• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Flawed Conspiracy Theorist logic

The Common Potato said:
I recall reading somewhere or other (paraphrasing) "please don't use maths or formulae as these are often used to confuse."
Click to expand...

IIRC Stephen Hawking was told by his publisher not to put equations in A Brief History of Time as you supposedly lost half your potential sales for each one. :eek:
 
There's a HUGE difference between denying global warming and believing in, for example, the fact that the mayor of Toronto smoked crack and beat up his sister's ex in jail to keep him silent about it.

The 2nd thing actually happened.
 
CT nuts have a need to be absolutists.
They lack or deny the necessary ambiguity to functionally operate in a world of imperfect information.

Since the consequences of denying Climate Change are so much worse than just presuming it's real until the Data is unambiguous, one way or the other, the sensible, none-selfish path is clear.
Most CTs are just justifications for procrastinating.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
CT nuts have a need to be absolutists.
They lack or deny the necessary ambiguity to functionally operate in a world of imperfect information.

Since the consequences of denying Climate Change are so much worse than just presuming it's real until the Data is unambiguous, one way or the other, the sensible, none-selfish path is clear.
Most CTs are just justifications for procrastinating.
Click to expand...
Such conspiratorial nonsense also helps to massage their egos.
 
A great example of a recent, real-world conspiracy is the Hezbollah pager operation. 3,000 wounded and killing around 20. We have a vague idea how Mossad pulled it off, and it's an example that runs counter to the standard Occam's Razor theory due to the complexity, and audacity required for success. But it happened, and while nobody officially took credit for the sabotage you don't have to be a deep thinker to accurately guess the guilty party behind the attack. What CTists will ignore is the consistency of the entire operation. At no point are outside governments advised nor involved. No additional shadowy entities have been hinted as accessories, and no deeper conspiracies hinted at. And each pager has bee traced back to a lot number, shipment number, shipment date, point of origin, the factory, and the paper trial showing who bought the company prior to the order.

These facts are consistent with all historical conspiracies. The only thing consistent with the average CT is inconsistency, lack of documented facts, and often
 
Robin said:
Isn't "Flawed Conspiracy Theorist Logic" a tautology? The word "flawed" is redundant.
Click to expand...
dudalb said:
Thing about Logic is it works on the GIGO principal:Garbage In,Garbage Out. You have bad premises, you will have bad conclusions.
Click to expand...
That, as a friend of mine once said, you can have flawless logic but if your starting premise is wrong, it doesn't matter how could your logic is.
Thermal said:
Some recent observations about CTers. You know, just in general.

Dishonest and dumb as rocks, but convinced they are the smart ones in the room. Not bright enough to see how bad their thinking really is.
Click to expand...
Nah and why folks think skeptics are all holier than though jerks. Smart people can believe all sorts of nonsense, one thing being smart does for you, it makes you better able to rationalize the nonsense you believe. Yes, there are plenty of conmen peddling conspiracy, and plenty of morons, but there are also plenty of relatively smart people who are logicking themselves into corners.

As for my own observation, I've seen a lot of anomaly hunting. Its all what about this thing that I think is weird. You explain that it isn't and they move on to the next and you explain that it isn't weird repeat and after a dozen anomalies they start back at the beginning, forgetting that they'd already half conceded the point. I've done that in real life with a couple of very intelligent almost 9/11 truthers. Hell, the whole 9/11 truther thing is 90% anomaly hunting. The forget the whole thing was an anomaly, there's gonna be a bunch of ◊◊◊◊ we've never seen because we've never seen anything like it before or since. Well except that one small plane that hit the Empire State Building in the 30s.
 
There is a difference between intelligence and education/awareness. You can be smart, but untrained in critical thinking, or not aware of this discipline and its techniques.
I think the main issue is that CT-ists reject the very concept of critical thinking and its usefulness.
 
Cosmic Yak said:
There is a difference between intelligence and education/awareness. You can be smart, but untrained in critical thinking, or not aware of this discipline and its techniques.
I think the main issue is that CT-ists reject the very concept of critical thinking and its usefulness.
Click to expand...
I'm unconvinced, I think they believe they are using critical thinking.

Also, another thing, there's a lot of argument from incredulity. I can't believe this random event could have happened so someone must be behind it. I can't believe this lone nut could have killed X therefore there must be a conspiracy.
 
Axxman300 said:
A great example of a recent, real-world conspiracy is the Hezbollah pager operation. 3,000 wounded and killing around 20. We have a vague idea how Mossad pulled it off, and it's an example that runs counter to the standard Occam's Razor theory due to the complexity, and audacity required for success. But it happened, and while nobody officially took credit for the sabotage you don't have to be a deep thinker to accurately guess the guilty party behind the attack. What CTists will ignore is the consistency of the entire operation. At no point are outside governments advised nor involved. No additional shadowy entities have been hinted as accessories, and no deeper conspiracies hinted at. And each pager has bee traced back to a lot number, shipment number, shipment date, point of origin, the factory, and the paper trial showing who bought the company prior to the order.

These facts are consistent with all historical conspiracies. The only thing consistent with the average CT is inconsistency, lack of documented facts, and often
Click to expand...
Even the proposed Operation Northwoods was expected to only hold for a few days, before the connections were made and the truth came out.
 
theprestige said:
Even the proposed Operation Northwoods was expected to only hold for a few days, before the connections were made and the truth came out.
Click to expand...
There is an irony here because Northwoods was a white-paper assembled for the Kennedy NSC as part of Operation Mongoose, with the goal of invading Cuba:


Over the past fifteen years historians have slowly come to a consensus that the Cuban Missile Crisis was JFK's fault, and Castro's invitation to install Soviet missiles was an act of self defense. After his death much of the Kennedy NSC files were buried because of this, and led to theories of a government coverup with the assassination in Dallas.
 
ahhell said:
I'm unconvinced, I think they believe they are using critical thinking.
Click to expand...

The two are not mutually exclusive. You can believe you are using critical thinking, whilst being wrong about that, but still not be unintelligent.
ahhell said:
Also, another thing, there's a lot of argument from incredulity. I can't believe this random event could have happened so someone must be behind it. I can't believe this lone nut could have killed X therefore there must be a conspiracy.
Click to expand...

Sure. However, it's perfectly possible for an intelligent person to argue from incredulity- perhaps more so, as a smart person would assume their disbelief in something was a smart conclusion.
 
Cosmic Yak said:
The two are not mutually exclusive. You can believe you are using critical thinking, whilst being wrong about that, but still not be unintelligent.


Sure. However, it's perfectly possible for an intelligent person to argue from incredulity- perhaps more so, as a smart person would assume their disbelief in something was a smart conclusion.
Click to expand...
Rejecting the idea of critical thinking is mutually exclusive with accepting it but doing it wrong.

The thing about argument from incredulity was meant a separate topic from whether they are intelligent or not. I was just noting that in my experience, it's a pretty common attitude among the conspiracy minded.
 
Speaking as a reformed CTist, we rely on confirmation bias for 98% of the crap we think is true. In the CT world, coincidences don't exist, and it is impossible for two or more things to be true at the same time. CTists hunt for anomalies in events to poke holes in "the official story", and then claim there are too many unanswered questions because the investigation didn't look into those anomalies. This has been true from the JFK assassination, 9-11, and Sandyhook. Almost no actual research is done by the average CTist except for reading CT books written by other CTists. You can count the number of JFK CT loons who've read the entire Warren Commission on one hand, and I feel like I'm one of only a few who's poured through the assassination files.

I've said before that I was indoctrinated into the JFK assassination CT by my father when I was six. Many CTists share a similar background. Dad was not the paranoid type, but had served in the US Army in the early 1960s, and lost many friends in Dak To in Vietnam, and had a reasonable mistrust in the government as a result. Being a CTist is fun because it creates the illusion that you're smarter/wiser than everyone else because you, "know a secret". My problem leading to my renouncing, escape, and declaring total war on CTists was the endless contradictions CTs force believers to accept without question. With JFK the suspected cabal behind his death endlessly changed, and this conflicts with actual murders where there is usually one suspect, or set of suspects because that's where the evidence leads. And then I went to Dallas to Dealey Plaza, and that was the final straw. That was in 1996, and since then I've turned away from almost all the magical thinking in my life that fed the CT-drivers in my head.

And CTists are no longer harmless. Pizzagate has a body count. The current President and his Cabinet are all avowed CTists, and their actions reflect this.
 
ahhell said:
Rejecting the idea of critical thinking is mutually exclusive with accepting it but doing it wrong.

The thing about argument from incredulity was meant a separate topic from whether they are intelligent or not. I was just noting that in my experience, it's a pretty common attitude among the conspiracy minded.
Click to expand...

Yeah, my main point was to take issue with the claim that CT-ists are stupid, as in unintelligent. I think that claim is patronising, arrogant and basically wrong.
 
Cosmic Yak said:
Yeah, my main point was to take issue with the claim that CT-ists are stupid, as in unintelligent. I think that claim is patronising, arrogant and basically wrong.
Click to expand...
They tend to be intellectually lazy, but not stupid. For the most part, I think CTs become popular not because of the event itself that is nominally the focus of the CT, but because of what the event is seen to have caused later. To give a recent example, the 9-11 conspiracy theories became popular due to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars that resulted. There were arguments to be raised against those wars (and in retrospect it is hard to point to any lasting benefits), but these arguments tend to be more complex. How much easier it is to just say that 9-11 was a false-flag, and therefore no wars should result. Back during the Vietnam War we would hear similar arguments about the Kennedy assassination; that he would not have gotten us involved and so he had to go. Again, there were valid arguments against being involved in Vietnam, but if you believed the CIA had JFK whacked, you could short-circuit to the claim that obviously it was illegitimate.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom