Sounds like you're in the beginning process of developing one! May the force be with you
Superior intellect/ "conspiracy theorists"
- Thread starter slant
- Start date
Hmm this is a very interesting point and it touches on what I never really understood about how some people do use information they know that's secret as some sort of ego boost. It's a good point, that it actually makes more sense that if you did have knowledge others didn't, you'd likely make a point of keeping it secret instead of proclaiming from the tallest mountain what you know. Particularly if you can't prove it.
I'll use a random topic as an example. UFO sightings. I feel like maybe 50 years ago, people would not discuss the experiences they had, except maybe close friends. These days there are a lot of people who speak up in documentaries and such, even if the proof they have is nothing more than their word and as a result people dismiss what they say.
Do you have any thoughts on why culturally, these topics that are "sensitive" often because either the proof is not accessable to the public or we have yet to be able to document something properly, are being discussed more out in the open? It does open people up to ridicule or doubt, and especially if a person comes off like we were discussing, very better-than-thou when discussing it.
Would the internet and rise in social media have an influence on this? Do you think the people who are loud and obnoxious about what they know have always existed like that, or did something happen to make people more prone to this attitude?
@slant
I think there are two separate issues in the topic you raised and they don't really fit well together.
One is about conspiracy theories - these are a belief that some powerful and clandestine organisation is influencing important events that impact on society outside the control of authentic political systems. You don't need to be particularly intelligent to hold such a view - probably it only needs sufficient wits to be able to set up a Twitter account and read what's there. These things are like an epidemic, as Jung pointed out, when whole subsections of a population become infected by beliefs that have no foundation in reality and are themselves collectively powerful enough to change national policies in irrational ways.
What does need both intellectual and emotional intelligence is creating and farming a fruitful conspiracy theory in a believable way and keeping control of it so that you can ride the crest of its wave into the highest political power. My goodness, history is full of despots who have seized control of nations this way.
Of course the very best conspiracy theories are ones that do contain just a little bit of truth so that they can be dressed up with 'empirical evidence' to support them.
My feeling is that the grunt followers of such conspiracy theories are primarily driven by fear and a sense of their own powerlessness. It's can be easier to blame some shadowy
THEM than to see yourself as part of the problem, and perhaps part of the solution.
But ....
The other issue is when someone holds a view that runs very much contrary to popular beliefs. The most fundamental of these are effectively paradigm shifts - alternative worldviews. Many of the great revolutions in science and politics have appeared this way - the first Greek philosopher 2,500 years ago who suggested the world was round must have been just such a guy. His contemporaries must have thought him mad. Early in 20th century, Alfred Wegener raised the idea of continental drift as explaining the shape and geology of the continents - he was vilified and treated as a lunatic, and the idea only took hold in the 1960s. Today we have changed completely and pretty well everyone accepts it as obvious. The thing is that a really great breakthrough in the understanding of anything is going to look like madness to all the other folks if it's truly original; it takes not just great intelligence but great courage too to pursue such ideas publicly. It's only a few hundred years since we burnt such folks at the stake for contrary worldviews, and this nearly happened to Galileo. Charles Darwin sat on his great work on evolution for many years for fear of the extreme response it could generate and the effects of that on himself and his family.
These contrarian insights are not at all the same as conspiracy theories, though they could of course seed one - the Pythagorean school in Greece could fit that sort of bill, hiding their great revolutionary mathematical knowledge behind a spiritual veil open only to initiates.
Why do these contrarian views generate so much fierce opposition when they aren't just ignored? One reason is simply that it takes a lot of effort to change, and it can be very hard understanding and accepting such conceptual changes. Another reason is that a lot of folks have a vested interest in the status quo. It you want an academic career in climate and weather studies you must hold with the prevailing theories about global warming or you won't get a grant, or a salaried position in an established organisation. Similarly, if you have a career designing ever better typewriters and mechanical typesetting kit, you will resist the introduction of computerised word processors and photo-typesetting kit because it will probably trash your means of livelihood. A reason with a very long pedigree is when an insight in the natural or political sciences conflicts with deeply held religious views and appears sacreligious.
Now ...
What makes both these topics so delicious is that some conspiracy theories are true. All that talk around the coffee machine that your company is about to shed 25% of its staff could all too sadly be correct. Similarly, just because someone dreams up an amazing scientific theory that refutes everything that's currently accepted - it doesn't mean they are a world-shaking genius. Sadly, far more often they are in fact what they are accused of being - a nutcase. But buried in all that nonsense from many aspiring world shakers will be the occasional shining diamond of wonder - the occasional nutcase who is in fact tomorrow's Albert Einstein. I mean - for goodness sake - who in their right mind would imagine riding on a beam of light and wondering what it would be like, and working it through and overthrowing the scientific High Priesthood of Isaac Newton in the process?
I think there are two separate issues in the topic you raised and they don't really fit well together.
One is about conspiracy theories - these are a belief that some powerful and clandestine organisation is influencing important events that impact on society outside the control of authentic political systems. You don't need to be particularly intelligent to hold such a view - probably it only needs sufficient wits to be able to set up a Twitter account and read what's there. These things are like an epidemic, as Jung pointed out, when whole subsections of a population become infected by beliefs that have no foundation in reality and are themselves collectively powerful enough to change national policies in irrational ways.
What does need both intellectual and emotional intelligence is creating and farming a fruitful conspiracy theory in a believable way and keeping control of it so that you can ride the crest of its wave into the highest political power. My goodness, history is full of despots who have seized control of nations this way.
Of course the very best conspiracy theories are ones that do contain just a little bit of truth so that they can be dressed up with 'empirical evidence' to support them.
My feeling is that the grunt followers of such conspiracy theories are primarily driven by fear and a sense of their own powerlessness. It's can be easier to blame some shadowy
THEM than to see yourself as part of the problem, and perhaps part of the solution.But ....
The other issue is when someone holds a view that runs very much contrary to popular beliefs. The most fundamental of these are effectively paradigm shifts - alternative worldviews. Many of the great revolutions in science and politics have appeared this way - the first Greek philosopher 2,500 years ago who suggested the world was round must have been just such a guy. His contemporaries must have thought him mad. Early in 20th century, Alfred Wegener raised the idea of continental drift as explaining the shape and geology of the continents - he was vilified and treated as a lunatic, and the idea only took hold in the 1960s. Today we have changed completely and pretty well everyone accepts it as obvious. The thing is that a really great breakthrough in the understanding of anything is going to look like madness to all the other folks if it's truly original; it takes not just great intelligence but great courage too to pursue such ideas publicly. It's only a few hundred years since we burnt such folks at the stake for contrary worldviews, and this nearly happened to Galileo. Charles Darwin sat on his great work on evolution for many years for fear of the extreme response it could generate and the effects of that on himself and his family.
These contrarian insights are not at all the same as conspiracy theories, though they could of course seed one - the Pythagorean school in Greece could fit that sort of bill, hiding their great revolutionary mathematical knowledge behind a spiritual veil open only to initiates.
Why do these contrarian views generate so much fierce opposition when they aren't just ignored? One reason is simply that it takes a lot of effort to change, and it can be very hard understanding and accepting such conceptual changes. Another reason is that a lot of folks have a vested interest in the status quo. It you want an academic career in climate and weather studies you must hold with the prevailing theories about global warming or you won't get a grant, or a salaried position in an established organisation. Similarly, if you have a career designing ever better typewriters and mechanical typesetting kit, you will resist the introduction of computerised word processors and photo-typesetting kit because it will probably trash your means of livelihood. A reason with a very long pedigree is when an insight in the natural or political sciences conflicts with deeply held religious views and appears sacreligious.
Now ...
What makes both these topics so delicious is that some conspiracy theories are true. All that talk around the coffee machine that your company is about to shed 25% of its staff could all too sadly be correct. Similarly, just because someone dreams up an amazing scientific theory that refutes everything that's currently accepted - it doesn't mean they are a world-shaking genius. Sadly, far more often they are in fact what they are accused of being - a nutcase. But buried in all that nonsense from many aspiring world shakers will be the occasional shining diamond of wonder - the occasional nutcase who is in fact tomorrow's Albert Einstein. I mean - for goodness sake - who in their right mind would imagine riding on a beam of light and wondering what it would be like, and working it through and overthrowing the scientific High Priesthood of Isaac Newton in the process?
Is everyone OK with this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light
Anyone ever questioned this?
Hence, an object moving at the speed of light through space experiences no time at all or in other words is frozen in time. So, the real reason why we can't move faster than the speed of light is that once we're moving entirely through space, there's no more speed to be gained.
That so?
copied from Cosmos...
The faster something travels, the more massive it gets, and the more time slows – until you finally reach the speed of light, at which point time stops altogether.
Time stops. At the speed of light. Really? Hear that, Lt. Dan? "They gave YOU the Congressional Medal of Honor!.......................!
Not having access to the items required, the time, and the manpower, We must just believe that. Has it ever been proven? Lots of folk have tried. I simply do not accept it as absolute truth. I'd love to try and disprove it, but why? Maybe I just have my intuition telling me lies now?
I would guess when something travels faster than light, time will restart and start going backwards maybe. I just don't and never have believed this.
186,000 miles per second. Time stops after that.
I'll leave the rest to theorists. They have put so much time into this, of course.
It is 3.7 billion miles every now and then from the Sun to Pluto. They like to use meters, I forgot.
The sun produces its energy by the conversion of mass into energy through the process of nuclear fusion. OK. What replaces the mass as it is used?
The sun uses fusion of hydrogen into helium to create sunlight at an astonishing rate. The sun gives off 3.86 x 1026 W of power. That means the sun is losing 4.2 million tonnes of mass every second due to nuclear fusion. copied
Mass-energy equivalence is the famous concept in physics represented mathematically by E=mc2,
which states that mass and energy are one and the same.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light
Anyone ever questioned this?
Hence, an object moving at the speed of light through space experiences no time at all or in other words is frozen in time. So, the real reason why we can't move faster than the speed of light is that once we're moving entirely through space, there's no more speed to be gained.
That so?
copied from Cosmos...
The faster something travels, the more massive it gets, and the more time slows – until you finally reach the speed of light, at which point time stops altogether.
Time stops. At the speed of light. Really? Hear that, Lt. Dan? "They gave YOU the Congressional Medal of Honor!.......................!
Not having access to the items required, the time, and the manpower, We must just believe that. Has it ever been proven? Lots of folk have tried. I simply do not accept it as absolute truth. I'd love to try and disprove it, but why? Maybe I just have my intuition telling me lies now?
I would guess when something travels faster than light, time will restart and start going backwards maybe. I just don't and never have believed this.
186,000 miles per second. Time stops after that.
I'll leave the rest to theorists. They have put so much time into this, of course.
It is 3.7 billion miles every now and then from the Sun to Pluto. They like to use meters, I forgot.
The sun uses fusion of hydrogen into helium to create sunlight at an astonishing rate. The sun gives off 3.86 x 1026 W of power. That means the sun is losing 4.2 million tonnes of mass every second due to nuclear fusion. copied
Mass-energy equivalence is the famous concept in physics represented mathematically by E=mc2,
which states that mass and energy are one and the same.
Last edited:
I'm not sure if this ties in to what you are saying, but yes, it does seem very exhausting to have to personally prove everything is true in order for it to be true. At a certain point if it's not directly relevant to your life I can see why you just either "trust" that it's true or know that it's irrelevant so it doesn't matter so much to you if it's true or notIs everyone OK with this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light
Anyone ever questioned this?
Hence, an object moving at the speed of light through space experiences no time at all or in other words is frozen in time. So, the real reason why we can't move faster than the speed of light is that once we're moving entirely through space, there's no more speed to be gained.
That so?
copied from Cosmos...
The faster something travels, the more massive it gets, and the more time slows – until you finally reach the speed of light, at which point time stops altogether.
Time stops. At the speed of light. Really? Hear that, Lt. Dan? "They gave YOU the Congressional Medal of Honor!.......................!
Not having access to the items required, the time, and the manpower, We must just believe that. Has it ever been proven? Lots of folk have tried. I simply do not accept it as absolute truth. I'd love to try and disprove it, but why? Maybe I just have my intuition telling me lies now?
I would guess when something travels faster than light, time will restart and start going backwards maybe. I just don't and never have believed this.
186,000 miles per second. Time stops after that.
I'll leave the rest to theorists. They have put so much time into this, of course.
It is 3.7 billion miles every now and then from the Sun to Pluto. They like to use meters, I forgot.
The sun produces its energy by the conversion of mass into energy through the process of nuclear fusion. OK. What replaces the mass as it is used?
The sun uses fusion of hydrogen into helium to create sunlight at an astonishing rate. The sun gives off 3.86 x 1026 W of power. That means the sun is losing 4.2 million tonnes of mass every second due to nuclear fusion. copied
Mass-energy equivalence is the famous concept in physics represented mathematically by E=mc2,
which states that mass and energy are one and the same.
Plasma: who would have ever thought that? They must have created nuclear fusion using the sun as their teacher. Change a gas into plasma to separate and add to close proximity the ions: We do it with a mistake and the mass and energy becomes mass(high) destruction that it produces. A Big Bang would destroy and melt away life. The energy we receive from the sun does not destroy us. What if our constant is slightly wrong? Could we split atoms and warm the world? I think we will in some years.
OP, We can just let it be, but ONLY because we do not have access to what we need to work with. We are all building nuclear weapons instead. Why? To make sure oil, gas, and coal still can be needed. Where North Korea is with almost stabilizing heat, there might could be found useful instead of destructive. Make Kim Jong-un a Nobel Peace Prize winner if he can do it. Think of the changes, but is war a constant? Is destruction a constant. Is oil a constant? Does everyone other than myself
not think about using fusion to create energy that can be contained and used to help this world we live in?
Money is certainly nice to have, but not at the cost of human life from destruction. Going a step higher does not mean to step on another to get there. Maybe there are conspiracy theorists thinking it could have already happened, but big oil tycoons are keeping it hidden? Why couldn't Russia help to heat Ukraine this winter without oil and gas? Use the technology that can help change the world, not that to threaten it. It matters to me.
It is difficult for me to know they have been testing since the 1950s or so, and have yet to come up with a peaceful use.
OP, We can just let it be, but ONLY because we do not have access to what we need to work with. We are all building nuclear weapons instead. Why? To make sure oil, gas, and coal still can be needed. Where North Korea is with almost stabilizing heat, there might could be found useful instead of destructive. Make Kim Jong-un a Nobel Peace Prize winner if he can do it. Think of the changes, but is war a constant? Is destruction a constant. Is oil a constant? Does everyone other than myself
not think about using fusion to create energy that can be contained and used to help this world we live in?
Money is certainly nice to have, but not at the cost of human life from destruction. Going a step higher does not mean to step on another to get there. Maybe there are conspiracy theorists thinking it could have already happened, but big oil tycoons are keeping it hidden? Why couldn't Russia help to heat Ukraine this winter without oil and gas? Use the technology that can help change the world, not that to threaten it. It matters to me.
It is difficult for me to know they have been testing since the 1950s or so, and have yet to come up with a peaceful use.
Last edited:
I wonder also how much having an external locus of control plays into this.
Only things I've noticed is that the conspiracy realm is a breeding ground for narcissism and hubris. Yet, once in a while the conspiracy turns out to be true.
Where are all these anti-gov, anti federal reserve, and anti liberals at? Liberals, to me, are at my left hand and I do not agree with their politics and control over the people, hiding information, and demonizing guns. Each of them are protected with guns.
There is a conspiracy going on to take away our rights: guns on their top agenda.
I have found that wisdom acquired with experience is shunned. People don't like it if you know something they do not know. Keeping this wisdom to oneself, it is much easier to walk amongst them. This is very painful to the one that knows. Should he say something in the gray to someone, everything is taken literally when not meant to be taken that way. I used to have a very large vocabulary and was made fun of by my peers. "Who are you trying to impress"? When in Rome, do as the Romans do.
I have found that such knowledge has its own place, though maybe I should have been running with someone else likeminded. Instead, I adapted to the way most everyone spoke. Shame on me.
It is great when we find our place in the world, even though we know things we choose not to speak.
One day we wake up, and the place was all wrong. As we keep taking our steps upward, we are likely to go beyond others' ways of thinking. Finally, we find someone that speaks our language. When we find out we are only being used, it is most annoying. They think they are getting what they want, only to find later they are all in a different league altogether. Finally, after others watch this, we find ourselves around people we feel comfortable with, when they are merely trying to use you again.
What most question is where you are now and the steps you have been fighting through. Knowing this when approached at first keeps us from being vulnerable. We don't feel important, but feel we have been finally placed where we are needed most. No pride in that. No mockery of those not there. We lick our wounds, but keep climbing that ladder. Those happy with where they are should never hate or dislike those that keep climbing.
I know my guns, and have never seen anyone shot with just a gun. People shoot other people. If we study the percentages of the most doing this, we find it is a conspiracy. We lock them up and the DA lets them out so they can strengthen their numbers when they shoot someone else. It is a failure in the system, or is it a conspiracy?
Want to hear a conspiracy? Check the shooters and convicted felons on their second or third time;
maybe, even those on their first time. We find people that should not have a gun because of their past, with the current laws that work for those who are not committing the crimes. One person may have been convicted three times for murder or attempted murder, but he may be in the park with his friends today and he is carrying against the current laws. Why is he out there?
Gun control? Check the trail on some of these people's money. Saddam Hussein used to pay some Palestinians to adorn their own child with bomb belts just to kill Israelis. I will always have a gun to protect myself, and it will be through the NICS system they are trying to rewrite. We are all victims of being too lazy to look into things. We strain at a gnat, but will swallow a camel.
When the CDC was approached and asked to remove certain statistics from their website, "because it is making gun control difficult", it spells conspiracy to me. People who have used their guns for personal protection are up to the millions: up to 2.5 million. CDC removed the statistics.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/cd...gun-use-pressure-gun-control-activists-report
Last edited:
I think that conspiratorial thinking probably does have a correlation with general intelligence.
Suppose you designed an AI with the ability to recognize patterns in human social behaviors at all scales (individual to civilizational). It would have an enormous power to detect patterns and associations at far beyond human processing speeds. Such a machine would churn out novel 'conspiracy theories' all day long as it detected patterns upon patterns upon patterns.
Pattern recognition is a component of general intelligence, and its reasonable to conclude that those who possess a greater ability to recognize patterns are at greater risk of developing conspiratorial thinking, especially when the brain rewards such connections having been made. What's missing is not 'intelligence', but reality testing. It's no coincidence that all of the risk factors for weakened reality testing are co-morbid with the stereotypes we associate with conspiracy theorists: social isolation prime among them.
So I suppose that, even though the OP was attempting to lay a snare, nonetheless there was or is some truth to the question.
Suppose you designed an AI with the ability to recognize patterns in human social behaviors at all scales (individual to civilizational). It would have an enormous power to detect patterns and associations at far beyond human processing speeds. Such a machine would churn out novel 'conspiracy theories' all day long as it detected patterns upon patterns upon patterns.
Pattern recognition is a component of general intelligence, and its reasonable to conclude that those who possess a greater ability to recognize patterns are at greater risk of developing conspiratorial thinking, especially when the brain rewards such connections having been made. What's missing is not 'intelligence', but reality testing. It's no coincidence that all of the risk factors for weakened reality testing are co-morbid with the stereotypes we associate with conspiracy theorists: social isolation prime among them.
So I suppose that, even though the OP was attempting to lay a snare, nonetheless there was or is some truth to the question.
There is no doubt that Americans are organizing to limit the sales and ownership of guns. It is also evident that at least two state legislatures are passing bills to criminalize the financial penalization of gun manufactures and fossil fuel producers (Oklahoma and Texas, namely). Are these conspiracies? I don't think so. Citizens organize to pressure government and business in free societies. Just calling political positions conspiratorial doesn't make them so.
BTW, liberalism is not collectivism. Liberalism is at the foremost concerned with the rights of the individual. It became a potent force in the world to counter the despotic monarchies of the middle ages. In fact liberalism is so pro property rights that it routinely comes under attack from collectivists.
Liberalism is not dogmatic, it seeks accommodation with opposing positions almost to a fault. There is as much criticism of liberalism on the far left as there is on the far right.
Concerns over gun rights comes down to perceptions of public safety. There are plenty of liberals who own guns and believe in their right to do so, but they also largely believe that gun manufactures are out of control, cranking out guns without regard to where they go.
Conspiracy lurks where combined corporate interests rally political fervor to defend the rights of gun manufactures to crank out as many guns as they can in the name of individual rights to own guns.
We see both sides of a coin. I personally feel it inappropriate to say "Americans". The general public is safe with law-abiding citizens who posses a gun or guns. Maybe "some Americans" which are usually liberals.
Gun manufacturers usually sell their guns to distributors, who sell the guns to dealers. The dealers not only use the NICS background check, but can also deny sales if they see something that causes a question in their minds. A government may have a "pro property rights" mentality, but why does it not respect pro civilian rights. As for property, what about my guns? The wording in the media of assault weapons has been misused overly. "Gun crimes" is an unrespectable use of "guns" to sway public opinion. People criminalize themselves, not guns.
We have reasons to have a gun or guns. Some folk are even collectors of curio and relics. They may collect guns from their own desires. Most all collectors keep them safe. Very many guns are never even fired by the collector. These are usually insured which requires they are kept safely to the insurer's requests. A gun is not necessarily a tool, and can be an object of a missing part of a collection.
Criminals or people not necessarily in their right frame of mind are what needs control, not guns.
Take away any gun rights, and all you are actually doing is giving criminals an advantage over law-abiding people. Guns don't kill people: people kill people. Trying to take those rights away or changing the laws will not stop criminals from owning guns and never will. Gun manufacturers do not haphazardly crank out guns and give them to whoever will buy them. That is a conspiracy against gun manufacturers.
When some people live in areas that are all streets and houses and businesses, many are not taught to properly handle a gun. Very many of us have been introduced to guns by our fathers who showed us not only proper use, but the value of life in every living creature we encountered. When hunting quail, we only did it by the laws. We never went around killing everything we saw. We ate the quail. Mankind has been living off the land thousands of years.
Some folk may buy a turkey, while others cannot wait for turkey season so they can harvest their own from nature. Some folk enjoy just cutting paper at a range to see a tight group.
Last edited:
It was a gun manufacturer that played a large role in the Union attacking the south. Repeating rifles were made to help them dominate those in the south with single shots. We have the right to legally manufacture guns. We have the right to legally buy firearms. Firearms should be firearms, not categorized as always weapons. AR-15 constructs are not always used as a weapon. Lawsuits from those who have never been in the woods are insane. It was proven to create a mass killing, all one need do is use fuel and an airplane. Think about 9-11: nobody ever called it "plane violence"! "Gun violence" is another term I personally decry. I have never had a gun attack me with some form of violence. It was proven to create a mass killing, all one need do is fill a van or truck with explosives. Remember Beirut? I do. Nobody called it van violence. These words and phrases have been embraced over the years by citizens. It is called mind control. Wake up.
Last edited:
