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...-- RayfordSteele, Jan 13 2020 Deus Ex (videogame) conspiracy theory highlight reel https://www.youtube...watch?v=C8kZ3HfeqtAFrom 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=allOnline 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_PersonalityA good idea at the time, by Adorno and friends [pertinax, Jan 19 2020] Negative Dialectic https://www.researc...thodological_StatusAdorno's again, understandable in context, but regrettable in its effects [pertinax, Jan 19 2020] Construction of the Aesthetic https://www.google....QwrLqsVIy8PdcBc1XMPAdorno on Kierkegaard [pertinax, Jan 19 2020] Either / Or https://archive.org...2015.504967/page/n5Kierkegaard vs Kierkegaard [pertinax, Jan 19 2020] Negative Dialectic - again https://libcom.org/...tics-theodor-adornoI 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/flateartherMentioned 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] (+) for category choice.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jan 13 2020 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.
[m-f-d] advocacy.-- sninctown, Jan 13 2020 // Find me the most egregiously moronic conservative trash site.. //
"Bring me the head of Andrew Lloyd Webber... "
Conspiracy ? But [Ray], don't you realze that it's all true... ?-- 8th of 7, Jan 13 2020 Good luck with that.
You're attempting to use thinking and logic to solve a problem that was developed without using those tools.
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"-- normzone, Jan 13 2020 Would one that says Bush went to Iraq to take their oil qualify? Or something closer in time, like promoting the Steele dossier?
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.
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.
But there's no magical way to cure magical thinking. It's just a flaw in the brain's algorithm, cannot be fixed.
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.-- theircompetitor, Jan 13 2020 //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.-- hippo, Jan 13 2020 The Whitehouse must have its own site. I'd start with that one.-- xenzag, Jan 13 2020 Ah yes, good old Mary ... always good for a bit of the ol' uninformed bigotry and prejudice...-- 8th of 7, Jan 13 2020 But I thought she was dead? please tell me they didn't keep her brain in a jar!-- Skewed, Jan 13 2020 There is considerable doubt if she was ever in any meaningful sense alive; if she was, it was an exceptionally bleak and joyless existance.
It's very like chemical weapons; the toxic residues can linger for years...-- 8th of 7, Jan 13 2020 It might be worth asking [2fries] what it was that led him to so perceptively reject conspiracy theories.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 13 2020 Probably the lack of evidence; it's just as if someone has come along and painstakingly erased all the traces...
// It's just a flaw in the brain's algorithm, cannot be fixed. //
Join us and find out just how wrong that is.
// explain to millenials that socialism doesn't work, and they've seen it fail multiple times in their lifetime. //
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.
We blame that on the shortage of truly sociopathic geography teachers. All the old skills are being lost...-- 8th of 7, Jan 13 2020 -All possibilities exist until disproven.-Keep whatever works.
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...-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jan 13 2020 yeah, who knew the prison video system would be using snapchat?-- theircompetitor, Jan 13 2020 You mean apart from the Illuminati, the Masons, Majestic-7, the National Enquirer and the Lizard People...?-- 8th of 7, Jan 13 2020 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...-- RayfordSteele, Jan 13 2020 //What could possibly go wrong...?//
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.-- Skewed, Jan 13 2020 // you spend the next 40 years of your life waiting for the spaceship to take you away //
No need to wait. We can beam you up right now.
// & trying to join the illuminati. //
You don't have to try. They find you.
// He knows we landed on the moon as he lived through it. //
Respect ... that narrows his identity down a bot though. Did he actually land, or stay in the command module ?-- 8th of 7, Jan 13 2020 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.
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.
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.-- RayfordSteele, Jan 13 2020 Lizards are real-- pocmloc, Jan 13 2020 Yeah, right... that's just what *They* want you to believe.-- 8th of 7, Jan 13 2020 That's what the pan-dimensional beings want you to think .-- RayfordSteele, Jan 13 2020 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.-- Skewed, Jan 13 2020 // the worst //
// egregiously moronic //
// the most hair-brained conservative conspiracy site //
// hair //
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.-- sninctown, Jan 14 2020 //all these Epstein didn't kill himself posters aren't going to hang themselves you know...//
:-) ^^^[+]-- pertinax, Jan 14 2020 No no no. Not the most unattractive. Think target audience, people. Social conservative, religious, Facebook-gullible, but supportive of vaccines, space science, and such.-- RayfordSteele, Jan 15 2020 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.-- wjt, Jan 15 2020 Wait ... who's Kelly?-- pertinax, Jan 17 2020 Qanon is too tame for voat.co-- Voice, Jan 17 2020 // 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" //
Probably someone who hadn't read Kierkegaard.-- pertinax, Jan 18 2020 That's a very large cohort, [pert].
Considering the population:
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.
<Notes that this is reading more and more like a rather depressing version of the Drake equation/>
Going back to your point, it's probably a reasonable approximation that over 99% of the general population haven't read Kierkegaard.
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.-- 8th of 7, Jan 18 2020 So the odds are stacked in my favour; what was your point?-- pertinax, Jan 18 2020 It's your round.-- 8th of 7, Jan 18 2020 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.
So explain to me what is special about Kierkegaard.-- pocmloc, Jan 18 2020 // I don't believe in philosophy //
You can't prove that, you know.-- 8th of 7, Jan 18 2020 //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.//
I think you just channeled my grade seven guidance councilor.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jan 18 2020 //You can't prove that, you know.// If I know, why do I need to prove?-- pocmloc, Jan 18 2020 Accumulation of observational evidence is not proof.
// you just channeled my grade seven guidance councilor. //
<Consults records/>
Yes, that was us. And yet you're still alive...
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...-- 8th of 7, Jan 18 2020 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.-- Voice, Jan 18 2020 Thus:
1 Kierkegaard impresses people who confuse brash confidence and using too many words with wisdom.
2. [pertinax] has read and is impressed by and/or respects Kierkegaard.
Therefore:
[pertinax] confuses brash confidence and using too many words with wisdom.
Q.E.D.-- 8th of 7, Jan 18 2020 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?-- pertinax, Jan 18 2020 Yes, but to be fair he was pretty mean to Donatello and Leonardo.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 18 2020 Must be why they threw him out of the Teenage Ninja Turtles before they became famous.-- Skewed, Jan 19 2020 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?-- pertinax, Jan 19 2020 Yes, interested... but scared to be at the same time.
So, the usual.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jan 19 2020 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.
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.
[gone to look for next link - BRB]-- pertinax, Jan 19 2020 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.
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.
[Gone to look for next link - BRB again]-- pertinax, Jan 19 2020 Next link: Construction of the Aesthetic.
I haven't read this one, so don't spoil the ending for me.
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.
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.-- pertinax, Jan 19 2020 Last link: Either / Or.
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.-- pertinax, Jan 19 2020 // This simple, efficient and wrong method has contributed a lot to the catastrophic breakdown of trust //
However, that doesn't mean that the breakdown of trust, and its corrosive destruction of representative democracy is a bad thing; far from it.
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.
Politics as currently constituted cannot function when intellectually rigorous proof is demanded for all assertions. This will be its downfall.
Distrust is good.
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.-- 8th of 7, Jan 19 2020 //Distrust is good//
I don't believe you.-- pertinax, Jan 19 2020 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.
Biting your tongue hurts after the first month. My tongue is almost shredded to bits.
This is a great read and should stay here for infinity for the links alone. "Bullshit Artist". Yup that sums it up nicely.-- blissmiss, Jan 19 2020 // I don't believe you. //
Excellent... our work here is done.-- 8th of 7, Jan 19 2020 // 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.//
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.
Word of the day: Hermeneutic-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jan 19 2020 As the Little, Brown book teaches, omit needless words.-- theircompetitor, Jan 19 2020 //conservative conspiracy theories//
You seem to think there are no liberal ones.-- Voice, Jan 20 2020 Conservative ones are the topic of this idea, but no-one has suggested that there are no liberal ones.-- pertinax, Jan 20 2020 A fact conflict that sparks a diverse range of groups in the same way? liberal conspiracies are going to be very rare.-- wjt, Jan 20 2020 OK, now someone has.-- pertinax, Jan 20 2020 // liberal conspiracies are going to be very rare //
Nonsense. All brain seek patterns and simple answers.
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.-- theircompetitor, Jan 20 2020 <Points at anno reading "Accumulation of observational evidence is not proof." />
Facts are important, and many of them may be correct*.
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).
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 ...
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.
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 ...-- 8th of 7, Jan 20 2020 *technically a true statement even with facts being true by definition
// He just doesn't buy some bits of science, like the bit about evolution and such. //
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:
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.
1. There is variation between directly related organisms. This is trivial to observe: children are not usually identical to their parents or their siblings.
2. At least some of this variation is heritable. This is trivial to observe: children usually resemble their parents and siblings.
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).
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.)
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.
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.
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".
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".
QED?
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.")
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]-- notexactly, Jan 20 2020 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)-- theircompetitor, Jan 20 2020 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...-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jan 20 2020 //omit needless words//
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.-- pertinax, Jan 20 2020 ^Avoiding, the time marching on, deprecated words, clearly.-- wjt, Jan 21 2020 You interrupted the chirping crickets. They'll have to start again now.-- pertinax, Jan 21 2020 I'll have to apologize to some, now hungry, predators.-- wjt, Jan 21 2020 random, halfbakery