On Sat, Apr 5, 2014 at 4:19 PM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy < multiplecit...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > On Sat, Apr 5, 2014 at 12:30 PM, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com>wrote: > >> >> >> >> On Sat, Apr 5, 2014 at 11:47 AM, LizR <lizj...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> That doesn't narrow it down too much. >>> >> >> Je m'accuse. I was one of them. >> >> My point was that conspiracy theories, in the sense of power elites >> secretly cooperating to further their own interests against the interests >> of the majority are not, unfortunately, unusual events in History. We know >> of countless examples of this happening in the past. I think it requires >> some magical thinking to assume that this type of behaviour is absent from >> our own times. >> >> I further pointed out that broadly discrediting any hypothesis that some >> elites might be conspiring against the common good, in broad strokes, seems >> to benefit precisely the ones in power. Furthermore, thanks to Snowden, we >> now have strong evidence of a large-scale conspiracy by western governments >> that I would not believe one year ago. In this case I'm referring to the >> secret implementation of global and total surveillance, with our tax money, >> by the people we elected, to spy on us, infringing on constitutions. >> >> I can't help but notice the very common rhetorical trick of using the >> nutty conspiracy theories (UFOs, the Illuminati, fake moon landing, etc.) >> to discredit the much more mundane and reasonable suspicions of elites >> abusing their power. The paper you cite in this thread uses that trick too. >> >> This broad denial of the existence of conspiracies is silly, if you think >> about it. The official explanation for 9/11 is a conspiracy theory: some >> religious arab fundamentalists conspired to create a global network of >> terrorist cells with the objective of attacking western civilisation. They >> hijacked planes and sent them into buildings and so on. If you don't >> believe in this explanation, you are then forced to believe in some other >> conspiracy. >> >> Of course conspiracies exist. The current denial of this quite obvious >> fact feels Orwellian, to be honest. >> > > To state "conspiracy" in some domain or level seriously, you have to be > precise and point accurately. Who, what, where, when, why? Just referring > to "elites" or entire industries, of which I am often guilty, doesn't > suffice. > Of course, especially in a court of law. However, given the enormous information asymmetry between the elected and the electors, this is usually impossible. If we want to improve our understanding on how society works, it makes sense to observe human behaviours. Then we can look for plausible explanations that fit these behaviours. In the case of total surveillance, attempts to censor the Internet and prohibition, the official explanations look implausible to me, while some degree of conspiracy looks more plausible -- which doesn't mean that I have the access to sufficient information to answer your questions rigorously. We can discuss priors and likelihoods with what we know. It's just empirical science, really. > That's a sort of conspiracy comfort tale, which has the same effect as > denying damaging backdoor deals on a large scale exist: inaction, no > coordination, less people on the streets. > > The distinction is not trivial, as the comfort tale is abused as some > explanatory weed, that illuminates all aspects of world politics, the > hopeless vista of the speaker's position; everything they disagree with > being part of the "grand conspiracy" and everything they agree with the > opposite. > > The comfort tale use is not serious and more a psychology thing istm. PGC > Agreed. Binary thinking and one-size-fits-all explanations are the hallmarks of fundamentalism. When doing intellectual exploration we have to be careful, these traps are everywhere. The vaccine against them is doubt. Cheers Telmo. > > >> >> Best, >> Telmo. >> >> >>> >>> >>> On 5 April 2014 22:31, Quentin Anciaux <allco...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> >>>> It was in one of the climate threads. >>>> Le 5 avr. 2014 09:11, "LizR" <lizj...@gmail.com> a écrit : >>>> >>>>> On 4 April 2014 19:35, Quentin Anciaux <allco...@gmail.com> wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> 2014-04-04 1:29 GMT+02:00 LizR <lizj...@gmail.com>: >>>>>> >>>>>> "Climate Deniers Intimidate Journal into Retracting Paper that Finds >>>>>>> They Believe Conspiracy Theories" >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Ironically, it looks like they are conspiring to silence any mention >>>>>>> of this fact! >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-deniers-intimidate-journal-into-retracting-paper-that-finds-they-believe-conspiracy-theories >>>>>>> >>>>>>> PS I know this isn't about "everything" but there seems to be some >>>>>>> interest in this topic on this forum. >>>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> It is strange, because when I did mention that here, the answer was >>>>>> that it was perfectly normal and rational to believe in global conspiracy >>>>>> theories and irrational not to. >>>>>> >>>>>> That sounds a slightly strange view, imho. Who said that, may I ask, >>>>> and in what context? >>>>> >>>>> (I will be sending my ninja assassins round to deal with them later, >>>>> as per the standing instructions of the Grand High Adepts of the >>>>> Illuminati...) >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> -- >>>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>>>> Groups "Everything List" group. >>>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >>>>> an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >>>>> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. >>>>> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >>>>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >>>>> >>>> -- >>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>>> Groups "Everything List" group. >>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >>>> an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >>>> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. >>>> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >>>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >>>> >>> >>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>> Groups "Everything List" group. >>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >>> an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >>> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. >>> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >>> >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Everything List" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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