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I have no reason to believe these Q conspiracies but I understand why people believe them, when we know about all the past shady activities like COINTELPRO, MKU

I have no reason to believe these Q conspiracies but I understand why people believe them, when we know about all the past shady activities like COINTELPRO, MKUltra, WMDs in Iraq, all the involvement South America, NSA spying, etc.

Barrin92 6y ago
your bar is pretty low if you think the fact that actual conspiracies exist justifies engaging in believing arbitrary conspiracy theories. This is akin to believing that all women cheat just because it actually happens to be the case that you met one that actually did, or thinking all Jewish people are trying to get your money because you were once defrauded by one. The problem with paranoid mindsets is not that they're always incorrect, it's that they're pathological in their structure.
- hodgesrm 6y ago
  Conspiracy theories also obscure the big reasons why things are messed up in society. The root causes often boil down to human frailty and/or bad luck--things that require a lot of plodding work to fix. Commercial aircraft are pretty safe because we've spent decades fixing problems one by one. At this point there are not many left.
- briefcomment 6y ago
  So what, we should disbelieve all conspiracy theories by default? In the rare case it happens to be true, it'll probably be too late to act upon, just like COINTELPRO and MKULTRA. We can assign the possibility of Q being true without actually taking a side and acting on it. I can say "this is both compelling and unlikely to be true, but as I long as I don't have to act on it, it doesn't matter if I believe in it or not". We can let the evidence over time build a stronger case for it or destroy it. The only reason I can see not to do that is if it introduces unacceptable consequences in the meantime, as the article is suggesting, but it seems like the reporting against it is ridiculously cherry picked and disingenuous. There's probably a much stronger case for stopping BLM as a organization at the moment, but I don't think I've seen an Atlantic article suggesting that. For the time being, Q seems like a harmless movement. It would be a red flag if Q denounced a group of people without justification, but Q has been pretty specific about the things and people it denounces, and if things go according to Q's plan the people it's denouncing are going to have their chance in court .
  - drdeca 6y ago
    Our prior probability for most conspiracy theories should be low, and we should update our probabilities in an approximately Bayesian way.
    - briefcomment 6y ago
      The point of my first post was to say we don't have to assign any probabilities at the moment. I'm just viewing it as compelling entertainment. Outside of this thread, I haven't mentioned it to anyone. It's probably premature to unwaveringly denounce or support it. When we have to actually act on it, or if it causes actual crime in the real world, that's when it helps if you take a stand.
      - drdeca 6y ago
        If knowing for certain one way or the other would influence one’s choices, a truly rational agent (which humans only approximate) must always at least implicitly assign a probability. Some people are appealing to people who believe it in their political campaigns. I think this is sufficient to make it relevant.
  - youareostriches 6y ago
    >Q seems like a harmless movement. Q-anon is dangerous and baseless libel that undermines democratic institutions. One person has already been murdered: https://www.npr.org/2019/07/22/744244166/shooters-lawyer-he-wasn-t-trying-to-kill-a-mob-boss-he-was-under-qanon-delusion https://www.npr.org/2019/07/22/744244166/shooters-lawyer-he-... Many others have been threatened with violence. >It would be a red flag if Q denounced a group of people without justification Which they have. Only well-known Democratic-party-affiliated personalities are implicated. The blatantly partisan narrative creates great potential for political violence. And like many other conspiracy theories, the narrative is full of antisemitic tropes: https://www.adl.org/qanon https://www.adl.org/qanon Finally, there's the obvious logical difference between conspiracy theory and conspiracy fact. The latter has actual evidence supporting it. And the probability of this menagerie of preposterous claims actually turning out to be true would be close to zero due to the vast number of participants who would have to keep silent. The more people who participate in any given conspiracy, the less time it can be kept secret on average: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0147905 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
betterunix2 6y ago
Q looks less like NSA spying and more like the McMartin Preschool trial. It made no sense in the 1980s and it makes no more sense in the 2020s.
throwaway4889 6y ago
I'm turning your argument around: why go around and invent fake conspiracy theories when actual conspiracies are a thing and are nothing like the fake ones?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
grawprog 6y ago
I have to admit, i've stayed away from the Q conspiracies, knowing where they all came from and just generally hearing the nonsense of the few things I have heard. But, I have to admit, had I read more of it at the time, I would have been ready to believe it. Ever since then, I don't like writing this comment, people completely dismiss me after that, but a friend of mine actually did apply for a job about a year before that all came out, at a pizza place, not a chain, some tiny little hole in the wall in a seedy neighbourhood, and was shown a back room with some matresses where she was told she could 'make extra money'. The thing is, there are dark, terrible seedy things that go on in the world, but, unlike what people like Q and the people that believe him think, it's not some grand unified conspiracy involving every level of government and large companies. It's places in your neighbourhood, apartments where women are trafficked from foreign countries by gangs and pimps to make them money, or they run hidden brothels out of businesses they own. Conflating these things to a giant conspiracy though is wrong and takes attention away from the people actually doing terrible things and lets them keep getting away with it while everyone's busy going after this shady non-existent shadow network.

Barrin92 6y ago

your bar is pretty low if you think the fact that actual conspiracies exist justifies engaging in believing arbitrary conspiracy theories. This is akin to believing that all women cheat just because it actually happens to be the case that you met one that actually did, or thinking all Jewish people are trying to get your money because you were once defrauded by one. The problem with paranoid mindsets is not that they're always incorrect, it's that they're pathological in their structure.

hodgesrm 6y ago
Conspiracy theories also obscure the big reasons why things are messed up in society. The root causes often boil down to human frailty and/or bad luck--things that require a lot of plodding work to fix. Commercial aircraft are pretty safe because we've spent decades fixing problems one by one. At this point there are not many left.
briefcomment 6y ago
So what, we should disbelieve all conspiracy theories by default? In the rare case it happens to be true, it'll probably be too late to act upon, just like COINTELPRO and MKULTRA. We can assign the possibility of Q being true without actually taking a side and acting on it. I can say "this is both compelling and unlikely to be true, but as I long as I don't have to act on it, it doesn't matter if I believe in it or not". We can let the evidence over time build a stronger case for it or destroy it. The only reason I can see not to do that is if it introduces unacceptable consequences in the meantime, as the article is suggesting, but it seems like the reporting against it is ridiculously cherry picked and disingenuous. There's probably a much stronger case for stopping BLM as a organization at the moment, but I don't think I've seen an Atlantic article suggesting that. For the time being, Q seems like a harmless movement. It would be a red flag if Q denounced a group of people without justification, but Q has been pretty specific about the things and people it denounces, and if things go according to Q's plan the people it's denouncing are going to have their chance in court .
- drdeca 6y ago
  Our prior probability for most conspiracy theories should be low, and we should update our probabilities in an approximately Bayesian way.
  - briefcomment 6y ago
    The point of my first post was to say we don't have to assign any probabilities at the moment. I'm just viewing it as compelling entertainment. Outside of this thread, I haven't mentioned it to anyone. It's probably premature to unwaveringly denounce or support it. When we have to actually act on it, or if it causes actual crime in the real world, that's when it helps if you take a stand.
    - drdeca 6y ago
      If knowing for certain one way or the other would influence one’s choices, a truly rational agent (which humans only approximate) must always at least implicitly assign a probability. Some people are appealing to people who believe it in their political campaigns. I think this is sufficient to make it relevant.
- youareostriches 6y ago
  >Q seems like a harmless movement. Q-anon is dangerous and baseless libel that undermines democratic institutions. One person has already been murdered: https://www.npr.org/2019/07/22/744244166/shooters-lawyer-he-wasn-t-trying-to-kill-a-mob-boss-he-was-under-qanon-delusion https://www.npr.org/2019/07/22/744244166/shooters-lawyer-he-... Many others have been threatened with violence. >It would be a red flag if Q denounced a group of people without justification Which they have. Only well-known Democratic-party-affiliated personalities are implicated. The blatantly partisan narrative creates great potential for political violence. And like many other conspiracy theories, the narrative is full of antisemitic tropes: https://www.adl.org/qanon https://www.adl.org/qanon Finally, there's the obvious logical difference between conspiracy theory and conspiracy fact. The latter has actual evidence supporting it. And the probability of this menagerie of preposterous claims actually turning out to be true would be close to zero due to the vast number of participants who would have to keep silent. The more people who participate in any given conspiracy, the less time it can be kept secret on average: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0147905 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

betterunix2 6y ago

Q looks less like NSA spying and more like the McMartin Preschool trial. It made no sense in the 1980s and it makes no more sense in the 2020s.

throwaway4889 6y ago

I'm turning your argument around: why go around and invent fake conspiracy theories when actual conspiracies are a thing and are nothing like the fake ones?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

grawprog 6y ago

I have to admit, i've stayed away from the Q conspiracies, knowing where they all came from and just generally hearing the nonsense of the few things I have heard. But, I have to admit, had I read more of it at the time, I would have been ready to believe it. Ever since then, I don't like writing this comment, people completely dismiss me after that, but a friend of mine actually did apply for a job about a year before that all came out, at a pizza place, not a chain, some tiny little hole in the wall in a seedy neighbourhood, and was shown a back room with some matresses where she was told she could 'make extra money'. The thing is, there are dark, terrible seedy things that go on in the world, but, unlike what people like Q and the people that believe him think, it's not some grand unified conspiracy involving every level of government and large companies. It's places in your neighbourhood, apartments where women are trafficked from foreign countries by gangs and pimps to make them money, or they run hidden brothels out of businesses they own. Conflating these things to a giant conspiracy though is wrong and takes attention away from the people actually doing terrible things and lets them keep getting away with it while everyone's busy going after this shady non-existent shadow network.