You do realize that about halfway through their ludicrous arguments and points that lack any shred of evidence other than "some guy on the internet said it" they basically said that they consider you close minded and that nothing they say will convince you? I find this ironic since they have refuted EVERY SINGLE piece of scientific evidence provided to them, apparently calling science itself a fraud.
There is nothing, and I mean nothing, short of some sort of massive self-realization that will halt their crazy. They are so focused on being right and being the ones to say "I told you so" that nothing else matters. They can't afford to be wrong because it would lower their self-worth. In the comfortable blanked of WTF they have created for themselves, not unlike fundamentalists, nothing will penetrate and they will refute everything. Even if the very people who hooked them into their lunatic, nonsensical, unprovable ideas came out and said "Wow, I was totally wrong and all this shit is completely bogus", they would come up with some argument about how that person was 'gotten to' by some new world order. Anything to preserve the delusion.
Give up Scott. 'Guy' is obviously long gone and won't come back from crazytown but by his own volition.
I really like all the Matrix references. They've got the red and blue pills, reality being electrical signals interpreted by the brain and "until you recognize the system, until you see the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you, you are still part of the system."
I really like all the Matrix references. They've got the red and blue pills, reality being electrical signals interpreted by the brain and "until you recognize the system, until you see the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you, you are still part of the system."
Yea the kid is like 18 or 19 so the Matrix was big when he would have just started to like that sort of thing ^_^
Once again, I'm not trying to be "Defend the Weed" guy, but there's no reason this would make any difference. :P
Hey I'm not a "weed" is horrible person but it has been known to make people more paranoid.
Paranoid is one thing, but demented and arguing about time cubes and the embodiment of RA is a bit more than weed.
Edit: Maybe to help you out a bit, I've smoked weed (numerous times), and the best way to describe the paranoia is "local". I'm paranoid about the cops pulling up, or about getting "too high", etc. I've never even thought to question the government or if time cubes are for real. Even in a totally gone out of my mind state, I can still comprehend logic, and I've actually argued a multitude of things high.
Weed can be laced with all kinds of fucked up things.
This is true, but I really doubt it's laced with the same thing for the last year or however long this guy has been smoking. One or two times doesn't really put this shit in your head.
Ok, about the weed, I had a schizophrenic uncle who constantly smoked pot. It made his condition waaay worse. It is not recommended to smoke dope if you have a disease like that in your family, which is why I avoid it. Unfortunately if you are prone to that kind of thing, it can help you down the crazy path. I by no means claim that it will definitely cause you to become schizophrenic, but I know first hand it's negative effects, and until you see them yourself you can't understand it.
I worked with him everyday for 2 years and have known him my entire life until he passed away a couple months ago and have a collection of wonderful nonsensical hilarious stories that are beyond possible.
I figured I'd keep posting the crazy links and such as he posts them just for a reference to some of the CRAZY freaking shit people believe.
He's been on this HAARP thing for the last day, talking about how the US caused the earthquake in Haiti using this HAARP device... Haarp.net
I just talked about all the questions he would need to have evidence for before you could make a claim like that.... My best was "WHY THE FUCK WOULD THE US CAUSE A EARTHQUAKE IN HAITI?"
So I've spent a better part of the weekend on long car trips with my cell phone arguing with conspiracy theories from everything from Where Obama was born to fuel cell engines that will get you across the country on 22 gallons of water to chemtrails. Is it just that by talking with friends about japan and the nuclear crisis and asking questions on other people's video clip posts that I've unearthed conspiracy theories or is the number of people deep in the conspiracy growing?
Could it be a function of the internet and google when you put in a search for something crazy it's actually difficult to find a link that refutes it or is it a function of the times we live in, war, privacy rights and giant mega corporations?
I think it's purely a function that any idiot can get a blog for a trivial amount of cash or even for free to propose whatever crackpot theory they have. From that point on, it's only natural that similar crackpots will tend to congregate.
Is it just that by talking with friends about japan and the nuclear crisis and asking questions on other people's video clip posts that I've unearthed conspiracy theories or is the number of people deep in the conspiracy growing?
Your circle of friends outside of the crew has always been nutty like this. I recall you complaining about it for years. You also tend not to ignore harmless-but-crazy people. Confirmation bias.
More generally, I'd say that the same relative number of people have this tendency now as always have. It may well have something to do with a need to feel superior to others (e.g., "I figured all of this out: I'm a superior person") coupled with compensation and rationalization for one's personal failures (e.g., "The world is keeping me down to prevent the truth from getting out: I would be rich if there weren't such forces arrayed againg me") with a healthy backdrop of an underlying susceptibility to memes matching their own confirmation bias (notice how they always find "evidence" of their plots in just about everything, even direct refutation of said plots).
A particular characteristic seems to be a sort of argumentation style where the person will respond to a direct refutation or contradictory evidence with a seemingly non-related statement. They will be confused that this unrelated statement does not in fact directly refute your point, having clearly expected you to follow their bizarre leap in logic.
I say all of this this because most every person I've ever encountered who believed these particular sorts of things acted in a similar manner, had similar personal problems, etc... Anecdotal I know, but I would suspect a correlation.
People have, and probably always will be, stupid. But in addition to being stupid, they are also gullible. It is incredibly easy to convince most people of whatever crazy crackpot theory you have, as long as it doesn't already conflict with some other idea they have. If someone doesn't already know or care about contrails it is easy to convince them of whatever crackpot explanation you come up with. I even remember an aerospace engineering student at RIT who had a professor who argued about what contrails were. The student knew that they were condensation on hot exhaust gasses from jet engines, but the professor thought it had something to do with the way the pattern of the air movement as it went through the jet.
I do actually believe there are an increasing number of crackpots out there. People have always been gullible, but very few were exposed to conspiracy theories except for the popular ones like UFOs and JFK. That's because the most media anyone got was corporate and professional. Only weird supermarket tabloids like Weekly World News had the nutty stuff. The Internet not only has allowed the few crackpots out there to publish their nut job ideas, but has exposed the gullible masses to those ideas. It doesn't help that the TV and radio have also started bringing more of that crazy conspiracy content on the air. It used to be just late night radio that had that stuff, but now you can see it on prime time cable.
There has been, and always will be, a sucker born every minute. Nowadays we just have more different people doing the sucking into more different things.
Your circle of friends outside of the crew has always been nutty like this
It's actually that I seem to know people who know crazy people. I end up arguing with people connected to people I know and not the people I actually know :-p
What do you think about the fact that a reasonable rebuttal to their information is much harder to get to then the crazy? I think this is actually a problem because it deludes people into thinking there is more weight to a theory they read.
I do actually believe there are an increasing number of crackpots out there.
I disagree. I think instead they're more obvious as they converge on common ideas. Previously, every town had its nutjobs with their own nuttery. TACMARS in Michigan, UFOs in SoCal, etc... The Internet now brings all of these people and ideas together, converging on super-nutjob memes. Lizard People aren't as compelling as Chemtrails nowadays, so the latter is more popular among nutjobs.
I think I was thrown off Rym, when I tried your technique of picking a crazier conspiracy theory and the guy dove into it. Sending me like 10 links and asked that I watch freaking hour and a half movies before commenting... I can see why there are not as many rebuttals out there... The sheer amount of quackery is overwhelming.
I think I was thrown off Rym, when I tried your technique of picking a crazier conspiracy theory and the guy dove into it. Sending me like 10 links and asked that I watch freaking hour and a half movies before commenting... I can see why there are not as many rebuttals out there... The sheer amount of quackery is overwhelming.
I think I was thrown off Rym, when I tried your technique of picking a crazier conspiracy theory and the guy dove into it. Sending me like 10 links and asked that I watch freaking hour and a half movies before commenting... I can see why there are not as many rebuttals out there... The sheer amount of quackery is overwhelming.
Why do you associate yourself with such people?
That's what I want to know. I've given up on anyone like that. They're Buzz Aldrining targets, examples for others not yet past the event horizon of reason, and nothing more.
That's what I want to know. I've given up on anyone like that. They're Buzz Aldrining targets, examples for others not yet past the event horizon of reason, and nothing more.
I'm with you guys. James Randi thinks there is no hope for these people, and he's been trying for almost the entirety of his very long life. I'm certainly not going to be able to do any better job than he can, so it's best not to even waste your time.
well, there are a lot of reasons, in the case of the 22 gallon of water fuel cell guy, that came into a discussion on the safety of nuclear power and he was not a friend of mine, he was a friend of a friend. The other major case is a cousin of Laura's of a Aunt and Uncle I really like and they have asked me to help them with their son. Who was really awesome until he started to go to college, failed out and fell in with a questionable group. Before then he was someone the crew would have liked a young tech minded kid who was pretty rational (into anime and video games).
To see someone fall into such crazy thinking when coming from a family of generally rational people interests me because I wonder who else could turn on a dime in their ability to see the world rationally. It's interesting. I also believe that cutting people off because of different views can be dangerous because it can cause your own echo chamber, so I keep around a few benign crazies to make sure I or we do not become crazy as well.
This thread makes my head hurt. I get all the exposure to crazy I need from the internet. I don't care who they are, I've got no patience for it in real life.
I've also seen some people come out of this crazy thinking. They may never be completely cured but they can pull themselves out of most of the most crazy paranoid ones. I still believe that challenging them to defend and defend and defend their views is the best course of action and people just giving up on people just lets them fall into their own echo chambers never being challenged and at the same time spreading there dangerous memes to other vulnerable minds. The lack of critical thinking and logic studies in schools today should only deepen these troubles.
I live in a liberal arts college town with a heavy crazy-to-sane ratio. Every day I hear something about 9/11 Truthers, Secret Republican XYZing, "They" are trying to suppress information, etc.
I don't think 99 percent of the so-called proponents of these conspiracies actually believe in them. I think they: a) Are asking for attention they would otherwise not receive, b) Want to have some exclusivity on some version of "truth" they create in order to validate themselves, c) Wish that their conspiracies were true, because it would be much simpler than the complex realities of most situations, d) Are otherwise socially ostracized and want to fit in with other conspiracy nuts.
I think these same criteria can be applied to the masses who align themselves politically. Most people never stop to think (or to discuss in a rational manner like we do) why they believe what they believe. Politics, religion, pro-life, intelligent design -- whatever the hitch might be, I think it almost always stems from tangential motivations rather than the stated ones.
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There is nothing, and I mean nothing, short of some sort of massive self-realization that will halt their crazy. They are so focused on being right and being the ones to say "I told you so" that nothing else matters. They can't afford to be wrong because it would lower their self-worth. In the comfortable blanked of WTF they have created for themselves, not unlike fundamentalists, nothing will penetrate and they will refute everything. Even if the very people who hooked them into their lunatic, nonsensical, unprovable ideas came out and said "Wow, I was totally wrong and all this shit is completely bogus", they would come up with some argument about how that person was 'gotten to' by some new world order. Anything to preserve the delusion.
Give up Scott. 'Guy' is obviously long gone and won't come back from crazytown but by his own volition.
until you see the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you, you are still part of the system."
Edit: Maybe to help you out a bit, I've smoked weed (numerous times), and the best way to describe the paranoia is "local". I'm paranoid about the cops pulling up, or about getting "too high", etc. I've never even thought to question the government or if time cubes are for real. Even in a totally gone out of my mind state, I can still comprehend logic, and I've actually argued a multitude of things high.
He's batshit crazy. That is all.
I worked with him everyday for 2 years and have known him my entire life until he passed away a couple months ago and have a collection of wonderful nonsensical hilarious stories that are beyond possible.
He's been on this HAARP thing for the last day, talking about how the US caused the earthquake in Haiti using this HAARP device...
Haarp.net
I just talked about all the questions he would need to have evidence for before you could make a claim like that.... My best was "WHY THE FUCK WOULD THE US CAUSE A EARTHQUAKE IN HAITI?"
HAARP is really just a fucking research station for gathering ionospheric data.
Top men.
Could it be a function of the internet and google when you put in a search for something crazy it's actually difficult to find a link that refutes it or is it a function of the times we live in, war, privacy rights and giant mega corporations?
Or just more people becoming mentally ill?
More generally, I'd say that the same relative number of people have this tendency now as always have. It may well have something to do with a need to feel superior to others (e.g., "I figured all of this out: I'm a superior person") coupled with compensation and rationalization for one's personal failures (e.g., "The world is keeping me down to prevent the truth from getting out: I would be rich if there weren't such forces arrayed againg me") with a healthy backdrop of an underlying susceptibility to memes matching their own confirmation bias (notice how they always find "evidence" of their plots in just about everything, even direct refutation of said plots).
A particular characteristic seems to be a sort of argumentation style where the person will respond to a direct refutation or contradictory evidence with a seemingly non-related statement. They will be confused that this unrelated statement does not in fact directly refute your point, having clearly expected you to follow their bizarre leap in logic.
I say all of this this because most every person I've ever encountered who believed these particular sorts of things acted in a similar manner, had similar personal problems, etc... Anecdotal I know, but I would suspect a correlation.
I do actually believe there are an increasing number of crackpots out there. People have always been gullible, but very few were exposed to conspiracy theories except for the popular ones like UFOs and JFK. That's because the most media anyone got was corporate and professional. Only weird supermarket tabloids like Weekly World News had the nutty stuff. The Internet not only has allowed the few crackpots out there to publish their nut job ideas, but has exposed the gullible masses to those ideas. It doesn't help that the TV and radio have also started bringing more of that crazy conspiracy content on the air. It used to be just late night radio that had that stuff, but now you can see it on prime time cable.
There has been, and always will be, a sucker born every minute. Nowadays we just have more different people doing the sucking into more different things.
What do you think about the fact that a reasonable rebuttal to their information is much harder to get to then the crazy? I think this is actually a problem because it deludes people into thinking there is more weight to a theory they read.
To see someone fall into such crazy thinking when coming from a family of generally rational people interests me because I wonder who else could turn on a dime in their ability to see the world rationally. It's interesting. I also believe that cutting people off because of different views can be dangerous because it can cause your own echo chamber, so I keep around a few benign crazies to make sure I or we do not become crazy as well.
It's a conspiracy!
I don't think 99 percent of the so-called proponents of these conspiracies actually believe in them. I think they:
a) Are asking for attention they would otherwise not receive,
b) Want to have some exclusivity on some version of "truth" they create in order to validate themselves,
c) Wish that their conspiracies were true, because it would be much simpler than the complex realities of most situations,
d) Are otherwise socially ostracized and want to fit in with other conspiracy nuts.
I think these same criteria can be applied to the masses who align themselves politically. Most people never stop to think (or to discuss in a rational manner like we do) why they believe what they believe. Politics, religion, pro-life, intelligent design -- whatever the hitch might be, I think it almost always stems from tangential motivations rather than the stated ones.