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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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But going further, there is a meme, that comment which I have read a thousand times, which says it's a fear of nobody in control, of a random universe and of Hanlon's razor that makes people invent conspiracy theories. Is this meme a psy-op itself? Its aim to bring down status of those who ask questions about possible conspiracies even lower, paint them as cowards running from the reality? Given how reliably it appears as a call-response pair with somebody mentioning a conspiracy theory in a discussion, I'm inclined to answer positively.

I have seen it in action with family members, mostly harmlessly, and seems best explanation of what is going on (in general reasonable aunt complaining about masons controlling substantial part of catholic church - while being controlled by Soros who also runs entire EU).

I think your aunt is picking up on the quite reasonable to point out fact that a CPA(or anyone else who uses a spreadsheet to make decisions) with dictatorial powers would make better object-level decisions for the organization than the current pope and most of his appointees. And what that's missing is, of course, the enormous amount of internal politicking going on where individual and group actors within the Catholic Church might have conditions which benefit themselves which are drastically different from benefit to the Church(the organization) as a whole, along with lots of true believers in the spiritual side of things making decisions off of what amounts to pure ideology, plus bog standard corruption.

I suspect that this is a very generally applicable and that it explains lots of jewlumminati-type conspiracy theories; organizations can easily become irrational actors.

I tend to agree with the idea that the meme itself is artificial, and I think the aim is to give the public a meme that simply dismisses the idea of conspiracy out of hand. I don’t believe in any particular conspiracy personally, but I find the meme obnoxious simply because dismissing a claim out of hand is a dangerous thing simply because it means not even bothering with the evidence. I think the proper and critical thinking response to a conspiracy claim isn’t dismissing it out of hand, but demanding proof. If the earth is actually round, it will still be round even if I question it. And provided that the evidence is available, truth will eventually win.

I think the proper and critical thinking response to a conspiracy claim isn’t dismissing it out of hand, but demanding proof.

Well, you often get "it is OBVIOUS", "lack of proof is proving strength of conspiracy" or "please view this 2h long youtube video".

What now?

First of all, the person who makes a positive claim is the one obliged to provide evidence. This is simply elementary logic. Negatives cannot be proven, so it’s not on me to prove that no conspiracy happened, it’s on you to provide some evidence that there is a conspiracy.

Second “it’s obvious” isn’t evidence. If it’s obvious, proving it should be easy.

Third, I don’t accept YouTube as a source. Find me a newspaper or other print source so I can check on the facts presented.

And doing this in family setting typically irritates another person much more than ignoring their comment about shadowy conspiracy.

Often dismissing it out of hand rather than demanding proof is much better strategy.

Jack Chick theory of politics.

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