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Conspiracy Theories As Gossip
I started my investigation into the gullibility of certain KMC members with thie thread below on the moon landing, It becomes more obvious as the thread continues my postion is false, I respect the members of the forum who applied logic to the situation like PVS and unveiled the thread for the fraud it was.
I found this and it sums up my feelings on Conspiracy theorists and theories beautifully. Opinions anyone. How thick are conspiracy theorists? How stupid are the ideas they propagate?
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Friday, July 02, 2004
Conspiracy TheoriesMy thoughts on why we should be suspicious of Conspiracy Theories:
CONSPIRACY THEORIES AS GOSSIP--------------------------
Conspiratorial views of history and current events are very seductive. In a very real way, conspiracy theories carry the same temptation and the same power as gossip does. Like gossip, sharing conspiracy theories carries a certain, peculiar pleasure. As human beings we tend to find a visceral pleasure in sharing the dirty-little secrets of others: even when those dirty-little secrets are more perceived than real.
True or fabricated, gossip tends to agree with the observable facts, and is marked by a good degree of logical consistency. Often gossip carries a great deal of explanatory power and provides a framework in which an individual's actions may be interpreted. Conspiracy theories are marked by these same attributes.
The problem with both gossip and conspiracy theories is that our collection of facts may be incomplete and our perception of them may be distorted. We are, after all, only human and to some degree we see what we want to see. And at a very primitive, emotional level we would rather see those dirty-little secrets; we would rather see conspiracies.
Because they are so seductive in this way, I believe that when confronted with a conspiracy theory it is appropriate to maintain a good deal of skepticism and self doubt.
FOOLING YOURSELF--------------------
In a commencement speech he have in 1974 to the California Institute of Technology, the great physicist, the late Dr. Richard Feynman told the students to cultivate:
...a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty--a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid--not only what
you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain the results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked--to make sure the other fellow can tell that they have been eliminated. . . . In summary, the idea is to try to give all the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.
I would like to add something that's not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the laymen when you're talking as a scientist. . . .I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is [more than] not
lying, but bending over backwards to show how you're maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen.
must we have this conversation again?
to 'search for the truth' is to do just that: search
that means hearing/reading certain theories and then going on to research for yourself, finding info outside the source, since the source's info can be highly tainted with bias (and usually is).
searching for the truth requires far more than clicking this link: http://www.rense.com.
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Hmm I bet Aliens did that together with the Illuminati, to destroy the only free voice out there.....no that conspiracy theory has a major flaw....no Bush in it.
__________________
Yeah, I heard a funny thing; Somebody said to me:
"You know that I could be in love with almost everyone
I think that people are...the greatest fun!"
so long as you hold true to the words "believe" and "possible"
then ok. but often you seem to substitute those words with
"know" and "definite". that is when you come off as a bit looney.
KMC Community Forums
Jun 20th, 2005 05:50 PM
Ignores Bardock, ho, hum back to thread 
