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Nation posted:but lets not forget that the eventual boogeymen in all of this (bin laden, saddam) worked directly for the USA. This is far from undisputed. Wiki has a good summary of both sides of the allegation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA-Osama_bin_Laden_controversy quote:The story about bin Laden and the CIA — that the CIA funded bin Laden or trained bin Laden — is simply a folk myth. There's no evidence of this. In fact, there are very few things that bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and the U.S. government agree on. They all agree that they didn't have a relationship in the 1980s. And they wouldn't have needed to. Bin Laden had his own money, he was anti-American and he was operating secretly and independently. The real story here is the CIA did not understand who Osama was until 1996, when they set up a unit to really start tracking him.
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Sep 23, 2013 02:49
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RagnarokAngel posted:Questioning is fine. Questioning is good, even. Exactly. Question Authority, but know when to stop. Sometimes the reason things are the the way they are is because it works. Vaccines are used because they have been proved over and over and over that they work. Just blinding assuming any theory that is contrary to the offical one has to be true, because 100% of everything we are fed daily is a lie serves no purpose. Cthulhu Dreams posted:
Because the real bad stuff would take effort to fight, while pretending its some kind of vast network of all powerful cadres means they can just post on the internet and be annoying to their coworkers but don't actually have to lift a finger.
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Sep 23, 2013 03:20
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Nation posted:I personally cannot blame anyone for questioning the official story, or any official story. We are constantly lied to and manipulated explicitly, nobody can argue the propaganda machines that run 24/7 do not promote an agenda, strangely similar to the agenda of the richest and most exploitative elements in the international stage. Bin Laden never worked directly for the USA and Saddam had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11, nor had Saddam ever worked for the USA either. The coup that brought the Ba'ath Part to power in Iraq was supported by the CIA, but Saddam wasn't even in Iraq when it happened. The intelligence services did indeed warn the Bush administration, but John Ashcroft basically said to the Justice Dept. "Don't gimme any of this terrorist crap, don't bother me with this baloney." and promptly went after porn and bong shops (he arrested Cheech or Chong, can't remember which one, during this time).
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Sep 23, 2013 03:36
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Don't forget draping lady justice's boobies. US did support Iraq in the Iran/Iraq war, but that was because Iran was the big bad, and Iraq was a fairly secular government.
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Sep 23, 2013 04:18
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Cthulhu Dreams posted:I just don't get it - there is bad stuff happening right under people's nose, but they invent this entire other set of bad stuff instead. This is the part I can't stand - I would honestly be more patient with conspiracy theorists if this poo poo didn't ultimately end with them raving how we need to DISMANTLE EVERYTHING since the government should be mistrusted constantly so of course we should abolish public schools and welfare. Also the 9/11 stuff smacks of racism of the highest caliber - like, of course the government had to do it (9-11) because who would trust the idea that men from countries most American people had barely read about in high school brought this super-modern ultra awesome capitalist country to it's knees with a jet and two towers? The really bad conspiracy nuts are actually way more nationalistic and patriotic then they realize.
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Sep 23, 2013 06:02
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twistedmentat posted:Thing is, False Flag attacks that are verified as that are not on the scale of "guy shoots a bunch of kids to get gun control enacted" but more just making up poo poo up that never happened. The Gulf of Tonkin is the best example, as there is no primary evidence it actually occured. Well, MKULTRA is a pretty good example of why I'm worried about dismissing conspiracy theories out of hand: there was no evidence or primary sources on MKULTRA until it was revealed by the government. In 1973, claiming that the government was giving people LSD and other drugs as part of mind control experiments would have been insane crazyland conspiracy theory stuff...despite the fact that, at the time, MKULTRA was being brought to a close after twenty years of experiments and the CIA was busily destroying all records of its existence. The only reason we know about it at all is was because some of the records had been misfiled and thus survived the attempt to shred everything; thanks to the fact that most of the evidence was destroyed, though, it's hard to confidently say "so and so never happened in MKULTRA". It's a goldmine for ridiculous conspiracy theories, yes, but it's kind of hard to blame the conspiracy theorists - given the deliberate destruction of evidence and the highly illegal nature of the experiments, it's a goldmine for crazy anti-government speculation. That doesn't just go for American conspiracy theories, either. The "NGO doctors giving free vaccinations are actually American spies giving fake vaccines" conspiracy theory seen in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan, for example, got a huge boost when the CIA actually did employ a doctor to do just that when during the search for bin Laden. That doesn't mean that any other doctors in the area are working with the CIA, but can it be completely ruled out? The line between conspiracy and reality isn't always as clear as one would like.
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Sep 23, 2013 06:30
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Main Paineframe posted:Well, MKULTRA is a pretty good example of why I'm worried about dismissing conspiracy theories out of hand: there was no evidence or primary sources on MKULTRA until it was revealed by the government. In 1973, claiming that the government was giving people LSD and other drugs as part of mind control experiments would have been insane crazyland conspiracy theory stuff...despite the fact that, at the time, MKULTRA was being brought to a close after twenty years of experiments and the CIA was busily destroying all records of its existence. The only reason we know about it at all is was because some of the records had been misfiled and thus survived the attempt to shred everything; thanks to the fact that most of the evidence was destroyed, though, it's hard to confidently say "so and so never happened in MKULTRA". It's a goldmine for ridiculous conspiracy theories, yes, but it's kind of hard to blame the conspiracy theorists - given the deliberate destruction of evidence and the highly illegal nature of the experiments, it's a goldmine for crazy anti-government speculation. The thing is, if you had dismissed that conspiracy theory in 1973, you would likely still be in the right, because the conspiracy isn't just that something is happening, it's a whole narrative with implied future consequences and a call to action. Nobody is going to say "They're trying to control our minds, but it won't work and they'll give up," they'll say "It's time for a revolution!" That's the part that's worth dismissing, and what separates theories from conspiracy theories.
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Sep 23, 2013 06:34
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gradenko_2000 posted:Anyone have any good sources to share about birther-ism? I think it pretty much also qualifies as a conspiracy theory considering the massive amount of mental gymnastics one has to go through to convince oneself that they're after Obama's birth records because there's legit shadowy stuff about that guy and nope, it's not about anything else, honest. One thing that people always seem to miss about the birthers, is that it's not just racist, it's also sexist. No matter where Obama was born, his mother was a US citizen, therefore he is a US citizen. But birthers always focus on his father's nationality because, in their twisted view, it's the man who determines nationality and the woman is simply irrelevant. But given the shitstorm of bigotry that is the birther movement, it's easy to miss that one extra lumpy turd. Birthers go into their argument assuming Obama cannot be a true American because he's black and create their narrative based on that. No evidence can ever convince them, because Obama will always be black and therefore will never be a true American  And that's the basic difference between a skeptic and a conspiracy theorist. One says, 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence' while the other will never accept anything that discounts their worldview and twists existing evidence to try and bolster their cause.
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Sep 23, 2013 07:43
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I was going to say that you can usually distinguish revolutionary conspiracy theorists from non- by the fact that non-conspiracy theorists usually advocate revolution as such, not because of the latest bad thing They did. Then it occurred to me that libertarians -- whose rule 1, 2 and 3 is 'government is necessarily bad and should be destroyed' -- love conspiracy theories more than they love gold. Maybe the situation there is that, for libertarians, government in general is thought of as a sort of conspiracy.
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Sep 23, 2013 08:40
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Mr. Funny Pants posted:This is far from undisputed. Wiki has a good summary of both sides of the allegation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA-Osama_bin_Laden_controversy In a 2004 BBC article entitled "Al-Qaeda's origins and links", the BBC wrote: During the anti-Soviet jihad Bin Laden and his fighters received American and Saudi funding. Some analysts believe Bin Laden himself had security training from the CIA.[1] Robin Cook, Foreign Secretary in the UK from 1997–2001, believed the CIA had provided arms to the Arab Mujahideen, including Osama bin Laden, writing, "Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan." His source for this is unclear Like I said in my post, we live in such a tangled web of information, just what the gently caress is the truth nobody knows. e: http://www.theinsider.org/news/article.asp?id=0228, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA%E2%80%93al-Qaeda_controversy Also we all know who gave saddam the weapons to fight Iran and the future ramifications of that support. a whole buncha crows fucked around with this message at 12:49 on Sep 23, 2013 |
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Sep 23, 2013 12:46
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Nation posted:In a 2004 BBC article entitled "Al-Qaeda's origins and links", the BBC wrote: It's almost as though during a gigantic war against someone people will make poo poo up for page hits.
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Sep 23, 2013 12:48
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computer parts posted:It's almost as though during a gigantic war against someone people will make poo poo up for page hits. What are you getting at? Re: That is sort of my point, it is ignorant to believe anyone would know the entire workings of clandestine groups, dedicated to secrecy, working for favourable outcomes for... a whole buncha crows fucked around with this message at 13:19 on Sep 23, 2013 |
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Sep 23, 2013 12:56
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Nation posted:What are you getting at? That analysts don't necessarily know anything, and indeed outside of one or two topics probably shouldn't be speaking.
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Sep 23, 2013 12:59
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Prester John posted:Icke is a bit different than the regular conspiracy crowd. He starts off perfectly rational and will go into detail about real events and problems in the world. He has been a pretty outspoken critic of Corporatism, both political parties in the US, Isreal, and especially the banking cartel. Actually, having attended one of his 10 hour lectures, I would say probably about 65% of the time was spent discussing pretty non crazy stuff. About 20% of his time was spent on the whole "we are all one" New Agey kind of stuff. And the rest was spent on some pretty out there ideas. He might have spent about 3-4 minutes on the reptilian alien thing. The main thing with Icke that is unlike a ton of other conspiracy theorists, his stuff is at least internally consistent. And he's not angry and shouting about it. His presentation is also very positive, especially compared to an Alex Jones. He doesn't try to terrify his audience, he tells them that no matter its all going to be okay. He emphasizes personal spiritual growth as the way to improve society. All in all he is pretty harmless and I think that is part of his charm. He talks a ton of sense and kind of just eases the nuttier stuff in there. I also noticed a lot of internal inconsistency. This is because David Icke believes in basically every conspiracy theory ever, and tries to cram them all into his weird New Age neoplatonist worldview. A lot of elements contradict each other just from the sheer scope of it all. For instance, he thinks that everything we see is a holographic projection of higher-dimensional reality, and that if we recognise this we can basically have superpowers and rely less on the constraints of the physical world. Yet this conflicts with the idea that the lizard people (not really lizard people, extradimensional beings called the Archons) need human psychic energy to survive for some reason. It's clear from some of his theories that the Archons are clued in to the whole holographic reality thing, but it's never explained why they nevertheless rely on such a weird and hard-to-control source of sustenance. The "Archons feeding on us" component also bumps up against his love of population control conspiracy theories, where he brings out the usual suspects (Bill Gates, the Georgia Guidestones, etc.) to put forward the standard theory that the elites want to kill 90% of the population. So the same conspirators that need massive amounts of human psychic energy to survive also want to kill the vast majority of humanity. These are just a couple of examples - Icke definitely contradicts himself pretty regularly. When it comes to conspiracy theories he's too cosmopolitan for his own good. That's not even getting into his weird neo-Velikovskian catastrophist bullshit about how Saturn used to be the Sun.
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Sep 23, 2013 13:19
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2frJ3e0hxPE I loving love David Icke chat. This video is a good summary of things that are certainly conspiracies.
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Sep 23, 2013 13:23
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Gorilla Salad posted:One thing that people always seem to miss about the birthers, is that it's not just racist, it's also sexist. No matter where Obama was born, his mother was a US citizen, therefore he is a US citizen. But birthers always focus on his father's nationality because, in their twisted view, it's the man who determines nationality and the woman is simply irrelevant. Eh I think this is reaching. I realize people can be blind to their own -isms but if their roles were switched (Obama's mother being the foreigner and his father being the citizen) I don't think they would feel any less strongly about it. I feel like that only works if the parents roles only work one way. RagnarokAngel fucked around with this message at 13:27 on Sep 23, 2013 |
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Sep 23, 2013 13:23
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Nation posted:Like I said in my post, we live in such a tangled web of information, just what the gently caress is the truth nobody knows. If you'd said something like, "Many people think we helped Bin Laden," I wouldn't have bothered. However, you posted it as though we should take it for granted that it happened.
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Sep 23, 2013 13:42
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I don't get this bizarre notion conspiracy theorists have that states "you are living in a prison cell but you can't see the bars". It's fairly obvious the bars to most real world people are money, time, and to a lesser extent healthcare. These "sheeple" should spend some time in Bangladesh working 17 hour shifts for £2 then they would maybe realize the relativity of the term freedom.
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Sep 23, 2013 14:06
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Ramagamma posted:I don't get this bizarre notion conspiracy theorists have that states "you are living in a prison cell but you can't see the bars". It's fairly obvious the bars to most real world people are money, time, and to a lesser extent healthcare.
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Sep 23, 2013 14:16
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Main Paineframe posted:Well, MKULTRA is a pretty good example of why I'm worried about dismissing conspiracy theories out of hand: there was no evidence or primary sources on MKULTRA until it was revealed by the government. In 1973, claiming that the government was giving people LSD and other drugs as part of mind control experiments would have been insane crazyland conspiracy theory stuff...despite the fact that, at the time, MKULTRA was being brought to a close after twenty years of experiments and the CIA was busily destroying all records of its existence. The only reason we know about it at all is was because some of the records had been misfiled and thus survived the attempt to shred everything; thanks to the fact that most of the evidence was destroyed, though, it's hard to confidently say "so and so never happened in MKULTRA". It's a goldmine for ridiculous conspiracy theories, yes, but it's kind of hard to blame the conspiracy theorists - given the deliberate destruction of evidence and the highly illegal nature of the experiments, it's a goldmine for crazy anti-government speculation. The thing is that it wasn't a conspiracy theory. I don't have any trouble believing that our government, or someone else's government has done some seriously horrible poo poo that we don't know about, much like MKULTRA. The problem is when people come out of the blue and make a claim with no supporting evidence. And while I have no trouble believing their claim is possible, there is no way in hell I'm giving them any attention or credibility without at least some evidence, and I won't believe them until it's proven so. The worst thing about conspiracy theories is that while there is rarely enough evidence to prove them true, it's also difficult to prove them wrong.
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Sep 23, 2013 14:36
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computer parts posted:It's almost as though during a gigantic war against someone people will make poo poo up for page hits. Yes, because America didn't support the Mujahadeen during the Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan  Whether or not Bin Laden and Zawahiri got direct support doesn't mean they weren't emboldened/enabled by the Soviet withdrawal - which was made possible by the Arms Trade, the ISI, Arab Governments, and the US. We should just keep making the same stupid mistakes in our foreign policy; revising history to make our leaders look good.
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Sep 23, 2013 14:49
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McDowell posted:Yes, because America didn't support the Mujahadeen during the Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan Actually the entire point of this line of argument is from somebody claiming that Osama was our employee, rather than someone who tangentially benefited from our retarded anti-Soviet policies by happening to be on the same side as people receiving weapons from us.
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Sep 23, 2013 15:10
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Sergg posted:Actually the entire point of this line of argument is from somebody claiming that Osama was our employee, rather than someone who tangentially benefited from our retarded anti-Soviet policies by happening to be on the same side as people receiving weapons from us. ComputerParts seems to making the argument that people pointing to past policy as the cause of current problems are doing it for attention and should keep their mouths shut. It is antidemocratic, Authoritarian, and doesn't contribute anything.
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Sep 23, 2013 15:23
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Luigi's Discount Porn Bin posted:I've heard other people say this too and mean money and all that, but if you're referring to the David Icke quote from the Vinnie Paz video, he literally thinks that the bars of the prison cell are subliminal hypnotic mind control signals being broadcast by interdimensional lizard beings through Saturn's rings (which are artificial) and amplified by the Moon (which is not only artificial, but also hollow). So where does he think tides come from?
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Sep 23, 2013 15:23
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McDowell posted:ComputerParts seems to making the argument that people pointing to past policy as the cause of current problems are doing it for attention and should keep their mouths shut. You are attributing motives to him that he has not displayed in any sense. He was complaining about "analysts" who made completely false claims.
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Sep 23, 2013 15:28
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Pope Guilty posted:So where does he think tides come from? Honestly, the mass of the moon is the least of the problems with Icke's conception of the solar system. He thinks that the Earth existed in an Edenic state before the Archons came and instigated a cosmic catastrophe that resulted in the destruction of the fifth planet (the debris from which is now the asteroid belt), the creation of the artificial moon, and the burning-out of Saturn, which was once a star and is now the headquarters of the Archons' attempt to mind-control humanity through the Saturn-Moon Matrix. Icke's cosmology is so utterly batshit that buying into it basically requires the belief that our entire understanding of physics is fundamentally flawed anyway, so it seems pretty trivial to think that we have the wrong idea about the moon as well.
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Sep 23, 2013 15:34
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Mr. Funny Pants posted:If you'd said something like, "Many people think we helped Bin Laden," I wouldn't have bothered. However, you posted it as though we should take it for granted that it happened. We did aid his organisation, which he was in a primary position as a saudi 'sheep' (Syrian slang  ) basically a cash cow for the Mujahideen, do take it for granted, it happened. wikipedia posted:"U.S. government financial support for the Afghan Islamic militants was substantial. Aid to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Afghan mujahideen leader and founder and leader of the Hezb-e Islami radical Islamic militant faction, alone amounted "by the most conservative estimates" to $600 million. Later, in the early 1990s, after the U.S. had withdrawn support, Hekmatyar worked closely with bin Laden.[90] In addition to receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in American aid, Hekmatyar was the recipient of the lion's share of Saudi aid.[91] There is evidence that the CIA supported Hekmatyar's drug trade activities by giving him immunity for his opium trafficking, which financed the operation of his militant faction" My semantics are bad but most people are smart enough here to realise when I say he worked for the USA, I mean the interests of such, not that he had working hours and a contract. The argument is for questioning, for example do we listen to Robin Cook when he said Al Qaeda never existed and is a demon we created or not? This was my foreign secretary in parliament. After the London bombings the police commissioner had this to say; "Al Qaeda is not an organization. Al Qaeda is a way of working ... but this has the hallmark of that approach." Which makes a lot more sense in that we are fighting an ideology, not a group of super villains. Bin Laden himself states it better than anyone; quote:"... this matter isn't about any specific person and... is not about the al-Qa`idah Organization. We are the children of an Islamic Nation, with Prophet Muhammad as its leader, our Lord is one... and all the true believers [mu'mineen] are brothers. So the situation isn't like the West portrays it, that there is an 'organization' with a specific name (such as 'al-Qa`idah') and so on. That particular name is very old. It was born without any intention from us. Brother Abu Ubaida... created a military base to train the young men to fight against the vicious, arrogant, brutal, terrorizing Soviet empire... So this place was called 'The Base' ['Al-Qa`idah'], as in a training base, so this name grew and became. We aren't separated from this nation. We are the children of a nation, and we are an inseparable part of it, and from those public demonstrations which spread from the far east, from the Philippines, to Indonesia, to Malaysia, to India, to Pakistan, reaching Mauritania... and so we discuss the conscience of this nation." So what am I actually getting at here? We cannot even get a clear picture about the enemy, the lines are blurred across generations, countries, alliances etc etc etc. This drives the conspiracy mindset when it is nigh impossible to clarify and our own media is as confusing as Alex Jones. Without being a conspiracy theorist we should all be able to see that crashing planes into buildings has been used to eradicate freedoms and privacy from the people under attack, create a perpetual war around the globe, finance a huge intelligence network now used against drug dealers to journalists, complete back door access to the internet, electronics and countless other infringements upon the law and protections given to people in the name of a war on terror. When we are told there were warnings, unheeded, to the same institutions that have seen a massive expansion in capability both legal and practical many people will ask the question and be unsatisfied with the answer when they see the attacks used by the people protecting them to instead take away from them. I have said a couple of times now, it doesn't matter who did what - anyone can see there is a severe problem with the generated reaction of the west, this creates our conspiracies.
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Sep 23, 2013 16:52
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Luigi's Discount Porn Bin posted:From what I can remember I think he acknowledges that the moon causes tides, but that it's capable of doing so even if it's hollow. Basically, either the moon has an ultra dense surface such that it weighs what we think it does even while hollow, or it weighs less than what we think it does but our understanding of gravity (and therefore our estimation of its mass) has been deliberately suppressed by the conspiracy so that we don't find out the truth about the moon's structure. Wow, he never got into any of this stuff when I went to see him. I mean he went into the whole "Moon is hollow" thing a bit and touched on Saturn, but that was about it. I think it was probably because I saw him in Cleveland and it was the very first time he'd ever given a speech in the Midwest, so he kept it low key.
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Sep 23, 2013 17:11
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kiresays posted:The thing is that it wasn't a conspiracy theory. I don't have any trouble believing that our government, or someone else's government has done some seriously horrible poo poo that we don't know about, much like MKULTRA. I think the idea that "if the CIA hadn't misfiled those documents, we wouldn't even know that MKULTRA had ever existed" unnerves a lot of people. The idea that an organization can cover up a project like that for twenty years and almost managed to erase all evidence that it had ever happened really sets off people's paranoia - it creates a perception that another similarly large and similarly evil program could have been completely covered up to such an extent that evidence of it hasn't been discovered yet and potentially could never be discovered. From an outside perspective, "poo poo that never happened" is indistinguishable from "poo poo that's been completely covered up", and there's been plenty of accusations that appeared to be the former but were revealed by a leak to have been the latter. The only difference between "conspiracy" and "not conspiracy" isn't whether there's evidence, it's whether any evidence has been found. Most conspiracy theories are crazy paranoid talk, but it's hard to knock the basic paranoia behind them; the only real problem is where they let it lead them.
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Sep 23, 2013 17:49
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Miltank posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2frJ3e0hxPE "Among the music videos that Tamerlan Tsarnaev posted on his YouTube account was this one featuring Italian-American rapper Vinnie Paz." http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/19/17830255-on-social-media-tsarnaevs-mixed-religious-fervor-and-youthful-whimsy?lite
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Sep 23, 2013 18:05
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Sergg posted:Oh yes, how could I forget how easy it is for a perfectly logical and rational person to believe the president of the United States is not a genuine US citizen despite the fact that he has released all of his birth certificates openly to the public. Silly me. Doesn't have anything to do with authoritarian personalities being deeply racist. They must have weighed the evidence and come to their conclusion based on intelligent and thoughtful criteria. Hey no need to apologise to me, this is a snarky forum. I actually wouldn't mind hearing about how birther beliefs and disarmament paranoia are really the displaced manifestation of someone's racially-aggravated Koro syndrome. It's just that your pop psychology cliches are more tired and just as baseless. Deep Thought fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Sep 23, 2013 |
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Sep 23, 2013 18:12
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Prester John posted:Wow, he never got into any of this stuff when I went to see him. I mean he went into the whole "Moon is hollow" thing a bit and touched on Saturn, but that was about it. I think it was probably because I saw him in Cleveland and it was the very first time he'd ever given a speech in the Midwest, so he kept it low key.
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Sep 23, 2013 18:43
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Curtis of Nigeria posted:Conspiracy theories are basically equivalent to third-world shamanism. From a structural anthropology perspective I'm pretty convinced conspiracy theories are pretty much modern versions of the whole "the sorcerer/headhunters/satanists/etc is in the other village" thing. A way to (poorly) reason about abstract and impersonal forces by basically blaming them on THOSE guys. Why is momma sick? The sorcerer in the next village is cursing us. Why are we so poor? The Jews are controlling the banks.
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Sep 23, 2013 18:58
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GyroNinja posted:Well of course the plane couldn't have taken down the building because jet fuel burns below the melting point of steel, so clearly it was taken down by thousands of thermite charges that were planted in secret in the busiest office building in the world. Jet fuel, sure, but how hot does that chemical they use to make the mind-control contrails burn? 
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Sep 23, 2013 20:13
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Another issue that really screams out to me when I see people claim that there was just hidden thermite packs, as in actual thermite just strapped to the steel beams of the tower. suming that the people placing them were not discovered thermite just drops down, it isn't like an explosion at all and would just melt some amount of the side and not cut through it from what I understand about thermite.
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Sep 23, 2013 20:27
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Main Paineframe posted:I think the idea that "if the CIA hadn't misfiled those documents, we wouldn't even know that MKULTRA had ever existed" unnerves a lot of people. The idea that an organization can cover up a project like that for twenty years and almost managed to erase all evidence that it had ever happened really sets off people's paranoia - it creates a perception that another similarly large and similarly evil program could have been completely covered up to such an extent that evidence of it hasn't been discovered yet and potentially could never be discovered. From an outside perspective, "poo poo that never happened" is indistinguishable from "poo poo that's been completely covered up", and there's been plenty of accusations that appeared to be the former but were revealed by a leak to have been the latter. The only difference between "conspiracy" and "not conspiracy" isn't whether there's evidence, it's whether any evidence has been found. Most conspiracy theories are crazy paranoid talk, but it's hard to knock the basic paranoia behind them; the only real problem is where they let it lead them. The problem is that people will take this to extremes of nuttyness. Yes MKultra was a thing, yes it was hidden for decades and the knowlage of it was nearly lost, BUT that doesn't mean that everything else is true. And you cannot say absence of proof is proof in of itself. Its literally ancient aliens thinking, we don't know how it was done, so therefor we can make up any theories we want and claim they're true because of argument from ignorance. Thought its kind of hilarious how the Ancient Aliens crowd claims that mainstream archologists are ignoring the mountains of evidence that are just sitting there, because they are just raking it in by denying it. I'm sure Georgio spends more on velvet sportcoats and hair product than the average archeologist makes in a year. Or when Anti-GMO people claim that all the scientists that are saying there is no evidence of any problems with the crops just because they are protecting their big giant grants. Yea, 90% of the money that Monsanto gives to in the grant is taken by the university or lab where the scientist works and then the remainder is given to them as their salery, but they can use the labs, assistants and equipment for their work free of charge. Again, the guy writing the books and making the documentaries are probably making way more than that. (please note that I often stop when I hear a claim "is the person who is telling you this selling you something at the same time?" If yes, then its probably bunk. BTW, I wanted to ask, what is with the comment about skeptical thinking suddently be seeing as sexist and racist? I remember there was some weird thing With Dr Rebecca Watson and Dawkins and while i've heard some lovely things being said about islam, I've also heard the same lovely things being said about Christians, Jews and Hindus, in that people are always trying to use their faith to control other people and impose their morality on others. Admittedly, I only listen to Skeptoid, SGU, Monstertalk, Conspiarcy Skeptic, and Exposing Psuedo-astronomy. Used to listen to cognitive dissonance but their thing got really old fast.
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Sep 24, 2013 02:01
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n/m - idiot
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Sep 24, 2013 02:10
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twistedmentat posted:BTW, I wanted to ask, what is with the comment about skeptical thinking suddently be seeing as sexist and racist? I remember there was some weird thing With Dr Rebecca Watson and Dawkins Watson made the "mistake" of humbly asking that men attending skeptic conferences not be creepy, stalky assholes. Later that night, a man in an elevator hit on her in a creepy way, and he would have heard her earlier request. And from that story came a thousand poo poo storms, including Dawkins saying (and I'm greatly simplifying here) essentially that boys will be boys. That might be an unfair characterization, so I welcome anyone adding to my understanding of the incident. After that, it was full steam ahead with Rebecca and the other Skepchick contributors getting buried in death/rape threats. Jen McCreight flat out stopped blogging due to the poo poo she was getting being genuinely frightening.
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Sep 24, 2013 02:41
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Mr. Funny Pants posted:Watson made the "mistake" of humbly asking that men attending skeptic conferences not be creepy, stalky assholes. Later that night, a man in an elevator hit on her in a creepy way, and he would have heard her earlier request. And from that story came a thousand poo poo storms, including Dawkins saying (and I'm greatly simplifying here) essentially that boys will be boys. That might be an unfair characterization, so I welcome anyone adding to my understanding of the incident. After that, it was full steam ahead with Rebecca and the other Skepchick contributors getting buried in death/rape threats. Jen McCreight flat out stopped blogging due to the poo poo she was getting being genuinely frightening. He wrote her a very disturbing letter: http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/10/sexism_in_the_skeptic_community_i_spoke_out_then_came_the_rape_threats.html quote:Dear Muslima It could be construed as him trying to tell her to shrug it off, but it was in really poor taste considering what happened to her and others at a couple of the Skeptics conventions. Between her and a couple of her Skeptic friends, they were bombarded with death threats, threatening emails, threats of rape and torture. It was pretty disgusting. A couple of the Skeptics Conventions even blamed them for the issues instead of standing up for them. e: I knew about the incident at the conventions prior, but I didn't know Dawkins role in it, really made me lose a lot of respect for the guy. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Sep 24, 2013 |
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Sep 24, 2013 02:53
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Yikes. I wish I had remained ignorant. I'm sure they all turned on James Randi when he came out too.
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Sep 24, 2013 04:19
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