard. |
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Give it up, [pert]; there's no hope. Outside the sanctified boundaries of the hb, you're a tiny voice crying in the wilderness, and soon (on a galactic timescale) you will die, a mere meaningless quantum blip in the infinite history of a gigantic, cold, indifferent universe, a little fragile bag of thinking chemicals held up by a tiny accumulation of brittle calcium salts. |
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So the odds are stacked in my favour; what was your point? |
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Presumably Kierkegaard is / was some kind of philosopher? I don't believe in philosophy so I've never read any of his / her (assume its a him as most of these philosopher types seem to be) stuff. |
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So explain to me what is special about Kierkegaard. |
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// I don't believe in philosophy // |
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You can't prove that, you know. |
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//you're a tiny voice crying in the wilderness, and soon (on a galactic timescale) you will die, a mere meaningless quantum blip in the infinite history of a gigantic, cold, indifferent universe, a little fragile bag of thinking chemicals held up by a tiny accumulation of brittle calcium salts.// |
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I think you just channeled my grade seven guidance councilor. |
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//You can't prove that, you know.// If I know, why do I need to prove? |
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Accumulation of observational evidence is not proof. |
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// you just channeled my grade seven guidance councilor. // |
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Yes, that was us. And yet you're still alive... |
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Then again, we have improved our techniques for inculcating hopelessness and despair into humans since then, mainly through a device called a "Revised rail service timetable". By the time any sort of train actually shows up, the potential passengers are ready to throw themselves under it... |
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So I looked up Kierkegaard and I'm not impressed. It seems to me he impresses people who confuse brash confidence and using too many words with wisdom. |
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1 Kierkegaard impresses people who confuse brash confidence and using too many words with wisdom. |
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2. [pertinax] has read and is impressed by and/or respects Kierkegaard. |
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[pertinax] confuses brash confidence and using too many words with wisdom. |
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What's so special about Kierkegaard is that he really annoyed
Adorno. What's so special about Adorno is that he's the reason
we have Godwin's Law. Does that point you in the right
direction? |
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Yes, but to be fair he was pretty mean to Donatello and
Leonardo. |
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Must be why they threw him out of the Teenage Ninja Turtles
before they became famous. |
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I could post links to, maybe, four documents which form a
breadcrumb trail from Kierkegaard, by way of Adorno, to bone-
headed conservative conspiracy theories, and thence to the topic of
the idea. However, they do have quite a lot of words in them, and
some of those words are hard to make sense of unless you've read
quite a lot of other words first. Is anyone interested? |
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Yes, interested... but scared to be at the same time. |
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Right, first link. "The Authoritarian Personality" was the report of
a research team on their project to discover the cause of
Nazism. This project was an excellent idea at the time but, in
the implementation, it all went horribly wrong. Its outcome was
to stigmatize, by association with Nazism, enormous numbers
of people who were in fact innocent of any involvement in it or
inclination towards it. Furthermore, it dehumanised those
people by declaring, among other things, that they were
incapable of "genuine experience" and of thinking for
themselves. N.B., there was no evidence to back these
declarations. |
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The effect of this report (and some other, similar books and
papers published around the same time) was to lead many
people in the postwar generation to consciously exclude from
political and cultural conversation people of the types
stigmatized in the report. This in turn contributed to feelings of
paranoia experienced by those people, which made them more
open to conservative conspiracy theories. That's a link between
conservative conspiracy theories and Adorno. It's a slightly
simplistic link because, although Adorno's name is on the cover,
he is probably less responsible than his colleagues for the
intellectual and ethical train-wreck which makes up the bulk of
the report, but never mind that for now. |
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[gone to look for next link - BRB] |
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Next link: "Negative Dialectic" was the work in which Adorno
decided that, instead of just being an exceptionally nasty
instance of evil, the holocaust should be regarded as, in effect,
the sole fixed definition of evil. (To find the passage in question,
search for "new categorical imperative"). With hindsight, we can
see how this takes us by a direct path to the stultifying world of
Godwin's Law. |
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Note the synergy with Authoritarian Personality, whereby we are
supposed to determine which side of any given debate Hitler
would be on merely by seeing which side those pseudo-
scientifically stigmatized people are on. This simple, efficient
and wrong method has contributed a lot to the catastrophic
breakdown of trust which, in turn has made it hard to reason in
either direction across the left-right divide, as [Rayford] is trying
to do. |
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[Gone to look for next link - BRB again] |
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Next link: Construction of the Aesthetic. |
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I haven't read this one, so don't spoil the ending for me. |
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However, what I have so far read *about* this book (originally
Adorno's dissertation), and about the longer-term role of
Kierkegaard's thinking in Adorno's life, led me to my earlier
remark that Kierkegaard really annoyed Adorno. That's in the
same way that, for example, Kepler was really annoyed that
planetary orbits were not definable by reference to a sequence
of regular polyhedra - that is, it was the oyster-grit which
provoked a lot of his thinking. |
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You see, whereas Adorno lent his authority to a crassly
simplistic, literally one-dimensional scale on which people could
be graded from good to bad, on a supposedly objective basis,
Kierkegaard insisted on the importance of each person's
subjective ethical choice, which had to be made without the
reassurance that one path was more rational than the other. |
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This is where Kierkegaard goes to great pains to argue both
sides of a case. It's not that he doesn't have a preference, but he
is illustrating the art of reasoning someone out of a position that
they never really reasoned themselves into. It takes a long time
and a lot of words, to say nothing of love and patience, and
there's no guarantee of success, but it can be done. |
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// This simple, efficient and wrong method has contributed a lot to the catastrophic breakdown of trust // |
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However, that doesn't mean that the breakdown of trust, and its corrosive destruction of representative democracy is a bad thing; far from it. |
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Without trust, there is no belief, and therefore no religion. Undermining and eliminating all religion as a social force is essential for progress. In Western societies it is already shrivelling under the onslaught of scientific materialism. |
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Politics as currently constituted cannot function when intellectually rigorous proof is demanded for all assertions. This will be its downfall. |
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As Simon Scharma concicsely characterises the start of the English Civil War in 1642, "there was a breakdown of deference of catastrophic proportions". After the war, the leaders were those who had earned respect by leadership in battle. A similar thing is happening now, on a global basis, although the battlefield is different. |
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This is such a priceless post. Thank you, Rayford, for asking
the question so many of us have asked ourselves, but to
avoid
incredibly long, and apparently useless confrontations
between logic/reality VS some crazy shit, have given up
even
approaching the subject for over 2 years now. |
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Biting your tongue hurts after the first month. My tongue is
almost shredded to bits. |
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This is a great read and should stay here for infinity for the
links alone. "Bullshit Artist". Yup that sums it up nicely. |
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// I don't believe you. // |
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Excellent... our work here is done. |
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// However, they do have quite a lot of words in them, and some of those words are hard to make sense of unless you've read quite a lot of other words first.// |
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He's not kidding folks. Lots of words. No pictures at all...
After wading through that I've come to the conclusion that people from the past were exceptionally long winded. |
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Word of the day: Hermeneutic |
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As the Little, Brown book teaches, omit needless words. |
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//conservative conspiracy theories// |
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You seem to think there are no liberal ones. |
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Conservative ones are the topic of this idea, but no-one has
suggested that there are no liberal ones. |
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A fact conflict that sparks a diverse range of groups in the same way? liberal conspiracies are going to be very rare. |
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// liberal conspiracies are going to be very rare // |
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Nonsense. All brain seek patterns and simple answers. |
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As to facts, the challenge ultimately culminating in the
breakdown of any trust, though we started with "it must
be true, I saw it on the Internet" -- is that we know very
few things as facts, but the volume of information
presented as facts is overwhelming so we MUST take
many things on faith, and thus our logic trees grow more
and more vulnerable. |
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<Points at anno reading "Accumulation of observational evidence is not proof." /> |
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Facts are important, and many of them may be correct*. |
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This highlights the importance of developing critical thinking, and concomitantly penalizing those who do not do so (who thus become easy prey for those who do). |
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When information is unrestricted, and available in vast quantities, many social structures break down under the pressure. Hence the reason religions such as Isal hate and fear the "polluting" influence of satellite TV and the internet. It exposes the individual to the possibility that there is a different world view. Notably, the individual does not need to be directly exposed to said world view; indeed, in some ways it is better if they aren't, as then they are free to imagine a world view without the irritating constraints of actual reality. They can imagine a world as they would like it to be, and if that is different (as it inevitably is) from their current reality then the bells of doom are tolling ... |
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And this is not a prediction; it is a description of what has already happened. The advent of printing using moveable type started the process, and had a devastating effect on early Modern societies. The Internet is the same thing, writ large. Now, a migrant herder in a yurt in the Mongolian desert can sit down in an evening an access a large proportion of the planetary knowledge bank using a terminal charged by solar power. Thy can watch near-real-time video of parrots flying through a jungle, aircraft arriving at major cities, grain being harvested, and more importantly have it explained what these things mean. |
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And they can use AirBnB to offer their yurt to a Mexican coffee grower who wants to try being a nomadic herder for a few weeks ... |
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*technically a true statement even with facts being true by definition |
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// He just doesn't buy some bits of science, like the bit about evolution and such. // |
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I don't think I've used it in real life yet, but here's an argument I prepared several years ago. It seems less well organized once
written out than what I remember, but anyway: |
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0. Evolution has nothing at all to do with any individual organism changing in any way during its own lifespan [neglecting specialized
things like horizontal gene transfer in bacteria]. It is only about changes from one generation to the next. |
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1. There is variation between directly related organisms. This is trivial to observe: children are not usually identical to their parents
or their siblings. |
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2. At least some of this variation is heritable. This is trivial to observe: children usually resemble their parents and siblings. |
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3. Some of this variation influences how well an organism can survive. This is less trivial to observe in a city, but just thinking about
it should suffice: a bird with worse feathers is less likely to survive; a herbivore with more efficient digestion is more likely to survive
(if food is scarce, which it often is). |
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4. Heritable variations, already acknowledged in point 2, can only be passed down to the next generation if the organism that has
them survives long enough to reproduce successfully, and this survival is influenced by those same variations, as already
acknowledged in point 3. This should be obvious. Why don't we see whole families where everyone suffers from cyclopia or
anencephaly? Because babies with those conditions don't survive long enough to reproduce. (Note: Don't look those up unless you're
ready to see some disturbing pictures.) |
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5. Which variations are good for survival and which are bad for it depends on the environment in which an organism lives. This should
also be obvious: swimming fins and buoyancy regulation organs are beneficial to survival in water; insulating fur is beneficial to
survival in cold places; dark skin is beneficial to survival in sunny places while light skin is beneficial to survival in less sunny places. |
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6. What's less obvious is that unnecessary adaptations that aren't directly harmful to survival (such as swim bladders in land animals,
or smart brains in rabbits) are still harmful to survival in that they consume limited resources (nutrition, energy, etc.) that would be
better spent on other things such as heating the body or running fast. |
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7. Combining points 4 to 6, traits that are beneficial to survival are likely to get more common among a population of organisms from
a given starting generation to a given later generation, while traits that are harmful to survival are likely to get less common. This is
known as "natural selection". |
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8. Due to points 5 to 7, and also due to the somewhat random nature of how variations between organisms arise, two isolated
populations of the same species can, over many generations, diverge in their traits to such a degree as to become two distinct
species. This is known as "speciation". |
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Another point in evolution's favor is that we see plenty of evidence that it works with what it has rather than inventing complex
things out of thin air like an "intelligent designer" would be expected to do. Otters evolved from other mammals, and so don't have
fish-like swimming fins even though they could be beneficial. Bats evolved from other mammals, and so don't have feathers even
though they could be beneficial. (What about the platypus? I don't know if we properly understand its evolution yet, but that's okay.
It's better to admit you don't yet know something, but are working on figuring it out, than to say "This one thing doesn't make sense
yet, so everything else that makes sense must be wrong.") |
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Also, because he doesn't sound like a flat-Earther, it might be worthwhile to show him some of that stuff for comparison. He might
see how trivial it is to disprove, and apply the same kind of reasoning to other things (or you could make the comparison). [link] |
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You can believe in evolution and still accept the possibility
of some level of Intelligent Design (like when scientists
debate the likelihood that we are living in a simulation) |
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All flat-Earthers should take solace in that if the many worlds theory pans out then there is indeed at least one flat Earth somewhere... |
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Indeed. However, if you want to climb out of the gravity-well of
your own world-view to go and visit someone who is mentally
living on another planet, you sometimes need a lot of words,
including some abstract ones. |
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^Avoiding, the time marching on, deprecated words, clearly. |
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You interrupted the chirping crickets. They'll have to start again
now. |
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I'll have to apologize to some, now hungry, predators. |
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