Paper On Conspiratorial Thinking Invokes Conspiratorial Thinking 371
Layzej writes "Last summer a paper investigating the link between conspiratorial thinking and the rejection of climate science provoked a response on blogs skeptical of the scientific consensus that appeared to illustrate the very cognitive processes at the center of the research. This generated data for a new paper titled 'Recursive fury: Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation (PDF).' The researchers reviewed the reactions for evidence of conspiratorial thinking, including the presumption of nefarious intent, perception of persecution, the tendency to detect meaning in random events, and the ability to interpret contrary evidence as evidence that the conspiracy is even greater in scope that was originally believed. Some of the hypotheses promoted to dismiss the findings of the original paper ultimately grew in scope to include actors beyond the authors, such as university executives, a media organization, and the Australian government. It is not clear whether the response to this paper will itself provide data for further research, or how far down this recursion could progress. I fear the answer may be 'all the way.'"
Yo dawg (Score:4, Funny)
I herd you like conspiration theories
Re:Yo dawg (Score:5, Funny)
Cue conspiracy theories... (Score:3, Funny)
In 3... 2... 1...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Why would you say this ... unless you have inside knowledge!
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Yo Dawg, so like my theory is that some crazy mujahideen who happens to be really rich decided to attack America using airplanes. He conspires with a bunch of dudes who then steal the identities of some other dudes, so then they hijack and crash their stolen airplanes at 500mph into buildings! Meanwhile, crazy dude's freakin' brother Shafig is eating breakfast with the ex-president of the USA. Sick, huh?
Conspiracy? By definition - hell yes. True? Seems legit. The truth is already f*cked up enough - w
Wrong field (Score:2, Funny)
It took them less than a month to put a paper out. I'm in the wrong field. I could have graduated in half a year.
Random Randomization (Score:5, Interesting)
Are we to presume, then, from the analytical model in TFA that the LIBOR affair, Watergate, and the 1919 Black Sox scandal are all just paranoid hysteria?
Re:Random Randomization (Score:5, Insightful)
There were not a lot of people shouting in the desert that "LIBOR are fixing interest rates for their own gain!", nor a lot of people saying "Nixon is using illegal means to keep track of his political opponents. Guaranteed!". Conspiracy theorists tend to miss the real conspiracies, it seems.
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I think that's primarily because conspiracy theorists imagine that conspiracies are typically much grander than the ones that exist in reality. The very nature of a conspiracy tends to keep it small; human nature is not overcome so easily.
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Re:Random Randomization (Score:5, Interesting)
While true that the unbalanced ones will always be off the mark, I worry that too broad a brush will make people unwilling to acknowledge real collusion for fear of being lumped in with the loony lot. Just the sort of thing political and business spinmasters try to foster.
Re:Random Randomization (Score:5, Informative)
That does happen. Anytime I point out what looks like price fixing, or market divying, there's always someone that says "stop being a conspiracy theorist".
I don't know about what you've pointed out, but it's very common that people point to something and call it price fixing when there's a clear and simple non-collusive market explanation for what's going on. Further, it's often likely that there is some more subtle dynamic that explains the apparent synchronicity of price changes or market division even when there is no clear and simple explanation. So while price fixing and market divvying do happen, there's a good chance that you often are being a conspiracy theorist, because they appear to happen more often than they really occur.
Re:Random Randomization (Score:4, Informative)
The entire world economy recently fell apart because information was kept secret through collusion and conspiracy. LIBOR was a conspiracy. Nearly very major tech company was caught engaging in "no poaching" employment rules. Corporations invested in fossil fuel infrastructure spend massive amounts of money buying lawmakers and inventing political movements so they can block the push for alternative technologies that would devalue their corporate asset sheets. Empires spent the better portion of the last few thousand years exploiting people to death for the benefit of a handful of individuals.
Pretending that people with a shitload of money, time, and power don't collude for their own self interest is one of the dumbest ideas that a person can have in the 21st Century. Since the dawn of hierarchical organizations there has been abuse and secrecy at the upper portions of those hierarchies. From khans to queens to popes this has been a self-evident fact of human psychology.
Where do you think the phrase "cui bono" came from?
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That's true - but I also think a lot of really smart people dabble in conspiracy theories. You won't see many of them pulling together a movement, but mainly they watch and attempt to verify things that seem interesting.
In other words - conspiracy theories are just wild-ass guesses. In some limited circumstances, it's a start for deeper researching of topics. Most of the real conspiracies are leaked or eeked out by conversations with real people, not conspiracy boards.
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There were not...a lot of people saying "Nixon is using illegal means to keep track of his political opponents. Guaranteed!".
Is this true? I wasn't alive in the early 70's, but looking at all the crazy thing people have accused recent presidents of, it's hard for me to believe that some group of people weren't ranting that Nixon was breaking into Democrats' offices.
Not me. There are always plenty of crazies ranting, but they tend to think much bigger than burglary. Any crazy who ranted to his group about trespassing would get sneered at as naive and blind to the real scope of the evil plot.
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That's right, the real crazies were ranting that Nixon was doing things like conducting secret wars in Cambodia and conducting illegal wiretaps, etc.
Re:Random Randomization (Score:5, Insightful)
This paper is about the thought processes, not about the actual truth. Actually there are no guarantees that you can not arrive to a right conclusion using flawed reasoning (however, I don't recall conspiracy theory nutjobs speculating about the LIBOR fixing).
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I suspect that conspiracy theories are a way to find/create a simplified version of the world which is more digesteable to those of limited mental skill (and yeah, I know I sound elitistic here). In that sense, it's similar to religion (the world and life is so much easier to cope with if one can invoke the "Will of God" to explain the vagaries of life).
That being the case, LIBOR as a conspiracy would simple be about a subject mater which is so complex to understand to begin with and in such a limited and o
Re:Random Randomization (Score:4, Informative)
You you rather that I had written my post in my own language or any of the other 5 languages I can speak?
I wouldn't want the likes of you to be overwelmed by my spelling mistakes on a non-native tongue. Someone who is clearly as highly gifted with language and argumentation as you would have no trouble with, say, Dutch, right!???
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Is this a joke? (Score:5, Insightful)
People believe in conspiracies because they don't have anyone in authority they can trust. It doesn't help when authority lies to them about virtually everything.
Re:Is this a joke? (Score:5, Insightful)
People believe in conspiracies because conspiracies actaully exist. The US really did get lied into two wars, for instance, and those who did the lying knew exactly what they were doing. The motives were profit and power. Period. That's about as evil as it gets.
Also, I think there is sufficient proof that government does NOT represent the interests of the people these days, that they do protect the interests of the rich, and that government gets seriously paranoid whenever there is an active movement opposing either it or the wealthy--see law enforcement's reaction to Occupy Wall Street for an example. The Bradley Manning case as another. The Aaron Swartz case as another. The list, unfortunately, goes on and on.
Does that mean every conspiracy theory is true? Of course not. However, I'm sick and tired of "conspiracy theory" and "conspiracy theorist" being some kind of get out of jail free card for people who don't want to truly address what's going on in our society these days.
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Re:Is this a joke? (Score:5, Insightful)
People believe in conspiracy theories because it is way much easier than to actually learn the truth. The great thing about conspiracy theories that you don't have to know the actual facts (in the case of many theories it is actually a hindrance), you don't have to be very rigorous with your logic and if there's any hole in the theory you are welcome to make up any explanation. Compare that to the hard work required to be competent in a real area of knowledge.
Also, your reasoning does not make much sense: you cannot trust the authorities so you believe everything the first nut job tells you? Really?
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I've long since stopped discussing the 9-11 "conspiracy theories" but one undeniable "truth" is that the greatest crime ever perpetrated on U.S. soil
The American Civil War was the greatest crime ever perpetrated on US soil, caused by the pro-slavery side.
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An interesting counter-opinion to that is that actually people believe in conspiracies because they want them to be true.
They would rather believe there is a malign force greater than themselves, than that there is no force greater then themselves.
In other words, it's a proxy for God.
Sneaky scientists (Score:5, Funny)
It's kinda like the way McAfee and Symantec have secret programmers who strategically release new viruses when business is slow.
My own conspiracy theory. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:My own conspiracy theory. (Score:5, Funny)
Leave out one key piece of information and it takes on a life of it's own, but there is nothing untrue about the above.
Conspiracies seem to live on the interpretation that those who believe them have a better understanding of the issue at hand than those in charge, or that they have all the relevant information, when they don't.
Nonsense. Even if you have all the evidence in plain view there can still be vast networks of shady dealings and huge cover-ups at work. Just look at the Kennedy Assassination!
Those bones matched royal DNA because they weren't from King Richard III, they were really from a current member of the royal family who has now been replaced with an evil doppleganger clone (made possible by recently discovered Nazi stem cell research and advanced eugenics). They just needed a convenient way to dismiss the evidence -- Oh, that body with royal DNA? Uh, oh, It's just the remains of King Richard! Which one? Why, the 3rd one! Now they've got an inside agent in the royal family... Hot on the heels of Kim Jong Un's replacement of Kim Jong Il, all while for the 1st time ever the USA presidency is held by a black man!?
Coincidence?! I Think Not!
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New suggested article title... (Score:3)
The paper was put forward in a slanted way. The report apparently concluded that: "those who subscribed to one or more conspiracy theories or who strongly supported a free market economy were more likely to reject the findings from climate science as well as other sciences."
What it the report SHOULD have concluded is: "those who subscribed to one or more conspiracy theories or who strongly supported a free market economy were more likely to reject the findings from science" which is exactly as valid, is a far more neutral observation, and does not single out a specific group.
By including the "climate science" as a specific category the researchers make themselves suspect and people may (perhaps not entirely without cause) assume that this report was not unbiased and perhaps targeting "climate sceptists" rather than being an honest report on the behaviour of conspiracists in general. And of course this fuels a discussion. The authors could have known this and probably did. Therefore the article's title should be renamed to: "Those who play at bowls, must look out for rubs".
Re:New suggested article title... (Score:4, Insightful)
What part of "as well as other sciences" does not translate to "science" in general? If they didn't research science in general, they should not say they did. If they did research it, they have proven themselves that "climate" apparently doesn't have anything to do with it. However which way you look at it, it smells fishy. The fact that they did actually research the reactions to such a polarized and hyped field where unproven theories are floating around only makes matters worse. It is flamebait research and should be treated as such...
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There is nothing wrong with saying those who are conspiratorial thinkers also tend to be against climate science in general.
Yes, there is, because this is an unsupported -- and I think unsupportable -- assertion. I see plenty of conspiratorial thinking on the side of those who are most aggressively concerned about climate change. Mostly about collusion between oil companies to suppress alternative energy technologies.
I think it's more likely that the tendency towards conspiratorial thinking is independent of political bent, except that it seems more prevalent among people with somewhat extreme views. I don't know if that's bec
Flamebait (Score:3, Funny)
Flamebait "study" provokes flames. News at eleven. I'm waiting for the next study showing the correlation climate alarmism and being a poo-poo head.
Anyone else remember the Sokal Affair? (Score:2)
The horse crap in this one is so deep I can barely see the light. Does anybody else remember that paper on sociology that turned out to be a joke composed of mostly made-up words, but the sociology community accepted it and praised it in some journal? It was the Sokal Affair (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair [wikipedia.org]) and the article was "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity," an article that sounds about as interesting as this one.
Thumb Awareness (Score:3)
The very mention of thumb awareness makes you immediately more aware of your thumbs. That is unless you don't have any in which case you are increasingly aware of that fact.
Yada Yada Yada (Score:4, Insightful)
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You've got the causality backwards. The theory evaluated conspiracy theorists' tendencies to believe in climate change, not climate change deniers' tendencies to conspiracy theory. That's an interesting but significant difference, because the implications are different (in this case, that conspiratorial thinking leads to a more generalised rejection of orthodoxy).
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Re:Yada Yada Yada (Score:4, Informative)
You're interpreting this the exact wrong way. They found a link. There's nothing wrong with that. And they didn't cry "foul" (fixed that for you). They made another research paper that actually *SUPPORTED* their original paper. They didn't say all climate skeptics are conspiratorial nuts. They just said conspiratorial nuts are climate skeptics as well. That shouldn't be taken as offense by climate skeptics, unless you are indeed a conspiratorial nut.
I bet they will soon publish this: (Score:2)
make a habit of reading pools to get big picture (Score:5, Interesting)
If you make a habit of reading polls on a a variety of political and social issues, you'll learn a lot about Americans and specifically you might come to the conclusion that about 25-35% of Americans are basically so disconnected from scientific and social reality they're functionally insane and their opinion should ALWAYS and AUTOMATICALLY be classified as "non-truth related".
For instance, and famously, about 46% of Americans don't believe in evolution
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/05/americans-believe-in-creationism_n_1571127.html
But also 10% think that prosecutors who send innocent people to jail should not be prosecuted:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-texas-exoneree-testifies-20130204,0,3950542.story?page=2
25% think Obama is not an American citizen:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20056061-503544.html [cbsnews.com]
30%^ think God decides the outcome of sporting events: http://rt.com/usa/news/super-bowl-result-god-337/ [rt.com]
And on and on and on. Watching polls what you'll discover is about 10% of Americans are just outright fascists who wouldn't hesitate to do whatever any right wing authority told them to do, and think it should have been started yesterday. This is also the finding of Bob Altemeyer in his seminal work on authoritarianism :
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/ [umanitoba.ca].
right.
About 25-30% believe that events on Earth are assiduously overseen by an all knowing God who "sees them when they're sleeping / and knows if they're awake / and knows if they've been bad of good..." and what happens in everything from their personal life to world events is really of no consequence except to the extent that it is a reflection of an eternal, ongoing battle between good and evil being fought on an unseen cosmic plane. This is something they have this is common with every Muslim extremist who ever strapped a suicide bomb onto himself.
Americans have a deficit of rationality, a deep and persistent belief that something other than outcome based, welfare of humans is the proper measure of human morality, are scientifically illiterate and constitutionally incapable of perceiving in their thinking just the kinds of bugs that the referenced article details.
There's not enough time to reform the American character before we have to take radical and decisive action on global warming. The fact is, democracy stops where science begins. This isn't going to lead to anything good.
The least divisive, least disrupting course of action is for the government to internally and secretly set up an Executive Action team within one the intelligence agencies whose purpose is to discredit, attack and dismantle and neutralize the leaders of the denier terrorist movement. We all know who they are. These *thought leaders* need to be attacked the same way we'd attack any group of terrorists building a bomb named which would have the same long term destructive power as global warming. Denialism is a bomb with the capacity to permanently destroy civilization and the people assembling that bomb are not working in secret. They need to be neutralized and their sources of funding and societal legitimacy attacked through and and all means necessary. They have forfeited their civil rights and constitutional protections. We simply need to deal with them like the world destroying terrorists they are.
You can come to this conclusion now when there's still time to do something about global warming or you can come to this conclusion later, when there's no possibility of doing anything about it and the starvation, the concomitant societal breakdown and mass, uncontrolled immigration, the tidal wave of anti-Western (Big Oil / Big Coal ) terrorism and collapsing centralized governments take not just the denier's civil liberties and Con
Political denial (Score:5, Interesting)
One thing that many who believe that climate change is a "scam" or a "conspiracy" have in common is a political outlook that says that lefties, socialists, hippies, greenies etc. are just plain WRONG about everything, that their entire world view is basically incorrect.
So it really is hard for them to accept that the lefties and the greenies might be RIGHT about something - which seems to lead to ever more bizarre denials.
The corollary of this is that people with this kind of viewpoint tend to believe that climate change is a stalking horse of the left, to de-industrialise the economy, to promote their "business-hating" ideals, etc.
Nefarious intent? (Score:2)
"the presumption of nefarious intent"
There is more than enough evidence to demonstrate that our contemporary institutions of government, media, academia, finance, etc. and the unholy alliances thereof have nothing BUT nefarious intent. It's only logical to assume that these people and groups are going to lie, cheat and obfuscate to fulfill their agenda at the expense of the vast majority of the population.
The label "conspiracy theorist" is simply their dismissive label for anyone who dares question the off
Dunning Kruger effect (Score:5, Insightful)
Conspiratorial Thinking is clear example of the Dunning Kruger [wikipedia.org] effect at work.
They overestimate their own intelligence or skill, and ignore contrary feedback. They disavow the intelligence or skill of others. These people are simply too stupid to invalidate their own hypothesis and recognise the validity of the alternative.
Manipulating LIBOR? That used to be a conspiracy (Score:3)
If I assume there's more to a story than what appears in the mainstream media, I must be experiencing "conspiratorial thinking." Or I could be assuming that most journalists are morons who are paid to write *something* whether they know anything about it or not.
Does "Skeptic" == the new "Hacker" (Score:5, Informative)
So, in the course of reading the article on ElReg, I noticed that the folks denying climate change are being referred to as "Skeptical".
I get it - being "skeptical" of something means that you are not taking it at face value - that you dispute it.
However, there's also the self-identified "Skeptical Movement" nowadays which consists of a lot of great folks who are trying to introduce science-based thought and skepticism / critical thinking.
I'm talking about folks like Adam Savage (of Mythbusters fame), Phil Plait (of "Bad Astronomy"), Brian Duning's Skeptoid, The Skeptic's guide to the Universe, Skepchick.org, the James Randi Educational Foundation, QackCast, and many many more...
Real science-based medicine and thinking... and to see "Skeptical" with a capitol S, I think of these folks and having the word used to refer to conspiracy nuts and climate deniers... well, it just feels like the same kind of co-opting that happened to the "hacker" monicker.
I guess I just wanted to get the word out that while the climate deniers and conspiracy nuts may be "skeptical" of climate change and such, they're not representative of "the Skeptical Movement" which is all about critical thinking and science-based approach to life, the universe, and everything.
Ah, Lewandowsky the fraud doubles down (Score:3)
The problem here is that the conspiratorial thinking that was invoked was was on the part of Lewandowsky. Rather than taking the critiques of his abandoned first paper as legitimate, he immediately decided that anyone disagreeing with him must be part of a conspiracy against him.
My prediction - when this second paper is also taken apart as a fraud, he'll write a third one saying everyone who disagreed with his second one is part of a conspiracy of conspiritorial thinking :)
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What do you mean "abandoned"? The first paper is listed on his publications page as being accepted for publication by Psychological Science. Given the usual academic journal turn-around times it seems like it passed peer review with flying colours.
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That blog makes a lot of good technical points wrapped up in a shit tonne of "Lewandowski is a con artist who made up all his data because he is out to get my friends" that means nobody will ever, ever listen to it. Which ironically kind of makes a point about conspiracist ideation all on its own.
turtles (Score:5, Funny)
all the way down.
The turtles are behind it all in the end.
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Are they teenaged, mutants, ninjas, and have a love of pizza?
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Stop it! It's too early for recursion!
Re:first (Score:5, Funny)
"from the elvis-lives-on-the-moon-with-hitler dept." - from the strapline of the title...
I was convinced beyond all doubt that Elvis was living with Diana in a guest house in Blackpool, but then again, I am a Brit, so I would think that...
Re:It is Psychology, Science! Fact! (Score:5, Insightful)
You wouldn't take people's freely written statements as being evidence of what they think?
Evidence does not have to be perfect to make an objective study. The brain may be an inaccessable black box as far as psychology is concerned, but if there are identifiable patterns in its output, you can still work from that.
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Yes sure, but there's a lot of room for how you interpret what they say.
The original paper says "conspirators" are defined as making a "secret plot by powerful individuals or organizations", and then the paper gives an example and says that the tobacco industry had a view that it was being attacked by powerful conspirators, ie. the tobacco industry had a conspiratorial mindset. But today people often say there is a conspiracy by big oil, just like the tobacco industry had a conspiracy. It seems all sides a
Re:It is Psychology, Science! Fact! (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems all sides are conspirators, and conspiracy crackpots, depending on how you interpret them. So it goes nowhere fast.
Any time two people get together to bone a third person it is a conspiracy. The only overarching conspiracy of which I am aware is the conspiracy to deprecate the word conspiracy, and you're assisting with it.
An environmentalist told me, it doesn't matter if CO2 isn't a problem, because by forcing people to reduce emissions, you force them to reduce production and consumption â"â"and then with a thoughtful pause she added, "It is about reducing greed." And I see that kind of view a lot, just like the free enterprise competitive types like Burt Rutan says the data doesn't add up and it is verging on fraud.
It is about reducing greed. Where do the emissions come from? Making stuff. How much of that stuff do we need? HTH, HAND.
Re:It is Psychology, Science! Fact! (Score:5, Funny)
Every time somebody tells me that, I have to give myself a time out in the bunker until I calm down.
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OK but which things do you say we don't need? 50 pairs of shoes is unnecessary, but what about air travel, central heating, fridges, and TV? Are those non-essential? Which things should be cut?
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It's not exactly a difficult thing to ascertain in a market economy. You simply include the environmental cost of manufacture and a lifetime of usage into the monetary price of the product. Then people choose which things they still need based on a true cost.
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The rub is how that "true cost" gets assessed and who asseses it, because something like global warming is *extremely* hard to put a price on. That is not a free market interaction because the costs for environmental issues, especially the theoretical costs such as with global warming, are anything but easy to guess at. The government would have to do the assessing. As we know with the global warming issue, asking the government to do this job is *extremely* political. Some politicians would not put a singl
Re:It is Psychology, Science! Fact! (Score:5, Insightful)
You're making the point that true free markets are poor at dealing with the environment. That's true. They are also poor at dealing with all sorts of other concerns, which is why markets are regulated in all sorts of ways. And taxed at varying rates. All decided on by politicians. This is just one more way.
I'm quite open to non-market ways of dealing with the AGW problem. If you have any suggestions.
Doing nothing, just because the idealised, imaginary, true free market has no way to deal with the issue, is certainly not the answer.
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That would explain why nuclear power is rejected out of hand by Warmists because it would enable us to continue "making stuff" without the emissions.
There's more than emissions. In any case, nuclear power and industry on earth have been developmentally retarded since we developed space technology. Instead of using it to get industry off Earth and clean it up, we used it to build ICBMs.
Re:It is Psychology, Science! Fact! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, that's a slippery slope [rationalwiki.org] leading to an imaginary dilemma, in service of your balance fallacy [rationalwiki.org].
That's actually a rather strange scenario for you to create, since solar power is bringing energy to areas of Kenya traditional power doesn't or won't go [nytimes.com].
Is it a reference to this [solarpowerportal.co.uk]? Are they having problems with their equipment? If so, it is rather obnoxious of you to call their hospital a "shack".
Or, is the scenario made-up, but still plausible? So where in Kenya are diesel generators illegal?
Basically, what I'm asking is, is there some reason for us to not believe you are completely full of shit?
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It saddens me as I used to vote for the Green party but it just seems to fracture into left vs right wing ideologies.
Some things can only be expressed by left vs right wing ideology.
If you think (say)that it is legitimate for the US to pursue its economic interests through war, you are taking a right wing position whether you like it or not.
I think you just dis-proved the point you were trying to make using that example, because it's actually a bi-partisan statist position, not a right wing one. John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and François Hollande being clear left-wing examples of thinking it is legitimate for the US (and France) to pursue economic interests through war.
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I think you just dis-proved the point you were trying to make using that example, because it's actually a bi-partisan statist position, not a right wing one.
Of course it doesn't disprove the point. It's simply that both Republican and Democrat are right wing. For example, the policies of the Democrat party are to the right of the policies of the UK Conservative party.
Pursuing economic interests through war is most certainly a right wing idea. Pursuing social justice through war would be a left wing one.
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How does it not? It references posts people made on blogs whilst sat at home scratching their balls. Where is the pressure being put on them to write something not true to themselves in that situation?
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Well, you shouldn't always. Some people do act in bad faith.
I remember way, way back, actually right here on Slashdot, I learned about organized bad faith public discourse for the first time.
The occasion was that an organization called "The Alexis de Tocqueville Institution" had published a book on Linux, which was widely reported as being a commissioned hit piece. In the ensuing discussion, someone linked to the blog
Re:It is Psychology, Science! Fact! (Score:5, Funny)
"Cheese Makes you Fat!"
"Shows what you know! I'm in the CHEESEMAKING PARTY! Cheese will just give me a healthy glow!"
"I'm sorry Mr Ridebacher, you have lung cancer"
"No, that's unacceptable. You're interfering with my rights! Tell you what, why don't we compromise and say that I have a bad cold?"
Re:It is Psychology, Science! Fact! (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes the politics comes in when people with different outlooks or values, try to decide what to agree to do.
Say your dog keeps relieving itself in my garden. Should I spend the money to improve the fence, or should you keep the dog under control?
Now take that simple example and multiple the complexity up to, if the climate shifts, and rain belts move, glaciers feeding rivers retreat, some forested areas increase, some storms reduce, some farmland becomes too cold, some warms up for better crops, etc. etc. how do you decide who is responsible and who should pay to act?
Some people say, it doesn't matter if China is emitting more CO2 than anyone else, it is the moral responsibility of the West to set the good example. Or even Germany, people say Germany should do the right thing, even if it'll make a negligible impact. And that is also weighed up against all the other problems, like disease in Africa, and so on. There's a value judgement that doing something about the climate is more important. Or not. Depends on you.
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Say your dog keeps relieving itself in my garden. Should I spend the money to improve the fence, or should you keep the dog under control?
False dichotomy: You're assuming it's the neighbor's dog, and not the neighbor.
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That is indeed the way it should be. The problem is that the free marketeers won't honestly discuss this choice. Instead they deny the science.
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Politics comes into picture when deciding what to do.
Unfortunately, many politicians and other organisations that have a vested interest in certain choices on what to do, have found that when hard science is involved, the easiest option to affect which choices are made is to attack the actual number producing science and scientists in the eyes of the public (i.e. a typical Straw Man strategy) using the techniques of propaganda.
This works because the vast majority of people simply don't have the mental disci
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Ah, the old "it's the will of the people so it must be right" meme.
Well, the first failure is that Democracy is not about the will of the people, it's about the informed will of the people. Control the information that people get (and their education) and you can shape their will.
The second things is that most countries don't actually have true Democracy: they have electoral circles and other little schemes that mean that 30% of the votes can be made to produce an absolute majority of representatives (with
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If only it were the case that people were simply arguing over the correct course of action. Your nation actually has elected representatives who think that all of the scientists behind climate research are part of some secret scheme to make millions of dollars and the data was entirely made up. I mean they have stated these things as though they were facts in the political decision-making process of your country.
What is "Conspiratorial Thinking"???? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm utterly confused by the premise here.
Conspiracies are very often extremely real and extremely provable. HSBC was just found guilty at the highest levels of management of laundering money for Mexican drug cartels. LIBOR manipulation involved dozens of banks and hundreds of people and was the largest financial market manipulation in history. During the mortgage crisis we had robosigning and MERS which intentionally broke the chain of ownership (and the law) in the interest of securitization. We also had dozens of investment banks bundling worthless mortgages and assigning positive valuations to them. Bernie Madoff and his partners conspired to rip off countless pension funds and communities. Etc. Etc. Etc. These are all conspiracies involving billions of dollars and hundreds if not thousands of people. That's just the last 4 years. And those are the provable conspiracies.
And then there are the conspiracies we know to be true, but cannot prove: Julian Assange for example, who announced he had an upcoming Wikileak regarding the banking system, and the next thing you know he's wanted on rape charges for consensual sex but supposedly with an aconsensual lack of a condom. A crime supposedly so serious that apparently world governments are willing to abandon 500 years of international law and invade sovereign embassies. Is disbelieving the premise "Conspiratorial thinking" or just "not being an idiot"?
Or let's take an easier one: Jon Corzine and his firm looted private accounts and absconded with over $1 billion dollars. The money was transferred somewhere. But no one knows where. It's a magical mystery of the disappearing $1 Billion. If you believe that are you resisting "conspiratorial thinking", or are you the biggest idiot on Earth? Let's see -- JP Morgan underwrote MF Global's trades. Everyone knows where the money went. But no one can talk about it. Because if you claim that the money went anywhere but to "money heaven", you're engaging in "conspiratorial thinking".
We are surrounded by corruption, plotting, scheming and insane rapes of the public coffers every day of every year.
These schemes are nothing other than "conspiracies".
But somehow this study begins with the entirely "fringe" premise that conspiracies aren't real. That in itself appears to be a conspiracy.
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A section of culture has made it fashionable to "deconstruct" critics of climate change science, and politics, as being "deniers", "nutcases", etc., and where that culture overlaps with academia, they write it into papers, for other academics who are also into that fashion to read.
So the paper links them to people who believe faked moon landings. If you ask the Chairman of the IPCC, he'll point you to people who still believe the Earth is flat.
It doesn't of course talk about real cases of mass fraud and cor
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And then there are the conspiracies we know to be true, but cannot prove: Julian Assange for example, who announced he had an upcoming Wikileak regarding the banking system, and the next thing you know he's wanted on rape charges for consensual sex but supposedly with an aconsensual lack of a condom
The reason he's wanted on rape charges for consensual sex but supposedly with an aconsensual lack of a condom is that in Sweden it is apparently illegal to have consensual sex but with an aconsensual lack of a condom (or with the other person being asleep).
The conspiracy side of things is all in his own head, where he thinks he's going to be extradited from Sweden to the US on totally unrelated charges regarding Wikileaks, as though Sweden is more in America's pocket than the UK.
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Yes, you are being conspiratorial.
What you are doing is conflating now exposed conspiracies, with conspiracy theories. Sure, conspiracies to scam etc exist, but by their very nature they lack evidence and we, the uninformed, don't know about it. When you assert something is a conspiracy and you are not privy to the evidence then, there is no basis from which you can assert that the conspiracy exists; it is mere speculation. Now look at a conspiracy theory website. They aren't saying they are speculating,
Re:What is "Conspiratorial Thinking"???? (Score:5, Interesting)
I am not conflating *all* conspiracy theories with those which have been proven to be true.
You misunderstand my point. And by the way, I agree conceptually with most of what you wrote.
My issue is with the semantic definition of the term "Conspiratorial Thinking" to mean "Seeing little green men".
To be clear: In science we theorize and then we prove. Postulates do not carry the same weight as empirical fact, and should therefore be treated as such.
BUT theories are not "falsities" either until proven as such. And this is the problem with the tone of the OP. That "conspiratorial thinking" represents a "wrong" is as scientifically invalid as assuming the facts to be true. My point is that there is nothing remotely wrong with theorizing. In fact, we *must* theorize as it forms the basis of research.
The notion that "conspiratorial thinking" is "wrong" is a dangerous notion as it sets forth the premise that we should all agree with the prevailing facts as they have been presented. My point is that we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the facts as presented are often false, and intentionally misrepresented as truth.
Given that we know conspiracies happen, it is in no way wrong-footed to theorize about who is engaging in secretive efforts, and how they might be benefiting.
Additionally: You asked "How can you know them to be true if you can't prove it".
Because we already have the proof of the crime. We simply do not have the proof of the criminal. This is the tree that has fallen in the forest. We discover the tree on the ground. It is not in question that the tree fell, only whether or not it made a sound (or what pushed it).
In the case of MF Global, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that $1 billion went missing from rehypothecated accounts. That this took some doing is clear. That this took some doing by multiple parties is also clear. (The transferral of $1 billion does not happen casually, without being noticed by the way). Ergo, we know that there was a conspiracy. What we cannot prove is who participated, or where the money went. But that there was a conspiracy goes without saying.
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Conspiratorial thinking is wrong not because of a disagreement about the prevailing facts, but as invoking counter-factual thinking and illogical arguments etc. This is what the paper highlights.
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Yes, this has always been the strategy of the climate-change-stonewallers:
1. It's not happening.
2. Conclusive evidence is not yet available.
3. The total effect could be small or even beneficial.
3. It's too late and too expensive to do anything about it.
Re:It is Psychology, Science! Fact! (Score:5, Informative)
The sixties would be a late time to come with that prediction/accusation. Keep America Beautiful, arguably the first corporate environmental front group, was founded in order to preempt and oppose laws restricting disposable products - in 1953.
Re:It is Psychology, Science! Fact! (Score:5, Insightful)
of course you're right, environmentalists aren't really interested in keeping the land, water, sea and air free of poisonous substances, its all just a big power play. (nice trolling)
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Real environmentalists are interested in the keeping things clean. Politicians, corporations and those so vocal in the news, blogs etc are not the same thing as real environmentalists. The sooner you learn the difference between those that use a cause for personal gain and the cause itself the better off you will be.
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We get it, you don't like people politically different from you and you think they're acting in bad faith.
Maybe you could try to objectively measure it and write up a paper on it?
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Most of the environmentalists I've known were just interesting in their own smug sense of self-righteousness.
I have relatives like that. The grief I get from them because I drive older vehicles that are kept in proper running order while they drive new vehicles replaced every couple of year but are of the environmentally friendly type. They also frown upon hunting while at the same time preaching about the necessity to only eat meat that is organic, free range, fair trade, locally produced, etc. The disconnect they have is rather shocking at times.
Re:It is Psychology, Science! Fact! (Score:5, Funny)
While you're ad hominem stereotyping is no doubt amusing to you and your fellow neo Nazis
Talk about recursive!
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I remember that time... The irony is that your post illustrates the most infuriating thing about the way Communists like to argue: "I can explain X in terms of Y, so therefore Y caused X!"
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But thanks for adding to the evidence that people who deny the existence of climate change are both paranoid and stupid.
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Not true, they explicitly state that they are not investigating the validity or not of any of the criticisms of the first paper. They are measuring psychological indicators of conspiracy thinking. Even the most out there obsessed conspirac theorist could be right, and this paper doesn't deny that.
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I've come to the suspicion that it's not so much lack of understanding of grammar or inability to spell that's at the root of the than/then problem, but rather the inablity to hear/speak the difference. The English sounds represented by "e" and "a" are not very far apart. Many of the people might be conflating the two sounds into one. If this is the case, you can correct them until you're blue in the face and they'll never understand because they can't hear the difference. Proof reading their own work won't
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I think it's part of a plot.
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and when touch typing, the index finger on opposite hands is used for both letters (and the movement is rotationally symmetrical)
I touch type with Dvorak, you insensitive clod!
The continued dominance of the illogical QWERTY keyboard smells like a conspiracy to me!
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> to cover up your own goal here ...
In other words, YOU believe that there is a conspiracy (even if only de facto) amongst those who question the conclusions of those who believe in anthropogenic climate change? We have indeed fallen into infinite recursion.
Me personally? I have no use for conspiracy theories. As a friend who used to work for CIA (vigorously) explained it to me, the more complex the conspiracy, the more impossible it is. SOMEONE will blab, or will forget a laptop with all the secret code
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Dang. Your post was interesting right up until that reference to Venus.
Warming is an issue and a hard problem we need to solve. But why do people always try to go straight for a disaster movie scenario ( OMG the Earth is turning into Venus!!)? That's not what's happening, what's happening is a gradual warming an increasing affects of that warming are impacting the ecosystem. But a fast conversion of the Earth's atmosphere into one like Venus is pure sensationalist hyperbole.
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I would love you see you substantiate the first clause of your first sentence.
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Well, if you'd read the paper, you'd see that they define a specific set of behaviors as relating to "conspiratorial thinking" before setting out to do the study. They don't just sit down and say "yeah, that looks conspiratorial".