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Notes -
Underestimated argument. Related tweet
The principle is simple enough: most
gamblersday traders lose money, those who don’t almost all just get lucky, and updating your priors because a tiny proportion of gambles pay off is stupid. Anyone who actually knows Jones/Ike tier conspiracy theorists in real life knows their hitrate is sub 1% and being the most obsequious normie who believes every word in the New York Times would make you right vastly more of the time than they are. If you believe everything, which they do, you will eventually be right about a few things. This challenges no conventional principle or authority.The NYT and the American establishment lie and trying to manipulate people so commonly that being reasonably suspicious and willing to believe plausible conspiracy theories makes you have a much more accurate version of the world.
It isn't gambling to not trust them but it is gambling to trust them. With bad odds. Going full Alex Jones means you are going to doubt the NYT when they peddle some of their BS but also buy into some of Alex Jones BS. In 2002 for example, if you listened to Alex Jones, he argued this:
Which would suggest against the Iraq War, neocon domination and authoritarian measures like the patriot act. Which isn't insane, but an example of Jones leading people in this instance to a more reasonable place than the establishment.
Having known people who believe in ghosts and aliens, they tend to be less dangerous for the world than those made to follow fanatically the new current thing. Whether it is war related, or a different agenda.
Did you read the post you were replying to? The idea is conspiracy theorists are wrong almost all of the time, and sometimes right simply because they copy the things others are saying and make them more extreme. And then, after the fact, their fans select specific things they said that aged well to declare them accurate. And you respond by ... selecting a specific thing Jones said 20 years ago and arguing for his accuracy.
This is a gross misrepresentation of my post, and you especially shouldn't be accusing others of not reading the posts they reply towards when you do that.
I disagreed with the above post of course. The point is that NYT and the establishment gets a lot of important things wrong and doubting them and buying into reasonable claims that are seen as conspiratorial would make you have more correct view of the world. That is because the establishment lies in favor of its agendas.
Whether "great replacement isn't happening", race, crime, war (iraq war the most notorious, even back in Vietnam with Torkin incident), or really partisan fake news (see Russiagate) are just some examples of categories you will find plenty of lies.
That even people like Alex Jones can get important things correct. The Iraq war and the rise of authoritarianism in response to war on terror are not insignificant issues. They are very important.
To think that this is an arguement for Jones being accurate in general, or me being a fanboy of his, when I said that he peddles BS too, is clearly inaccurate. Another short arguement was that in important ways some of the kooky nonsense can be less harmful than believing fanatically in current thing propaganda and doubting that instead.
You promoted in the past the lab leak theory as a conspiracy theory for example, and it was a case of you getting it wrong since it is at worst a plausible theory. A lot of irrationality of our times is on irrational extreme dismisal of valid issues.
If you want to be better than even the Alex Jones of the world, you ought to be more humble about reality and stop painting things that reflect negatively on the American elite as false by default and part of conspiracy theories. Suspicious right wingers have been for the most part proven more correct for their suspicions than those booing them over the years.
And even those who get things wrong too, but also get things correct in an important way the sentiment of questioning power is more valuable than not questioning it, so I wouldn't be too condemning. And my problem would be more that by including the more indefensible claims, they erode the value of things that are true in their arguments. We don't live in an age of overt paranoia against elites but in an age of lack of sufficient accountability.
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Your analogy doesn't work. If conspiracy theorists were treated like day traders, the NYT would not try to imply belief in Jones' theory is cause for immediate loss of credibility, they'd imply it's unlikely, but might end up being true, because you never know.
What you're doing is like acting it was no big deal that one UFO nut was 100% proved to be correct about extra-terrestrial contact, because all the other UFO nuts before him were wrong.
I don't understand why you think i'm arguing that, like, the lab leak is fake because Qanon people are crazy. I'm not saying any thing about the lab leak or similar. I'm saying that OP's claim about chinese soldier immigrant coups is Q-anon tier.
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