dvada191 wrote:

proudfootz wrote:

dvada191 wrote:

proudfootz wrote:

Heck, I didn't know for a fact they were keeping track of my phone calls until recently.

As you point out, if they want to they can do what they like under the excuse of 'national security' or some other such woo.

Why is it 'woo'?

It becomes woo when by chanting the magic spell 'national security' paranoid fuckwitted yahoos can do whatever the hell they like.

I'm sure tapping Angela Merkel's phone has saved many lives because of her terrorist activities...

Merkel has fuck all to do with the delusional idiots claiming that the NSA is "spying" on us and out activities. The fact is that no fucking NSA worker is going to stare at a list of sniffed packets. Your data gets banked, and is run through algorithms to check for suspicious activity (googling, "how to make a bomb"??). And anyway, they need a fucking warrant just to look through it.

Merkel does have something to do with delusional idiots claiming we aren't being spied upon.

After all, a week or so ago some numbnut could have said 'No one at the NSA is tapping her phone!'

Sadly, in this free society we enjoy we are reliant on whistle blowers to tell us about such things.

Apparently some dipshit at the NSA or some similar guardian of our liberties was able to get her phone tapped what do you bet the excuse was 'national security'?

If my neighbor monitors my phone activity, my internet activity, and photocopies my mail (not reading it right away, but banking it 'just in case' they want to read it later) I sort of think 'spying' is a pretty good word for it.

Bland assurances from discredited sources are every bit as comforting as this character -

[youtube]http://youtu.be/3DlN4Sh06po[/youtube]

Vice Admiral Sir John Cunningham: "There is no cannibalism in the British Navy. Absolutely none. And when I say 'none' I mean there is a certain amount - more than I'd care to admit. If there are any incidents of cannibal activities they're to tell me immediately so that I can immediately take every measure to hush the whole thing up. And finally necrophilia is right out!"

psikeyhackr wrote:9/11 has just made the cultural stupidity really obvious.

People in the nation that put men on the Moon can't figure out the importance of knowing the steel and concrete distributions in analysing any supposed collapses of skyscrapers.

Those people would be
a) People who wouldn't have a fucking clue what to do with the figures if they were in front of them.
and
b) People who would, but who for some reason don't seem to be concerned.

As someone who clearly belongs in group a), as you have demonstrated by your posts here, maybe you should keep your thought to yourself.

Still it's interesting to see you're finding lots of laughs from 9/11.
But then many conspiracy theorists do seem to see conspiracies as some form of sick entertainment.

Government conspiracy theories are a conspiracy; they help perpetuate the myth of monolithic hegemony to mask the absolute clusterfuck in a quagmire that is governing. A facetious thanks too all those who participate in the spreading of misinformation.

Each of Kali's hands knows fuck all what the others are up to and they're all fighting over the levers of power.

The reality is chaotic and potentially darker than the conspiracy fantasy.

tolman wrote:

psikeyhackr wrote:9/11 has just made the cultural stupidity really obvious.

People in the nation that put men on the Moon can't figure out the importance of knowing the steel and concrete distributions in analysing any supposed collapses of skyscrapers.

Those people would be
a) People who wouldn't have a fucking clue what to do with the figures if they were in front of them.
and
b) People who would, but who for some reason don't seem to be concerned.

As someone who clearly belongs in group a), as you have demonstrated by your posts here, maybe you should keep your thought to yourself.

Still it's interesting to see you're finding lots of laughs from 9/11.
But then many conspiracy theorists do seem to see conspiracies as some form of sick entertainment.

I've never understood why it's so hard for some to acknowledge the probability that a small, dedicated, hardworking but dangerously fanatical group of people could conspire to attack the U.S. using 21st century guerrilla tactics.

While horrific, it remains a powerful argument for the agency of a few dozen human beings. We can all learn from this regardles of our politics.

On the one hand, a fervent belief that the government is working against your interests is harmful when the government is your elected representatives, what realistic alternatives are there to democratically electing representatives?

On the other hand, our governments really are found to be working against our interests on a fairly regular basis, corruption being the most obvious example.

The only real solution, I feel, lies in creating a system which minimises corruption. This is easier said than done, largely because the people who most benefit from corruption are the ones tasked with ending it.
Look at the USA for example, it is often touted as the exemplar democracy but, to my eyes at least, it is horrifically corrupt. A similar charge could be applied to most countries, I'm not intending to pick on the USA.

How do you distribute power without distributing the ability to use that power for your own interests?

Supporting Caste wrote:I've never understood why it's so hard for some to acknowledge the probability that a small, dedicated, hardworking but dangerously fanatical group of people could conspire to attack the U.S. using 21st century guerrilla tactics.

Conspiracy theories don't seem to be principally about what actually happened.
They seem to be more about some people finding a way to feel special, ahead of the game or intellectually superior when they seem otherwise fairly unlikely to have much reason for feeling like that.

I guess some people with inadequate education and a chip on their shoulder want to find a way to look down on people they are jealous of.
For some people, certain types of religion might provide a way to do that (undereducated/miseducated creationists sneering at qualified biologists), but for people without religion, how can they manage to justify feelings of undeserved superiority?
Conspiracy theories would seem to be a fairly efficient way for people to feel they are on some kind of intellectual high ground without needing any actual intellect.

That it seems common (indeed, almost obligatory) for such people to dishonestly pretend things are more simple and polarised than they are seems likely to be related to the above. It seems almost an article of faith for such people to claim that anyone who isn't a conspiracy nut believes governments are thoroughly trustworthy, even in times when there is widespread cynicism about governments, and even when other people have explained that that isn't how they think.
Presumably a major reason for that is that if one is willing to lie and pretend that everyone else is entirely naive, then one could view one's own distrust of government as being an indication of great insight. It simply wouldn't do to acknowledge that other people distrust governments, just less obsessively.

trubble76 wrote:On the one hand, a fervent belief that the government is working against your interests is harmful when the government is your elected representatives, what realistic alternatives are there to democratically electing representatives?

On the other hand, our governments really are found to be working against our interests on a fairly regular basis, corruption being the most obvious example.

The only real solution, I feel, lies in creating a system which minimises corruption. This is easier said than done, largely because the people who most benefit from corruption are the ones tasked with ending it.
Look at the USA for example, it is often touted as the exemplar democracy but, to my eyes at least, it is horrifically corrupt. A similar charge could be applied to most countries, I'm not intending to pick on the USA.

How do you distribute power without distributing the ability to use that power for your own interests?

The problem lies in people. Any system could be made to work if it weren't for corrupt people being clever enough to get around it.

tolman wrote:

Supporting Caste wrote:I've never understood why it's so hard for some to acknowledge the probability that a small, dedicated, hardworking but dangerously fanatical group of people could conspire to attack the U.S. using 21st century guerrilla tactics.

Conspiracy theories don't seem to be principally about what actually happened.
They seem to be more about some people finding a way to feel special, ahead of the game or intellectually superior when they seem otherwise fairly unlikely to have much reason for feeling like that.

I guess some people with inadequate education and a chip on their shoulder want to find a way to look down on people they are jealous of.
For some people, certain types of religion might provide a way to do that (undereducated/miseducated creationists sneering at qualified biologists), but for people without religion, how can they manage to justify feelings of undeserved superiority?
Conspiracy theories would seem to be a fairly efficient way for people to feel they are on some kind of intellectual high ground without needing any actual intellect.

That it seems common (indeed, almost obligatory) for such people to dishonestly pretend things are more simple and polarised than they are seems likely to be related to the above. It seems almost an article of faith for such people to claim that anyone who isn't a conspiracy nut believes governments are thoroughly trustworthy, even in times when there is widespread cynicism about governments, and even when other people have explained that that isn't how they think.
Presumably a major reason for that is that if one is willing to lie and pretend that everyone else is entirely naive, then one could view one's own distrust of government as being an indication of great insight. It simply wouldn't do to acknowledge that other people distrust governments, just less obsessively.

I find the anti-conspiracists are in the way of trying to find people to look down upon.

It makes them feel special.

proudfootz wrote:I find the anti-conspiracists are in the way of trying to find people to look down upon.

It makes them feel special

Thinking of the 9/11 thread, given the lack of competence of the people crying 'conspiracy', I'm not sure people who have a clue about physics or engineering would need to do anything in order to feel superior, if that was actually what they wanted.

However, I don't see many people there who do have a relevant education trying to make a big deal out of that even in the face of attempted patronisation from people who evidently don't understand what they're talking about.

It would hardly be much of an achievement to know more about physics or engineering than most Truthers, since any first-year engineering undergraduate should be well above that level.

People who actually do science or engineering don't need ignoramuses to compare themselves with to feel worthwhile - they can just look at what they do for satisfaction in its own right.
If all the conspiracy theorists were whisked away in black helicopters overnight, I can't see many scientists or engineers being likely to miss them.

tolman wrote:

proudfootz wrote:I find the anti-conspiracists are in the way of trying to find people to look down upon.

It makes them feel special

Thinking of the 9/11 thread, given the lack of competence of the people crying 'conspiracy', I'm not sure people who have a clue about physics or engineering would need to do anything in order to feel superior, if that was actually what they wanted.

However, I don't see many people there who do have a relevant education trying to make a big deal out of that even in the face of attempted patronisation from people who evidently don't understand what they're talking about.

It would hardly be much of an achievement to know more about physics or engineering than most Truthers, since any first-year engineering undergraduate should be well above that level.

People who actually do science or engineering don't need ignoramuses to compare themselves with to feel worthwhile - they can just look at what they do for satisfaction in its own right.

If all the conspiracy theorists were whisked away in black helicopters overnight, I can't see many scientists or engineers being likely to miss them.

Nor would the world miss all the ignoramuses who feel compelled to put down so-called 'conspiracy theorists'...

They seem to be more about some people finding a way to feel special, ahead of the game or intellectually superior when they seem otherwise fairly unlikely to have much reason for feeling like that.

proudfootz wrote:Nor would the world miss all the ignoramuses who feel compelled to put down so-called 'conspiracy theorists'...

They seem to be more about some people finding a way to feel special, ahead of the game or intellectually superior when they seem otherwise fairly unlikely to have much reason for feeling like that.

The childishness and lack of inventiveness of your post is noted, albeit without any surprise.

Had you had anything worthwhile to say, I assume you would have tried to say it.

That conspiracy theorists who demonstrably do know far less than is necessary to meaningfully talk about a technical issue think that their special something extra somehow makes up for a lack of either formal education or competent self-education is quite clear, and your pathetic 'you too' replies won't change that.

tolman wrote:

proudfootz wrote:Nor would the world miss all the ignoramuses who feel compelled to put down so-called 'conspiracy theorists'...

They seem to be more about some people finding a way to feel special, ahead of the game or intellectually superior when they seem otherwise fairly unlikely to have much reason for feeling like that.

The childishness and lack of inventiveness of your post is noted, albeit without any surprise.

Funny how you only recognize the childishness of your own words when I forget to put them in quotes...

Had you had anything worthwhile to say, I assume you would have tried to say it.

Check yourself. You've posted nothing of substance.

That conspiracy theorists who demonstrably do know far less than is necessary to meaningfully talk about a technical issue think that their special something extra somehow makes up for a lack of either formal education or competent self-education is quite clear, and your pathetic 'you too' replies won't change that.

There may be some who fit that description, just as there are rabid anti-conspiracists who know fuck all about technical issues either.

Your pathetic attempts to argue otherwise betray a certain Manichean worldview of black and white with no color or even greys.

But do go on shouting about 'conspiracists' ruining the country. It reads like those who blame 'immigrants' for what's wrong, or 'socialism', or whatever hobbyhorse is the preferred bogeyman de jour.

Supporting Caste wrote:Government conspiracy theories are a conspiracy; they help perpetuate the myth of monolithic hegemony to mask the absolute clusterfuck in a quagmire that is governing. A facetious thanks too all those who participate in the spreading of misinformation.

You might not read the papers, but I think you will find governments are among the biggest spreaders of misinformation.

Each of Kali's hands knows fuck all what the others are up to and they're all fighting over the levers of power.

Well, that's a theory.

Do you think that sometimes these individuals work together to acquire power?

What do you think these people want power for?

And in the democratic world of transparency in government, why are all these strugglers for power so keen on keeping their activities secret?

The reality is chaotic and potentially darker than the conspiracy fantasy.

No doubt things are dark and chaotic. But people won't stop speculating about conspiracies until we get a few centuries under our belts of people not participating in conspiracies.

proudfootz wrote:Funny how you only recognize the childishness of your own words when I forget to put them in quotes...

[I would have hoped] 0bviously, the childishness of your post comes from the silly repeating back without any meaningful attempt to analyse or refute.

proudfootz wrote:

That conspiracy theorists who demonstrably do know far less than is necessary to meaningfully talk about a technical issue think that their special something extra somehow makes up for a lack of either formal education or competent self-education is quite clear, and your pathetic 'you too' replies won't change that.

There may be some who fit that description, just as there are rabid anti-conspiracists who know fuck all about technical issues either.

Not 'may be'.
There definitely are some, in significant quantity. And some pretty obviously post here.

Clearly there has to be a reason why some people feel a need/desire to talk with a claimed air of authority about things they don't know enough about and to keep doing that even when it's clear that they are unqualified.
Many normal people get carried away from time to time and talk about things a bit beyond their abilities, but few sane people would go around repeatedly suggesting that the bulk of entire professions were wrong on matters of fairly simple objective and supposedly important facts while failing to actually engage with people who disagreed with them on the matter of those facts.

Certainly it is possible in technical fields for a relative amateur to occasionally come up with something which relative experts have overlooked or been brought to believe impossible, but such occurrences are rather rare, and would tend to be characterised by the amateur still having a decent understanding of the field while maybe just lacking some unhelpful prejudices, and the amateur being able to engage in meaningful and honest conversations.
Even people who disagreed with them should be likely to view them as largely competent even if judged mistaken on some particular point, rather than just being a joke.
An amateur who made sweeping criticisms while appearing to be an ignorant idiot would seem highly unlikely to be any kind of world-changer.

proudfootz wrote:Your pathetic attempts to argue otherwise betray a certain Manichean worldview of black and white with no color or even greys.

You're telling untruths there, so blatantly that it's hard to see it as other than deliberate.

I never claimed that everyone criticising conspiracy theories was some sort of expert, nor did I claim that all conspiracy proponents were ignorant.
I was simply talking about the very obvious and vocal subset of conspiracy proponents who are clearly less bright than they seem to think, and who seem obtusely resistant to even logical argument, yet who seem oddly motivated to give everyone else the disbenefit of their opinions.
Particularly, the kind of people who like inventing grandiose and elaborate conspiracies and trying to portray them as the obvious answer, ironically often with appeals to Occam and/or common sense.
Thus, despite a Grand Conspiracy being posited which (if it existed) would have had the power to take over airliners and crash them into buildings, in order to simulate doing that 'they' take over airliners and make them vanish elsewhere while making fake airliner crashes which involves a great deal of prior work and subsequent cover-up.
And the simulation is botched anyway, since 'they' demolish buildings which supposedly anyone can see wouldn't collapse as a result of airliner impacts and resulting aftermath, and even demolish another building which they could have adequately destroyed any allegedly unwanted contents of simply by setting fires and letting them burn.

proudfootz wrote:But do go on shouting about 'conspiracists' ruining the country.

Please explain how I can 'go on' doing something which I haven't been doing?

Personally, I see conspiracy nuts self-medicating with attention as primarily a source of limited annoyance on little bits of the internet.

proudfootz wrote:It reads like those who blame 'immigrants' for what's wrong, or 'socialism', or whatever hobbyhorse is the preferred bogeyman de jour.

It's interesting that you should say that, since as far as I can see, it's when conspiracy theories get manipulated by people with real axes to grind that they stop being pathetic and actually become dangerous, blaming all manner of ills on one or more groups - Commies, the bourgeoisie, Jews, Muslims, blacks, Rightists, splittists, men, women, gay mafias, Enemies of the Revolution, or whatever.

tolman wrote:

proudfootz wrote:Funny how you only recognize the childishness of your own words when I forget to put them in quotes...

[I would have hoped] 0bviously, the childishness of your post comes from the silly repeating back without any meaningful attempt to analyse or refute.

Analyze or refute what? There was no substance to your post AFAICT.

Even you found your own words to be childish.

proudfootz wrote:

That conspiracy theorists who demonstrably do know far less than is necessary to meaningfully talk about a technical issue think that their special something extra somehow makes up for a lack of either formal education or competent self-education is quite clear, and your pathetic 'you too' replies won't change that.

There may be some who fit that description, just as there are rabid anti-conspiracists who know fuck all about technical issues either.

Not 'may be'.
There definitely are some, in significant quantity. And some pretty obviously post here.

Clearly there has to be a reason why some people feel a need/desire to talk with a claimed air of authority about things they don't know enough about and to keep doing that even when it's clear that they are unqualified.

It may very well be for the reasons you cite: anti-conspiracists with a compulsion to put down others may have a desire to feel superior to others even though they have not earned such feelings.

Many normal people get carried away from time to time and talk about things a bit beyond their abilities, but few sane people would go around repeatedly suggesting that the bulk of entire professions were wrong on matters of fairly simple objective and supposedly important facts while failing to actually engage with people who disagreed with them on the matter of those facts.

Clearly what's needed is for someone like you, obviously a skilled amateur armchair psychologist!

proudfootz wrote:Your pathetic attempts to argue otherwise betray a certain Manichean worldview of black and white with no color or even greys.

You're telling untruths there, so blatantly that it's hard to see it as other than deliberate.

Am I? It seemed you were intent to 'go after' unlearned people who argued one side, without equally condemning unlearned people who argue against them. Perhaps I was mistaken.

But do feel free to show me the error of my assumption by quoting where you are equally harsh with bullshitters who are anti-conspiracist.

I never claimed that everyone criticising conspiracy theories was some sort of expert, nor did I claim that all conspiracy proponents were ignorant.

That's a very fair assessment. There are worthy contributions from many diverse people who may reach different conclusions.

I was simply talking about the very obvious and vocal subset of conspiracy proponents who are clearly less bright than they seem to think, and who seem obtusely resistant to even logical argument, yet who seem oddly motivated to give everyone else the disbenefit of their opinions.

I find many are less bright than they seem to think.

Particularly, the kind of people who like inventing grandiose and elaborate conspiracies and trying to portray them as the obvious answer, ironically often with appeals to Occam and/or common sense.

This is all beginning to look rather vague and hand wavey.

Sometimes there are indeed grandiose conspiracies, and elaborate ones. Invented by criminals, not exposers of criminals.

Why should it be 'ironic' to appeal to Occam or common sense when we know that conspiracies are engaged in, sometimes they are complex, and sometimes they are grandiose?

You seem to have someone in mind? Or are you inventing a 'conspiracy theorist' upon whom you can vent your spleen?

Thus, despite a Grand Conspiracy being posited which (if it existed) would have had the power to take over airliners and crash them into buildings, in order to simulate doing that 'they' take over airliners and make them vanish elsewhere while making fake airliner crashes which involves a great deal of prior work and subsequent cover-up.

I suppose that such a conspiracy (eerily like that of Operation Northwoods recommended to JFK during his brief tenure as President in the US) would indeed require quite a bit of work and coverup.

So what?

And the simulation is botched anyway, since 'they' demolish buildings which supposedly anyone can see wouldn't collapse as a result of airliner impacts and resulting aftermath, and even demolish another building which they could have adequately destroyed any allegedly unwanted contents of simply by setting fires and letting them burn.

How is it 'botched' when (if this is indeed what happened) they can convince a loud minority of ordinary people who know nothing technical about the subject to devote hour after hour of their spare time to 'debunking' suspicions?

proudfootz wrote:But do go on shouting about 'conspiracists' ruining the country.

Please explain how I can 'go on' doing something which I haven't been doing?

I may have been mistaken thinking you were in agreement with the title of this thread.

Personally, I see conspiracy nuts self-medicating with attention as primarily a source of limited annoyance on little bits of the internet.

As, I'm sure you will agree, are the anti-conspiracy nuts.

proudfootz wrote:It reads like those who blame 'immigrants' for what's wrong, or 'socialism', or whatever hobbyhorse is the preferred bogeyman de jour.

It's interesting that you should say that, since as far as I can see, it's when conspiracy theories get manipulated by people with real axes to grind that they stop being pathetic and actually become dangerous, blaming all manner of ills on one or more groups - Commies, the bourgeoisie, Jews, Muslims, blacks, Rightists, splittists, men, women, gay mafias, Enemies of the Revolution, or whatever.

Sadly, if it weren't for the existence of real conspiracies there'd be no reason for the public to speculate.

proudfootz wrote:Analyze or refute what? There was no substance to your post AFAICT.

Even you found your own words to be childish.

You're deliberately telling lies again
Even if it was likely obvious to anyone but a fuckwit the first time around that I was referring to your pathetic 'you too' response, it should have been crystal clear even to a fuckwit after I explictly pointed that out.

proudfootz wrote:

proudfootz wrote:Your pathetic attempts to argue otherwise betray a certain Manichean worldview of black and white with no color or even greys.

You're telling untruths there, so blatantly that it's hard to see it as other than deliberate.

Am I? It seemed you were intent to 'go after' unlearned people who argued one side, without equally condemning unlearned people who argue against them. Perhaps I was mistaken.

But do feel free to show me the error of my assumption by quoting where you are equally harsh with bullshitters who are anti-conspiracist.

That's a complete logic fail.

You were accusing me of having a black and white view (which I don't have, and which, indeed, I had earlier suggested was one of the failings of the nuttier conspiracy nuts).
Then you try and defend your comment by saying I wasn't equally criticising ignorant people who use bogus arguments when arguing with ignorant conspiracy theorists.

Firstly, that's a fail since the point I was making was regarding ignorant people criticising people who do have a clue, not ignorant people arguing with each other. The latter wasn't obviously an issue of debate.

Secondly, it's a fail since even if I had done exactly what you claimed in a situation where it was relevant, and indeed even if I had denied the existence of ignorant people who didn't believe in conspiracy theories (which I obviously didn't), that would pretty obviously not be an instance of 'black-and-white thinking', but of one or other form of bias, which would be an entirely different sin.

proudfootz wrote:Why should it be 'ironic' to appeal to Occam or common sense when we know that conspiracies are engaged in, sometimes they are complex, and sometimes they are grandiose?

Because the people making such claims seem often to see highly complicated conspiracies as being simple explanations for events.
'The Conspiracy did it!' is not a simple explanation if The Conspiracy is highly complex and its existence is entirely speculative.

proudfootz wrote:I suppose that such a conspiracy (eerily like that of Operation Northwoods recommended to JFK during his brief tenure as President in the US) would indeed require quite a bit of work and coverup.

Hardly 'eeerily alike', as far as I can see.

The main WTC conspiracy theories are essentially that a great conspiracy organisation secretly and carefully and elaborately planned to make everyone believe something happened, the impossibility of which is claimed to be obvious even to people of limited education and intelligence.
Furthermore, some of the theories claim that that isn't enough, and that rather than merely crashing freely chosen yet mid-size and allegedly inadequately damaging aircraft into freely chosen targets they were unable to destroy (and therefore having to also arrange non-believable demolitions), the conspiracy also decided to fake the impacts as well.

And, of course, the choice of the supposedly 'impossible' targets then necessitated large-scale cover-ups, the involvement of numerous people unlikely to remotely share the aims of the conspiracy, and hope that of the large number of people qualified to say 'that's bollocks', very few people would say anything critical of an obviously bogus explanation.

Compared to that, doing simple real stuff (shootings, bombings, sinking boats) and blaming it on someone else at a fevered point of the Cold War would seem like a piece of cake.

But of course, the reason why conspiracy nuts have to argue that the events of 9/11 were 'impossible' is because that's essentially the only argument they have.

proudfootz wrote:How is it 'botched' when (if this is indeed what happened) they can convince a loud minority of ordinary people who know nothing technical about the subject to devote hour after hour of their spare time to 'debunking' suspicions?

There would seem to be a fairly low limit to what someone would need to know to see the flaws and ignorance in most of the conspiracy arguments that get presented here.
For example, I would expect that quite a few of the people I studied physics with at high school would see the flaws in psikeyhackr's attempts at arguments.

Obviously, an actual conspiracy may not bother much about nobodies who no-one is ever likely to take seriously, but surely if the conspiracy was faking something impossible they would actually be concerned about the people who might get listened to?
I can't see them caring much about the psikeys of the world, but they would seem rather more likely to worry what people who did have a clue might think, not only in their own country but in places they could control rather less easily.
Since it would be trivially easy for a conspiracy of the size/power/reach of the claimed one to arrange any number of other atrocities they could easily spin into excuses for war, why should they choose one which is supposedly 'impossible'.
Seemingly the only forthcoming explanation is what I guess you'd call an armchair psychiatrist one along the lines of 'Maybe they did it to show off'.

proudfootz wrote:

proudfootz wrote:But do go on shouting about 'conspiracists' ruining the country.

Please explain how I can 'go on' doing something which I haven't been doing?

I may have been mistaken thinking you were in agreement with the title of this thread.

What, just by posting in it?

Remember what I said earlier about the idiocy of people projecting their retarded black-and-white views of reality onto other people?

This is exactly the kind of thing I was thinking of.
Thanks for the illustration.

The more information we have about what governments and corporations are up to the less we seem to trust them.

All forms of government are a conspiracy, allegedly on behalf of the people they represent, or claim to, and their interests. Depending on which political state you live in; learning more about your government and it's true conspiratorial aims, may well result in you trusting it less. Especially in terms of it being considered a representative and legitimate conspiracy in the interests of its people. If you're lucky, you live in a state where the more you find out about your national conspiracy - your government, the more you trust it.


Either and all of which realisations would constitute a rationalisation of your understanding.


Conversely, the whole NWO/Illuminati/insert stupid shit here, type of conspiracy theory is, I think, primarily explained as a form of postmodern worship of irrationalism. A religion for the postmodern generation who are too cool to be party to ye olde conspiracy hogwash such as orthodox religions, but not so cool they don't reinvent such irrationalist dogma to a specification of their own choosing. Such people are no help to the ongoing rational, real-world attempts to curb, control, and challenge the abuses of power by governments.

If Alex Jones, for example, has been of any discernable use to anyone, it has to be as a servant of the abusive powers, not their nemesis as he styles himself. As I like to tell AJ fans - he is a Jesuit CIA insider working for the illuminati!!! Wake up people!!

Sauce for the goose etc...

Anyway, I was going to ramble and ruminate on this topic far more than I have but being a generally minimalist poster, I feel I have said too much already so I'll leave it at that.

tolman wrote:

proudfootz wrote:Analyze or refute what? There was no substance to your post AFAICT.

Even you found your own words to be childish.

You're deliberately telling lies again

Nope. Everybody can read the post. You embarrassed yourself and now try to blame me for your foolishness.

Even if it was likely obvious to anyone but a fuckwit the first time around that I was referring to your pathetic 'you too' response, it should have been crystal clear even to a fuckwit after I explictly pointed that out.

Oooo. Acting angry means you must be sincere.

proudfootz wrote:

proudfootz wrote:Your pathetic attempts to argue otherwise betray a certain Manichean worldview of black and white with no color or even greys.

You're telling untruths there, so blatantly that it's hard to see it as other than deliberate.

Am I? It seemed you were intent to 'go after' unlearned people who argued one side, without equally condemning unlearned people who argue against them. Perhaps I was mistaken.

But do feel free to show me the error of my assumption by quoting where you are equally harsh with bullshitters who are anti-conspiracist.

That's a complete logic fail.

You were accusing me of having a black and white view (which I don't have, and which, indeed, I had earlier suggested was one of the failings of the nuttier conspiracy nuts).

Then you try and defend your comment by saying I wasn't equally criticising ignorant people who use bogus arguments when arguing with ignorant conspiracy theorists.

Firstly, that's a fail since the point I was making was regarding ignorant people criticising people who do have a clue, not ignorant people arguing with each other. The latter wasn't obviously an issue of debate.

Secondly, it's a fail since even if I had done exactly what you claimed in a situation where it was relevant, and indeed even if I had denied the existence of ignorant people who didn't believe in conspiracy theories (which I obviously didn't), that would pretty obviously not be an instance of 'black-and-white thinking', but of one or other form of bias, which would be an entirely different sin.

Could you be any more vague?

The post I responded to was so empty of content it could easily apply to the anti-conspiracist kooks. Which I did.

proudfootz wrote:Why should it be 'ironic' to appeal to Occam or common sense when we know that conspiracies are engaged in, sometimes they are complex, and sometimes they are grandiose?

Because the people making such claims seem often to see highly complicated conspiracies as being simple explanations for events.

This observation would benefit from having something specific in it.

'The Conspiracy did it!' is not a simple explanation if The Conspiracy is highly complex and its existence is entirely speculative.

Apparently you are trying to refer to something. I wonder what it is.

proudfootz wrote:I suppose that such a conspiracy (eerily like that of Operation Northwoods recommended to JFK during his brief tenure as President in the US) would indeed require quite a bit of work and coverup.

Hardly 'eeerily alike', as far as I can see.

No. Just the usual highly complex false-flag terrorist campaign involving hundreds of people in an effort to stampede the US into war. Dime a dozen.

Nothing to see here...

The main WTC conspiracy theories are essentially that a great conspiracy organisation secretly and carefully and elaborately planned to make everyone believe something happened, the impossibility of which is claimed to be obvious even to people of limited education and intelligence.

Is that right?

Furthermore, some of the theories claim that that isn't enough, and that rather than merely crashing freely chosen yet mid-size and allegedly inadequately damaging aircraft into freely chosen targets they were unable to destroy (and therefore having to also arrange non-believable demolitions), the conspiracy also decided to fake the impacts as well.

Yep. There is AFAICT some diversity among speculations about the terror attacks on 9/11.

And, of course, the choice of the supposedly 'impossible' targets then necessitated large-scale cover-ups, the involvement of numerous people unlikely to remotely share the aims of the conspiracy, and hope that of the large number of people qualified to say 'that's bollocks', very few people would say anything critical of an obviously bogus explanation.

Is there any way to know how many people you mean by 'numerous' or a 'large number' etc? is it ten? One hundred? A thousand? Is there any reason to imagine there is any thought behind this theory of yours? Other than the 'argument from incredulity'?

Compared to that, doing simple real stuff (shootings, bombings, sinking boats) and blaming it on someone else at a fevered point of the Cold War would seem like a piece of cake.

Yes, one of the plans in Northwoods was to fake the destruction of an airplane that was supposed to land safely. Our boys at the Pentagon were confident they could pull that off, no problem - despite the fact that the fucking plane would be right there for everyone on base to gawk at.

But of course, the reason why conspiracy nuts have to argue that the events of 9/11 were 'impossible' is because that's essentially the only argument they have.

Really? Now do you get all this insider info on these 'nuts' through your Ouija board? Or is Tarot more your style?

proudfootz wrote:How is it 'botched' when (if this is indeed what happened) they can convince a loud minority of ordinary people who know nothing technical about the subject to devote hour after hour of their spare time to 'debunking' suspicions?

There would seem to be a fairly low limit to what someone would need to know to see the flaws and ignorance in most of the conspiracy arguments that get presented here.

I see - so one need not be an 'expert' to be an anti-conspiracist nutter. That explains a lot!

For example, I would expect that quite a few of the people I studied physics with at high school would see the flaws in psikeyhackr's attempts at arguments.

Maybe they would. Maybe they wouldn't.

That would require not only mind reading, but the gift of prophecy as well.

Obviously, an actual conspiracy may not bother much about nobodies who no-one is ever likely to take seriously, but surely if the conspiracy was faking something impossible they would actually be concerned about the people who might get listened to?

I can't see them caring much about the psikeys of the world, but they would seem rather more likely to worry what people who did have a clue might think, not only in their own country but in places they could control rather less easily.

Since it would be trivially easy for a conspiracy of the size/power/reach of the claimed one to arrange any number of other atrocities they could easily spin into excuses for war, why should they choose one which is supposedly 'impossible'.

Seemingly the only forthcoming explanation is what I guess you'd call an armchair psychiatrist one along the lines of 'Maybe they did it to show off'.

It is true that sociopaths seem to like to rub people's noses in it - 'taunting' their victims and onlookers.

People capable of such heinous acts (assuming for the sake of argument that 9/11 was an 'inside job') might have the advantage of controlling the evidence, much like when a corrupt police force plants incriminating evidence or suppresses exculpating evidence.

Suppose someone who 'does have a clue' objects - the evidence they'd need to make their case is in the hands of the criminals.

A bland denial from the police department government agency is usually all it takes to settle things for the average punter. Once that's done the average news service goes on to the next story.

proudfootz wrote:

Please explain how I can 'go on' doing something which I haven't been doing?

I may have been mistaken thinking you were in agreement with the title of this thread.

What, just by posting in it?

Not just that, as I am also posting on the thread. But by indulging in anti-conspiracist rhetoric.

But I could have been mistaken.

Remember what I said earlier about the idiocy of people projecting their retarded black-and-white views of reality onto other people? This is exactly the kind of thing I was thinking of. Thanks for the illustration.

It seems I wasn't mistaken - another long un-nuanced tirade against 'conspiracists'.

proudfootz wrote:Nope. Everybody can read the post. You embarrassed yourself and now try to blame me for your foolishness.

I really didn't think you'd be obtuse enough to carry on your lies to this extent.

Given that I said:

tolman wrote:The childishness and lack of inventiveness of your post is noted, albeit without any surprise.

I suspect it was clear to most people from the start that I was perfectly aware you were simply repeating what I had said, and that that was what was childish.

But if you want to keep pretending otherwise, I doubt you'll surprise many people now.

proudfootz wrote:

That's a complete logic fail.

You were accusing me of having a black and white view (which I don't have, and which, indeed, I had earlier suggested was one of the failings of the nuttier conspiracy nuts).

Then you try and defend your comment by saying I wasn't equally criticising ignorant people who use bogus arguments when arguing with ignorant conspiracy theorists.

Firstly, that's a fail since the point I was making was regarding ignorant people criticising people who do have a clue, not ignorant people arguing with each other. The latter wasn't obviously an issue of debate.

Secondly, it's a fail since even if I had done exactly what you claimed in a situation where it was relevant, and indeed even if I had denied the existence of ignorant people who didn't believe in conspiracy theories (which I obviously didn't), that would pretty obviously not be an instance of 'black-and-white thinking', but of one or other form of bias, which would be an entirely different sin.

Could you be any more vague?

The post I responded to was so empty of content it could easily apply to the anti-conspiracist kooks. Which I did.

Vague?
You accused me of 'black and white thinking', and your 'evidence' for that was that I failed to condemn something which wasn't the subject of the thread, which I hadn't denied happened, and which even if it happened wouldn't be a mirror-image of what I was talking about.
And where failing to condemn it even if it was a live issue would be nothing to do with 'black and white thinking'
That is to say, your 'evidence' was bugger-all to do with what you were accusing me of.

But that you lack the decency or honesty to acknowledge that seems pretty typical.

proudfootz wrote:

Hardly 'eeerily alike', as far as I can see.

The main WTC conspiracy theories are essentially that a great conspiracy organisation secretly and carefully and elaborately planned to make everyone believe something happened, the impossibility of which is claimed to be obvious even to people of limited education and intelligence.[/quote]

Is that right?[/quote]
Looking at the theories presented here and elsewhere, it appears to be.
Most of the people making the arguments that events were impossible seem to be neither particularly qualified nor especially bright.

proudfootz wrote:

And, of course, the choice of the supposedly 'impossible' targets then necessitated large-scale cover-ups, the involvement of numerous people unlikely to remotely share the aims of the conspiracy, and hope that of the large number of people qualified to say 'that's bollocks', very few people would say anything critical of an obviously bogus explanation.

Is there any way to know how many people you mean by 'numerous' or a 'large number' etc? is it ten? One hundred? A thousand?

Well, if you're so clueless regarding what would be necessary at minimum to pull off the various alleged conspiracy scenarios, maybe you shouldn't pontificate about conspiracies and attack people questioning them as if you did actually have a clue.

proudfootz wrote:Yes, one of the plans in Northwoods was to fake the destruction of an airplane that was supposed to land safely. Our boys at the Pentagon were confident they could pull that off, no problem - despite the fact that the fucking plane would be right there for everyone on base to gawk at.

And did the plans go into details about how such a thing could be pulled off in the long term with either:
a) people still alive who were supposed to have died, or
b) people supposed to have died who never existed?

proudfootz wrote:

But of course, the reason why conspiracy nuts have to argue that the events of 9/11 were 'impossible' is because that's essentially the only argument they have.

Really? Now do you get all this insider info on these 'nuts' through your Ouija board? Or is Tarot more your style?

It's quite clear that the basic argument of most 9/11 conspiracy theories is that it must have been a Great Conspiracy because what is supposed to have happened couldn't actually have happened.
That is why so much effort seems to go into making claims regarding the impossibility of the basics of the official explanation.
Without that, there seems to be little other than arguments built around sparse and weak circumstantial evidence.
Which seems to be why people try to defend the basic assertion at all costs even when their arguments are useless.

proudfootz wrote:

There would seem to be a fairly low limit to what someone would need to know to see the flaws and ignorance in most of the conspiracy arguments that get presented here.

I see - so one need not be an 'expert' to be an anti-conspiracist nutter.

Well, obviously you're trying to shittily misrepresent what I said, though I suppose history suggests you probably couldn't be trusted to do anything else.

Getting back to what I actually said:
One certainly doesn't need to be a certified structural engineer to see that psikeyhackr's arguments are a pile of crap, since the flaws in his arguments are very basic, and likely to be visible to many people with high school physics and a popular-science-level comprehension of engineering.
That's surely one of the important things about objective/scientific arguments - if an argument is demonstrably bollocks, it doesn't actually take a professor to point it out, just someone with a possibly limited yet correct understanding.

That's even leaving aside the fact that he continually and deliberately avoids answering clear and simple questions regarding claims he makes which are fundamental to his argument.
And I don't think people need advanced qualifications in psychology or psychiatry to understand what that means.
They just need to understand that when people have an argument they can't rationally defend, some choose to simply avoid the issue even when it's obvious to any rational observer that that is what they are doing.
I would have thought that's something that most people learn just from growing up.

proudfootz wrote::smug:

Yes, you are, but not with any obvious justification.

proudfootz wrote:

For example, I would expect that quite a few of the people I studied physics with at high school would see the flaws in psikeyhackr's attempts at arguments.

Maybe they would. Maybe they wouldn't.

That would require not only mind reading, but the gift of prophecy as well.

No, it simply requires an understanding of how fundamentally retarded his arguments are.
What a pity that appears to be something which you lack.

proudfootz wrote:People capable of such heinous acts (assuming for the sake of argument that 9/11 was an 'inside job') might have the advantage of controlling the evidence, much like when a corrupt police force plants incriminating evidence or suppresses exculpating evidence.

No, not much like that, since faking evidence in a police investigation is something which can be done by a small number of people or even a single person either planting it for others to find or claiming to have found it, quite possibly with one piece being enough.
And typically with few other official people around who would have any particular reason for doubting that evidence.

Removing evidence from a large and complex scene is quite different, since if there will be many people present, no-one knows in advance who might find it.

proudfootz wrote:Suppose someone who 'does have a clue' objects - the evidence they'd need to make their case is in the hands of the criminals.

Not if the conspiracy claimants are to be believed - their major claim seems to be that the official explanation is demonstrably impossible, even obviously impossible.
Were that claim actually true, the official explanation itself would be the evidence anyone should need to show that at the very least, something was Deeply Wrong.

Government and media do lie and misled. You really can't trust any of them to have correct information. I'm not sure how this will destroy democracy.