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Ok I swear I don't just get up every morning and ask, "How can I be schizo today?"
But in one day I saw the following two things:
https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1731747916568727610
Among the masses of migrants flowing across the southern border each day, a whole line of Chinese nationals, military aged men, automatically standing at "parade rest" as one reply pointed out.
And this:
https://twitter.com/EndWokeness/status/1731808064108372245
Senator Dick Durbin making a speech in favor of allowing illegal immigrants into the military.
My schizo sense is tingling and saying that Nefarious Forces are Intentionally using the Power of Money to plan Bad Things for America.
Or, since this space has norms in favor of speaking plainly and against Darkly Hinting, let me put it more directly:
Is China bribing American politicians to allow Chinese soldiers to become American soldiers to conquer the USA via military coup?
Less Of This, Please. There are plenty of 500k follower twitter accounts that react with horror to tweets with out of context clips and screenshots of news headlines, I know where to get it if I want it, and I don't want it here.
It's funny how all sorts of "conspiracy theorists" and people with weird ideas are halfway self-conscious of the fact they're like that, and make jokes about it. You should either genuinely believe your ideas, deeply investigate them, debate them - or consider what 'schizo' ideas you had five or ten years ago and how many of them have held up, and admit you're very wrong.
Also, whatever standard approves of this post but not posts about perfectly reasonable topics that just don't have enough context isn't serving its purpose.
It's because the term "conspiracy theorist" is used as an insult rather than a rational argument, if you endorse it, you take away it's power. If you say "yes, I am a conspiracy theorist, here is a conspiracy theory I believe in, and here is the evidence - come at me!" all sneering is suddenly reduced to quiet whimpering to the effect of "that doesn't count as a conspiracy, that's just a bunch of people coordinating to achieve a common goal".
Hanlon's Razor, the bottom-up view of society. Very schizo ideas I was very wrong about, this is why I'm a conspiracy theorist.
Or, "excuse me, they're called 'conspiracy facts' now". Or of course the comic about "How to talk to your friends who believe conspiracy theories": "Hey bro, you were right about everything, I'm sorry".
Often I mention Snowden or one of the other NSA "conspiracy theories" which turned out to be true.
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Eh. There's a real class of very bad ideas like the QAnon cinematic universe, or things like 'the government has secret spies all over the place. I have a friend who used to be one of them, he tells me about the reptilians and their spiritual plans for humanity's enslavement. I'm not sure I believe it but apparently the elites conspire with them, they took out JFK, they took out the people on the Clinton kill list..." (those are all real things I've actually been told by people who were being genuine, not hyperbole). I think OP is very much coming from the mindset that generates that.
The goverment having secret spies all over the place, especially in important organizations like twitter, is actually plausible and on some level true. There are agents of the goverment promoting censorship and it is hard to ascertain where certain of the biggest NGOs, private organizations, intelligence services, and parts of the bureaucracy like FBI begin and end.
In general, things that are true, or plausible are called conspiracy theories all of the time.
The mechanism of this can be seen with the Nordstream attack. The theory that the Russians did it was not called a conspiracy theory all that commonly, but the theory that America did it was called a conspiracy theory. Even though the later is much more likely than the first.
Another issue is that we have exaggerations being treated as a reason to not take serious things that are much more plausible. For example is the WEF running everything? No. Do they promote certain agendas and try to put their own people in positions of power? Out of their own words.
So yeah, there are true conspiracies, plausible ones and some more kooky claims. And there isn't a shared wise humanity that will accept the validly of all that belong in the true or plausible categories. Plenty of people would dismiss them if they go against the establishment.
There is also a conspiracy to promote ridiculous conspiracies and focus on them. But such tactics can be taken by fewer people as well who are inclined to do so. Is there a conspiracy to do so? Well, if there are people who work for an organization who promotes these claims, yes it will count as such.
Cass R. Sunstein and Andrian Vermule argued that the best way to combat conspiracies promoted by supposed extremists was to flood those spaces with ridiculous conspiracies. https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/law_and_economics/119/
For example, instead of talking about Epstein who according to an Ex Mossad agent he was part of Mossad, promote, or focus upon reptilians, q-anon or aliens. https://7news.com.au/the-morning-show/jeffrey-epstein-was-a-mossad-spy-says-investigative-journalist-dylan-howard-c-595812
There are those who promote these theories, those who bite into the bait, and then those who overly focus on them and dismiss more legitimate issues. And once this tactic has started working as a result we will also observe people who do the second on their own and others who dismiss legitimate issues on their own, thinking that they are promoting what is true in accordance to their belief, rather due to some other motivation. We will also see people booing the concept also because they do side and support American elites for example and due to opposing scrutiny.
No, there is a thing that 'conspiracy theory' materially refers to and they are extremely wrong. There are people in 2018 who believed that secret numbers in Trump's tweets are hints about how he's still the real president and fighting a shadow war against the soros deep state. "Is China bribing American politicians to allow Chinese soldiers to become American soldiers to conquer the USA via military coup?" is recognizably one of those, in a way that "ukraine did nordstream" is not. I agree there are gradations, but there's clearly a huge gap between the two. Just because some NYT journalists called things you agree with conspiracy theories doesn't mean the concept isn't useful. Your reply is pure 'arguments as soldiers' - kooky conspiracy theories are bad, therefore they must be generated by the other side to hide the REAL truth! Come on.
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Underestimated argument. Related tweet
The principle is simple enough: most
gamblersday traders lose money, those who don’t almost all just get lucky, and updating your priors because a tiny proportion of gambles pay off is stupid. Anyone who actually knows Jones/Ike tier conspiracy theorists in real life knows their hitrate is sub 1% and being the most obsequious normie who believes every word in the New York Times would make you right vastly more of the time than they are. If you believe everything, which they do, you will eventually be right about a few things. This challenges no conventional principle or authority.The NYT and the American establishment lie and trying to manipulate people so commonly that being reasonably suspicious and willing to believe plausible conspiracy theories makes you have a much more accurate version of the world.
It isn't gambling to not trust them but it is gambling to trust them. With bad odds. Going full Alex Jones means you are going to doubt the NYT when they peddle some of their BS but also buy into some of Alex Jones BS. In 2002 for example, if you listened to Alex Jones, he argued this:
Which would suggest against the Iraq War, neocon domination and authoritarian measures like the patriot act. Which isn't insane, but an example of Jones leading people in this instance to a more reasonable place than the establishment.
Having known people who believe in ghosts and aliens, they tend to be less dangerous for the world than those made to follow fanatically the new current thing. Whether it is war related, or a different agenda.
Did you read the post you were replying to? The idea is conspiracy theorists are wrong almost all of the time, and sometimes right simply because they copy the things others are saying and make them more extreme. And then, after the fact, their fans select specific things they said that aged well to declare them accurate. And you respond by ... selecting a specific thing Jones said 20 years ago and arguing for his accuracy.
This is a gross misrepresentation of my post, and you especially shouldn't be accusing others of not reading the posts they reply towards when you do that.
I disagreed with the above post of course. The point is that NYT and the establishment gets a lot of important things wrong and doubting them and buying into reasonable claims that are seen as conspiratorial would make you have more correct view of the world. That is because the establishment lies in favor of its agendas.
Whether "great replacement isn't happening", race, crime, war (iraq war the most notorious, even back in Vietnam with Torkin incident), or really partisan fake news (see Russiagate) are just some examples of categories you will find plenty of lies.
That even people like Alex Jones can get important things correct. The Iraq war and the rise of authoritarianism in response to war on terror are not insignificant issues. They are very important.
To think that this is an arguement for Jones being accurate in general, or me being a fanboy of his, when I said that he peddles BS too, is clearly inaccurate. Another short arguement was that in important ways some of the kooky nonsense can be less harmful than believing fanatically in current thing propaganda and doubting that instead.
You promoted in the past the lab leak theory as a conspiracy theory for example, and it was a case of you getting it wrong since it is at worst a plausible theory. A lot of irrationality of our times is on irrational extreme dismisal of valid issues.
If you want to be better than even the Alex Jones of the world, you ought to be more humble about reality and stop painting things that reflect negatively on the American elite as false by default and part of conspiracy theories. Suspicious right wingers have been for the most part proven more correct for their suspicions than those booing them over the years.
And even those who get things wrong too, but also get things correct in an important way the sentiment of questioning power is more valuable than not questioning it, so I wouldn't be too condemning. And my problem would be more that by including the more indefensible claims, they erode the value of things that are true in their arguments. We don't live in an age of overt paranoia against elites but in an age of lack of sufficient accountability.
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Your analogy doesn't work. If conspiracy theorists were treated like day traders, the NYT would not try to imply belief in Jones' theory is cause for immediate loss of credibility, they'd imply it's unlikely, but might end up being true, because you never know.
What you're doing is like acting it was no big deal that one UFO nut was 100% proved to be correct about extra-terrestrial contact, because all the other UFO nuts before him were wrong.
I don't understand why you think i'm arguing that, like, the lab leak is fake because Qanon people are crazy. I'm not saying any thing about the lab leak or similar. I'm saying that OP's claim about chinese soldier immigrant coups is Q-anon tier.
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