Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Basic Fallacy of Conspiracy Theories

Short version: Sean Carroll on COSMIC VARIANCE

"What we see is not what there is. The wave function really exists, but we don’t see it when we look; we see things as if they were in particular ordinary classical configurations."

Conspiracy arguments amount to an accumulation of the observed: never questioning the relationship between observation and reality in itself, merely shuffling the observational deck and drawing conclusions from a rearranged, but equally flawed set of "facts."

The mistrust of the conspiracy theorists is superficial. They work with naively childish notions of both 'reason' and how to test (and to distinguish) received notions from reality--merely offering alternative versions for those received notions... by default, no more creative than looking at a mirror image and thinking the spacial or sequential reversal amounts to a reimagining of the origninal...when it is but a reorginization of the same. A profound failure of imagination, not it's confirmation.


Tried to post this on SAugisntine's Bunker... but got a comments closed at the end, and couldn't find where this was still open. So come join me here. I'm open comments too.


8 comments:

  1. Jacob, the comments are open at TET 5.0 now... we close off each thread as it becomes too slow-loading, then open a new one.

    "The mistrust of the conspiracy theorists is superficial. They work with naively childish notions of both 'reason' and how to test (and to distinguish) received notions from reality--merely offering alternative versions for those received notions..."

    The term "conspiracy theorist" means what, exactly? A group of people who are all of equal intelligence, mental stability, educational level, social standing, family background, professional accomplishment, and so forth, whose experiences (in politics, corporate systems, engineering, etc) are identically scant and whose powers of deductive reasoning are inferior to your own?

    I don't understand the concept. Were the people who insisted that Nixon step-down after Watergate "conspiracy theorists"? What about the people who blew the whistle on Ken Lay of Enron? Were the people who asserted Voter Fraud in Florida (especially) in 2000, "conspiracy theorists"? Is any judge who finds for the plaintive in a case against organized crime a "conspiracy theorist"? I'm interested in the nuanced argument that can explain... for example... how the Official, Mainstream, Non-Forbidden theory of the attacks on The Pentagon and The World Trade Center in 2001 *isn't* a "conspiracy theory". Surely, in *every* version of theory about those events, a "conspiracy" is at the heart of the theory. No? If not: explain.

    The term is empty jargon with a purely political function. You can't build a nuanced argument around a piece of junk sloganeering. The term is an an ad hominem used to shut-down debate. What is your personal interest in shutting down debate?

    And how does a "wave function" apply to, eg, Richard Nixon?

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  2. Falicy? That's illiteracy gone wild.

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  3. Of course, the theorists are not the problem, but a form of argument. My misleading figuration of the subject.

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  4. (my correction of "plaintive" to "plaintiff" doesn't seem to have made it through!)

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  5. Dear Anon

    I'm a terrible speller. Which requires a certain degree of literacy.

    Why anonymous? What are you afraid of? I never leave anonymous comments. My ignorance is on display for all to see!

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  6. ... but your plaintive plaint was dully knoted.

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  7. Many institutions limit access to their online information. Making this information available will be an asset to all.

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