Am I an anti-liberal traditionalist? Humans are so silly. I have an idea. If you want to hit the right-wingers with something out of left field, try Rigorous Intuition, especially those posts over on the right under the heading “The Military-Occult Complex, ritual abuse/mind control, and ‘High Weirdness’”. I guarantee a few WTFs.
Heh, thanks. Probably won’t work on the local right-wing technocrats, however, as they are simply not interested in many such issues like the workings of the Bush regime or the military-industrial complex. I’m curious enough to take a look, though.
Edit: heh, that blog quotes Dick’s novels—already a good sign to me.
Availability heuristic; I haven’t read many conspiracy theorists. He struck me as more careful and more cogent than the few others I’d read; like, he bothers to explicitly bracket certain ideas as having a good chance of being wrong, and he emphasizes giving up on a thread if it doesn’t seem to be fruitful. He’s generally pragmatic. He also has a healthy skepticism about the motives and natures of claimed demonic/alien entities, not in the sense of categorically doubting that they’re supernatural/alien/”weird”, but in the sense of not assuming that just because they say they want to help humanity and so on that that is strong evidence of actual benevolence: “I find it a fascinating frustration that many of those convinced of a massive government cover-up fall over themselves to accept the words of non-human entities.” — this post on Fatima. Being pseudo-Catholic and schizotypal I naturally worry about demons—in fact that’s part of why I’m pseudo-Catholic and not, say, pseudo-Tibetan-Buddhist. So Jeff Wells scores a lot of points with me for his caution on that front.
Do you have recommendations for other conspiracy theorists, or conspiracy theorist debunkers? ’Cuz honestly I think Jeff Wells makes a compelling, coherent case for High Weirdness, which is worth keeping in mind as a live hypothesis, though I don’t think we’ll have the collaborative argumentation tools necessary to rationally assess the hypothesis for at least another five years.
I visited Fatima in 2007 with my family. It was...spooky...and in a way that the Vatican was not (that is to say, not in the same way as any old, massive, historically-important thing is). On the other hand, my Portuguese isn’t very good, so I may not have understood as much as I thought.
I clicked around a little on his site. Most of his conspiracy theories appear to be political and he’s clearly been mind-killed by politics.
As for evaluating “conspiracy theories”, I recommend you start by reading this blog post by Eric Raymond, also this comment by Konkvistador if you haven’t already seen it.
Sounds like you might not have read enough to see where his strengths and weaknesses are. Politics is his weakness and I mostly ignore that stuff, but I’m more interested in his paranormal stuff including the military-occult stuff, where he seems to have less of an ax to grind and sometimes presents a bunch of interesting source material without trying too hard to spin a story out of it. E.g. I like his report on Fatima, linked in my previous comment; what do you think of that one? (Though I suppose I should have told Multiheaded that Wells’ political stuff is bad and that his High Weirdness stuff is way better. Oh well.)
In my previous comment I for some reason conflated High Weirdness with conspiracy theory; in reality I suspect they’re not that connected. I’m more interested in High Weirdness than conspiracy, so any critiques of High Weirdness would be useful. I’m really unimpressed with standard “skeptic” arguments. Re conspiracy theories, Konkvistador and Raymond make the obvious points, I suppose there might be nothing more insightful to be said about the matter at that level of generality.
Though I suppose I should have told Multiheaded that Wells’ political stuff is bad and that his High Weirdness stuff is way better.
Nah, don’t worry. I understood from the start that politically that blog is something like the rants of a hippie Bircher. That is, with rather clouded judgment and some nonsense priors in the first place, but curious when it directs attention to odd facts that don’t fit the mainstream narrative. [1] Like the village idiot whose ravings contain clues to plot secrets in some computer RPGs.
(when I said “the Bush regime”, I didn’t mean all the standard left-of-center complaints about how he was evil, stupid and killed puppies—although I agree with the last two—but the genuinely irrational-looking stuff like the connections with fringe groups and the CIA’s rumoured odd activities)
P.S. Wow, that guy’s T-shirts are quite awfully designed.
P.P.S. And still it’s clearly worth reading, at least in matters which are somewhat above mere conspiracies and politics:
“If you draw the timelines,” said futurologist Ian Pearson, “realistically by 2050 we would expect to be able to download your mind into a machine, so when you die it’s not a major career problem.” Pearson is sometimes credited with the invention of that fouler of distinction between home and office, text messaging. And given how all the futurist fantasies of increased leisure time have panned out, no one should take comfort in the prospect that death itself need not encumber job performance. Even though pensionable age and benefits continue to be rolled back vindictively, there was always at least the promise of the peace of the grave.
When it’s Hanson talking about the glorious future of Ems, the self-styled “rationalists”—I’m not talking about the LW majority, but the thinking patterns characteristic of some of the Overcoming Bias old guard—smile and nod. When it’s a somewhat disturbed and not overly logical guy warning sincerely about the looming Hell on Earth—factually, the same thing—they groan with annoyance at the pathetic Luddites and their mental disease known as “humanity”.
Obvious devil-worshipping “rationalist” cults like Objectiivism are only the tip of the iceberg here; we’re talking about some rather shocking spiritual and cultural erosion, handwaved as “non-neurotypicality” or “contrarianism” when it is at all acknowledged. (I’m not saying that there’s something horribly wrong with non-neurotypicality or contrarianism per se, as they are, but there’s nothing wrong with patriotism per se either, and you know who else was patriotic? [Godwin’s law])
By God, Will, I feel like I understand your concerns so much better now!
P.S. I know, I know, it’s kinda hypocritical of me to criticize a community member as morally corrupt after telling another guy to cut that shit out, but I can’t help it, I’m really spooked by this kind of people.
[1] Sorry, I missed this footnote when writing the comment, and now I forgot what it was. Silly me :(
Also, damn, it’s a bit of a jolt to encounter someone who thinks of the world’s course in the same Gnostic terms that I often entertain. I too have been associating the spectre of anti-religious, anti-ideological, technocratic tyranny that’s haunting us with the supposed iron “logic”, runaway reductionism and blind hubris of the Archons, as relayed by the ancients and by latter-day SF visionaries like Dick.
(All aboard! We’re off for −10 rating in 3… 2… 1...)
Am I an anti-liberal traditionalist? Humans are so silly. I have an idea. If you want to hit the right-wingers with something out of left field, try Rigorous Intuition, especially those posts over on the right under the heading “The Military-Occult Complex, ritual abuse/mind control, and ‘High Weirdness’”. I guarantee a few WTFs.
Heh, thanks. Probably won’t work on the local right-wing technocrats, however, as they are simply not interested in many such issues like the workings of the Bush regime or the military-industrial complex. I’m curious enough to take a look, though.
Edit: heh, that blog quotes Dick’s novels—already a good sign to me.
I’m curious why you picked this conspiracy theorist in particular.
Availability heuristic; I haven’t read many conspiracy theorists. He struck me as more careful and more cogent than the few others I’d read; like, he bothers to explicitly bracket certain ideas as having a good chance of being wrong, and he emphasizes giving up on a thread if it doesn’t seem to be fruitful. He’s generally pragmatic. He also has a healthy skepticism about the motives and natures of claimed demonic/alien entities, not in the sense of categorically doubting that they’re supernatural/alien/”weird”, but in the sense of not assuming that just because they say they want to help humanity and so on that that is strong evidence of actual benevolence: “I find it a fascinating frustration that many of those convinced of a massive government cover-up fall over themselves to accept the words of non-human entities.” — this post on Fatima. Being pseudo-Catholic and schizotypal I naturally worry about demons—in fact that’s part of why I’m pseudo-Catholic and not, say, pseudo-Tibetan-Buddhist. So Jeff Wells scores a lot of points with me for his caution on that front.
Do you have recommendations for other conspiracy theorists, or conspiracy theorist debunkers? ’Cuz honestly I think Jeff Wells makes a compelling, coherent case for High Weirdness, which is worth keeping in mind as a live hypothesis, though I don’t think we’ll have the collaborative argumentation tools necessary to rationally assess the hypothesis for at least another five years.
I visited Fatima in 2007 with my family. It was...spooky...and in a way that the Vatican was not (that is to say, not in the same way as any old, massive, historically-important thing is). On the other hand, my Portuguese isn’t very good, so I may not have understood as much as I thought.
I clicked around a little on his site. Most of his conspiracy theories appear to be political and he’s clearly been mind-killed by politics.
As for evaluating “conspiracy theories”, I recommend you start by reading this blog post by Eric Raymond, also this comment by Konkvistador if you haven’t already seen it.
Sounds like you might not have read enough to see where his strengths and weaknesses are. Politics is his weakness and I mostly ignore that stuff, but I’m more interested in his paranormal stuff including the military-occult stuff, where he seems to have less of an ax to grind and sometimes presents a bunch of interesting source material without trying too hard to spin a story out of it. E.g. I like his report on Fatima, linked in my previous comment; what do you think of that one? (Though I suppose I should have told Multiheaded that Wells’ political stuff is bad and that his High Weirdness stuff is way better. Oh well.)
In my previous comment I for some reason conflated High Weirdness with conspiracy theory; in reality I suspect they’re not that connected. I’m more interested in High Weirdness than conspiracy, so any critiques of High Weirdness would be useful. I’m really unimpressed with standard “skeptic” arguments. Re conspiracy theories, Konkvistador and Raymond make the obvious points, I suppose there might be nothing more insightful to be said about the matter at that level of generality.
Nah, don’t worry. I understood from the start that politically that blog is something like the rants of a hippie Bircher. That is, with rather clouded judgment and some nonsense priors in the first place, but curious when it directs attention to odd facts that don’t fit the mainstream narrative. [1] Like the village idiot whose ravings contain clues to plot secrets in some computer RPGs.
(when I said “the Bush regime”, I didn’t mean all the standard left-of-center complaints about how he was evil, stupid and killed puppies—although I agree with the last two—but the genuinely irrational-looking stuff like the connections with fringe groups and the CIA’s rumoured odd activities)
P.S. Wow, that guy’s T-shirts are quite awfully designed.
P.P.S. And still it’s clearly worth reading, at least in matters which are somewhat above mere conspiracies and politics:
When it’s Hanson talking about the glorious future of Ems, the self-styled “rationalists”—I’m not talking about the LW majority, but the thinking patterns characteristic of some of the Overcoming Bias old guard—smile and nod. When it’s a somewhat disturbed and not overly logical guy warning sincerely about the looming Hell on Earth—factually, the same thing—they groan with annoyance at the pathetic Luddites and their mental disease known as “humanity”.
Obvious devil-worshipping “rationalist” cults like Objectiivism are only the tip of the iceberg here; we’re talking about some rather shocking spiritual and cultural erosion, handwaved as “non-neurotypicality” or “contrarianism” when it is at all acknowledged. (I’m not saying that there’s something horribly wrong with non-neurotypicality or contrarianism per se, as they are, but there’s nothing wrong with patriotism per se either, and you know who else was patriotic? [Godwin’s law])
By God, Will, I feel like I understand your concerns so much better now!
P.S. I know, I know, it’s kinda hypocritical of me to criticize a community member as morally corrupt after telling another guy to cut that shit out, but I can’t help it, I’m really spooked by this kind of people.
[1] Sorry, I missed this footnote when writing the comment, and now I forgot what it was. Silly me :(
Also, damn, it’s a bit of a jolt to encounter someone who thinks of the world’s course in the same Gnostic terms that I often entertain. I too have been associating the spectre of anti-religious, anti-ideological, technocratic tyranny that’s haunting us with the supposed iron “logic”, runaway reductionism and blind hubris of the Archons, as relayed by the ancients and by latter-day SF visionaries like Dick.
(All aboard! We’re off for −10 rating in 3… 2… 1...)
Given how deeply this comment is buried in an old thread I’d be surprised if 10 people even read it.
Oh, don’t worry, dude, you can simply make nine or so new accounts to make up for it. ;)