Just when I was feeling a lack of things to write about that I haven't beaten to a repetitive pulp, salvation comes from of all places Facebook.
Accordingly, the topic du jour is "Conspiracy Theories", specifically those that people adopt without recognizing them as such. It's arguable that if people recognized something as a conspiracy theory (negative connotation of irrationality and unverifiable intended) they wouldn't adopt it. A good old conspiracy on the other hand...
In some ways this is uncharacteristically personal for me, as it was triggered by something posted by a friend, or at least someone who remains so at the time of writing. I've cut people loose before and I'll do it again any time that I need to if they become liabilities or it's clear we no longer have anything in common. We're very close to this point presently because B (let's call him that) seems to be getting sucked in by what I consider dark, irrational forces.
As is plain to anyone who reads this (and I don't think anyone who doesn't know me personally does anyway) you cannot say something that I consider foolish and not have me call you on it. Accordingly, if you post something that talks about how the Israel lobby, aided by "the Rothschilds" controls the media and whitewashes everything in Israel's favour, I'll be all over you.
Firstly, though B denies it, this is standard "Jewish big business controlling the world" conspiracy. Secondly it's patently absurd, especially the media angle; Israel is regularly vilified in the media, the media being largely a product of the leftist puppy mills masquerading as Universities these days.
So, it's apparent that he is sucking this stuff up without any rational or empirical analysis, and despite my intellectual limitations I am an absolute scourge of people like that. What depresses me is that facts and proof, verifiable falsifiable information, has no effect on people who buy into these things.
The foundation of any Conspiracy Theory is something, and it can be anything, that CANNOT BE PROVED. One of the more egregious examples is the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on 9/11/2001. I watched it happen, live on TV, so these idiots are not going to tell me that it was a "controlled demolition". I've seen them though, arguing that the lack of evidence for their allegation is due to a Mossad/CIA plot involving a fictional substance dubbed "nano thermite".
The idea of a CT is to provide an explanation that fits your narrative, in other words to fit events to your worldview (evidence be damned). Preconceptions are particularly resistant to any assault by reasoned debate; most people are intellectually lazy and and find it easier to accept pre-digested ideas. I frequently need to change my views on things as new information comes to me, but not on everything. If your ideas are well founded on facts, only a change in the FACTS, not merely other ideas will necessitate a change.
The ongoing debasement of the English language notwithstanding, I am not Humpty Dumpty; words have particular meanings, not just whatever I decide that they mean. In that vein, the objects of my ire today are properly called Conspiracy Conjectures. A theory is something that originated as a falsifiable hypothesis and was verified by reapeatable testing, and these conspiracies are none of that. Conjecture (paraphrasing from Oxford) is a half-assed idea based on incorrect or incomplete information.
I'm not going to waste time debunking specific things today, but I did my best to make B think about what he's posting. Some of our mutual aquaintances believe some questionable things, and I think this is rubbing off on B. I've asked him for specific examples and some quantifiable info (names and numbers); something tells me that I won't be getting it, but I'd like to be surprised here. And yes, we did land on the Moon.
2 comments:
I'm butchering the quote here, but J.G. Ballard said something like "It is no longer meaningful to ask who killed JFK. It has become a work of art." Conspiracies are a collaborative form of confirmation bias where narratives are built which conforms to preconceptions. This will always happen and always has.
How they work can tell you a lot about those preconceptions. There is a great book by the Smithsonian called "Look to the skies" or something like that, which is an analysis of the UFO myths of America which have morphed into a flock of full blown conspiracy theories. It starts in the 40's with UFO's believed to be experimental aircraft and by the nineties it's mutated into there being a manhattan sized underground city of grey aliens under Area 51. Whee. Looks like a big increase in paranoia.
As for 911, according to the chair, the investigation commission was pretty much set up to fail. This is not evidence of a front end conspiracy, more likely the pragamatic response to a collossal failure of US security on all levels to limit information about it. A useful narrative about what happened and why was established initially; why screw with that.
Fantastic work full of creativity. Congratulations. Continue your path!
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