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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   27621 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024

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I think you're overfitting different phenomena into a limited number of buckets. All of the following are true (IMO, of course):

  • The self-immolator is probably schizotypal and connected a lot of dots that aren't connected.
  • There are many schizotypal conspiracy theorists that believe very weird things about the world as a result of their lack of reasoning ability and overly aggressive pattern matching.
  • Some people lean towards conspiracies because randomness bothers them.
  • Some people lean towards conspiracies because humans have a tendency to pattern-match and attribute causality. They're not bothered by randomness, they're just not very good at understanding it, so they see intentionality everywhere.
  • There are substantial conspiracies that actually exist, including those by intelligence agencies, big corporations, non-governmental organizations, and more.
  • Some of these conspiracies will include trying to discredit people that notice what's going on.
  • There probably isn't a shady cabal that secretly controls everything - the most powerful people are probably the people that appear to be the most powerful people.

This set of positions allows plenty of space for some pretty wild conspiracy theories to be true without needing to add unnecessary moving parts to my understanding of the world. The CIA really does organize coups, but the guy that lit himself on fire is a garden-variety nutter.

The CIA really does organize coups, but the guy that lit himself on fire is a garden-variety nutter.

Has the CIA actually coup'd a government since the Church Commission?

There has been no evidence up to even the level of the coup against the Mosaddegh government (ie. not a particularly high bar) that the CIA planned or executed any of it.

I had read this guy's blog before he got famous. I believe his main theory, the one he's held most consistently, is that Bitcoin is literally a vast Ponzi scheme concoted by some financial cabal intent on using it to crash the global economy. As a theory, it's not that much odder than your standard conspiracy theory stuff; what made it slightly notable enough to get my attention is that usually "there's a big financial cabal there trying to crash the economy for nefarious purposes" are pro-crypto and think that crypto's a tool to combat the financial cabal, not the tool of the financial cabal. As such, he didn't seem "crazier" than your average conspiracy guy; YMMV what the baseline of craziness for that crowd is.

That said, his manifesto and pre-suicide entry offer hints that he had been developing into a crazier direction (I suppose getting into the whole conspiracy milieu can't help), so when you get someone who is going down a slope that way and the somewhat notorious Aaron Bushnell immolation, well, that's what you get.

He believed The Simpsons was sending coded messages about an impending global totalitarian government. That’s much crazier than average.

Back in the time when I encountered the blog, he wasn't rambling about The Simpsons, unless I missed something. That's precisely what I was referring to, he has been spiralling to the crazy direction quite fast before his final act.

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