The Horrors of the World Are All About *YOU*

 

From this Metafilter thread, mostly about the Grandaddy of Using Conspiracy for Profit, there is a link to a righteous rant by the blogger MightyGodKing.  He, like myself, has lost all patience with the false-flagger conspiracy loons who blame all criminal malfeasance on subtle and unknowable government evil.  He points out what I have as well many times, and quite frankly does it much better than I ever have.  The 'Conspiracy Theorists' who scream "False Flag" over any and all tragic events are trying desperately to have an important place in the consequences of the horror.  MGK writes:

"because yelling “false flag” doesn’t really have anything to do with the plausibility of a conspiracy theory, but instead relies on the desperate need of people – and, let’s be honest, generally white dudes, because it is white dudes who comprise the overwhelming majority of conspiracy theorists – to feel victimized when something bad had absolutely nothing to do with them."

That is the long and short of it.  The point of engaging conspiracies has nothing to do with engagement at all.  It is appropriating pain for personal self-importance.  Frankly it is no different than the companies widely reviled who use tragic events to market their products.  That's not engagement, but rather manipulation and as MGK notes, it's awfully assholish.

"falseflaggers don’t care because their theories aren’t about logic or reason or anything at all. Their theories are about making tragedies that happen to other people about them. It’s a fundamentally narcissistic response to tragedy – to not only ask “how does this affect me” but to twist the facts of the event to create a narrative so that you are more likely to be affected. It’s an asshole move, plain and simple, and falseflaggers deserve to be treated like assholes, because they’re assholes."

One of the most profound comments to the post is this, from The Unstoppable Gravy Express:

When government decides to do shady unethical stuff, typically the last thing they want to do is, y’know, call attention to it.

“I’ve drafted a new bill to give us complete control of all milk production in the country. But first, let’s blow up a few thousand cows so everyone’s attention will be firmly on the dairy industry. THEN we’ll sneak it by them. Heh, heh heh.”

More to the only point I would add to what MightyGodKing writes is what another commenter in his thread suggests:

Believing in conspiracies makes you smart. Any time you get an online discussion of this kind of thing, someone will announced that while the official story may fool the sheeple couch potatoes who accept whatever lies the mainstream media spoonfeed them, smart people look behind the lies and uncover the truth! As CS Lewis once observed, this is an awfully seductive delusion.

The idea that one is smarter than 'everyone else' is seductive, but also instructive.  It clarifies to any rational person that False Flaggers don't want to engage but rather seek desperately to hide from any engagement.  It is circular reasoning that shows disagreement is evidence of 'lesser thinking', and so should (must) not be taken seriously.  The false flagger knows more, cares more, has more importance to reality and existence than the person who points out that they might be wrong.  Of course they're not wrong; every breath or word of question and/or disagreement proves how right they are.  It's a particular invulnerability to the truth, based solely on the need to be important.

Seriously, there are enough real conspiracies in the world to occupy our time.  Cops acting illegally and hiding behind the 'thin blue line', Wall Street in general, the Republicant's desire to drown government in a bathtub and many Democrats desiring to help them, Obama's flawed "Grand Bargain", 'the Left's' betrayal of labor, the LDS Church opposition to the icky 'gays' being people, ALEC, the NRA, the Patriot Acts, the 'War On Drugs'.  These things are not hidden; they're in your face every fricken day.  BUT, they don't afford one a sense of being a superhero who sees what's *really* going on, and latching oneself like a remora to tragedy in order to feel important  while being disengaged.  Those common place conspiracies are just life that we all deal with in this 'bestest country EVAR!'

So, next time you encounter someone talking smack about 'free energy beam weapons', 'actors hired to play amputees' and people disappearing mysteriously from a tragedy, nod sagely and walk away (never losing eye contact until at a safe distance.)  You won't convince them of the crazy they spout, and they won't help you in covering anything that is a real concern.  They're in it for themselves, may they find their place in Heaven or build to good Karma.  But it isn't about you, and never will be.  It is about, to them, how the horrors of the world are theirs to own.

Comments

[NamelessRange]

I enjoyed this post.

I am usually not a fan of psychologizing. It's too easy, is rarely testable, and is more like drawing the bullseye after the shot, though this hypothesis sure seems to fit doesn't it? It's worth pointing out that Conspiracy theorists Necessarily psychologize others to make there delusions more plausible to them.

It seems like there is another very real bias occurring in the Conspiracy Theorist- that of conflating uncertainty. The premise , "What we are told about 9/11 is not entirely true", a premise I can except, becomes cosmic rays and cgi, when the explanation could be far simpler. Basically, the conclusions do not follow.

An example of the bias I am referring to was highlighted when the the researchers Kahneman and Tversky went to the Second International Conference on Forecasting in 1982. These were professional forecasters. Foretelling the future was their job.The researchers asked one group of forecasters about the probability of a complete breakdown of diplomatic relations between the United States and the Soviet Union sometime in 1983.

Now they asked a separate group about the probability of a Soviet invasion of Poland followed by a complete breakdown of diplomatic relations between the USA and the Soviet Union some time in 1983. Group two responded with higher probabilities. The reason why this doesn’t make sense is that in any case where Russia invades Poland and diplomatic relations breaks down is necessarily a case where diplomatic relations breaks down.

You cannot assign higher probability to the compound event ‘A and B’ than the single event ‘A, whether or not B happens.’ But that was what the forecasters did. There’s a number of ways of looking at the reasons why they did this. The most important thing to realize about this is that adding more details onto a prediction or explanation automatically makes that hypothesis less probable by the laws of probability theory. But it can also make it sound more plausible to human beings.

This tells us something of the probability theory underlying Occam’s Razor and the human psychology that causes us not to implement Occam’s Razor. So, you see individuals believing these enormous, complicated stories with no evidence behind them.

It helps us understand their delusions to recognize bias that we all have, except for theirs seems hyperactive.

[Wulfgar]

Terrific comment!

By no less than 3 people, I have been directed to watch videos of PhD. Judy Wood laying out her ideas concerning 'free energy beam weapons causing demolecularization' used on 9/11. In 2 of those presentations, she begins the same way, by positing that if one can accept that 4+5x3 = 27 than one can view the events of that day without a predisposed bias of 'rules'. I posted my personal response to that 'logic' on Facebook, and copy it here:

Problem solving 101. The answer is 27

But wait, what is the question? That is simple enough. 4 + 5 x 3. Now you may solve that equation to be 19 or 27.

If your solution is 19, then you are slavishly beholden to the doctrinaire rules of mathematics, oppressed by the authority of the few who taught you that multiplication comes before addition.

BUT, if your answer is 27, then you have freed your mind from the burden of calculation (and reality) such that you can imagine different solutions, thinking outside the box, as the cool kids say. You can examine a problem and come up with solutions unconstrained by the conventional. For instance, you can see that the Tooth fairy really did leave a quarter under your pillow. You can accept the Illuminati control our governance despite the obvious attempts by a few rich (and often stupid) folk to directly manipulate voting. And best of all, you can readily accept that the 'evidence' of 9/11 clearly points to some unknown free energy beam weapon bringing down the twin towers, after having moved a storm away from the East Coast (which of course the media never covered).

Still, that hardly seems the limit of breaking the rules. If 4 + 5 x 3 can be 27, why can't it be 333? We're breaking rules, people and looking at reality in a whole new way. I suggest that 9/11 was pulled off by dragons.

You see, problems are easy to solve, when you ignore the pesky and tedious rules of reality. Thus endeth the lesson.

Just as you indicate, anything within the realm of the possible shares equal probability only in so far as one denies the most likely possibility from any review, or posits evidence from the realm of fantasy.

[The physics guy]

Physics? I don't need no stinking physics!

Mark, you dumbass, I'll write it again knowing full well that you will *never* understand it:

Newtons third law: F=opposingF

F= ma
a = Δ velocity/ Δ time.

I didn't have to attempt to include velocity, you moron. It's already fundamentally part of the Newtons law itself. ~W

[NamelessRange]

I find it humorous when you talk about self reflection Tokarski. The other night when your son, one of the few people who has the patience to argue against your specific bullshit, absolutely devastated your arguments, you threw a fit. Your panties bunched so far up your ass that you deleted the whole post, and the embarrassingly illogical responses that you provided. It was only up for a night, but I saw it.

The fact is that your most recent amputee actor theories are testable. I can imagine a myriad of ways to prove that amputees existing prior to the Boston bombings, are indeed the same individuals supposedly injured in the bombings. I doubt such evidence will be attained. Rather, comparing photographs is far safer to maintaining your a priori delusions.

In Tokarski's world, hyper-rational unknown agents are running insanely effective PSYOPs all the time, and they're doing it with rubber masks and fake legs.....Right.

If we granted the truth of your premises then the existence of devestating evidence against the anti-conspiracy theorist would be abundant. ( Escape Clause time) The fact that NONE of these nails in the coffin EVER rise to the surface is telling, and is exactly what we would expect given your premises are bullshit, which, lacking GOOD evidence, is incredibly likely.

As they say, "you got nothin". So you may as well just keep musing over "evidence" on par with blurry Polaroids of Sasquatch.