6 ms·

Probably worth pointing out this twitter account is promoting the idea that the 2020 election was stolen. To me that casts suspicion on their other assertions.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
gfodor 5y ago
I follow this account and others like it because it allows one to be exposed to things like the idea that COVID leaked from a lab a year ago. Skepticism is warranted in all cases, of course, but I think it's extremely healthy to keep in tune with a variety of subcommunities who are in and of themselves skeptics of many mainstream narratives.
- adkadskhj 5y ago
  I don't understand how you can manage, honestly. The absolute swarm of conspiracies around COVID and the election overwhelmed me and i wasn't even trying to stay informed on them. Furthermore, even if i was trying to stay informed on them it seems like a full time job trying to discern the "maybe not entirely moronic" conspiracies to the completely batshit ones. Most are batshit, it seems. Sounds exhausting.
  - gfodor 5y ago
    I find that the times it is exhausting is when I've been overly attached to my own beliefs such that there's an emotional response to being exposed to claims in conflict to them. The best way to overcome this inhibitor to open mindedness in my opinion is to just ensure you have a broad exposure such that it becomes normal and unimpactful to read many things you strongly disagree with regularly.
    - lolc 5y ago
      While I agree that it's healthy to keep a broad set of sources, I find that once a source has shown to be untrustworthy on some topic, I discount them on other topics too. There is a difference between having a certain worldview and twisting facts to your narrative. Unfortunately, a good chunk of the Republican party in the U.S. is happily ignoring facts around the last presidential election. There is little use in exposing yourself to their faux complaints. Much like it was not useful to read up on the "Russian connection" that was invented to attack Trump. So when people fall prey to these ideas, I discount their opinion. I stop reading them. No reason to willingly absorb noise.
      - gfodor 5y ago
        These people you mention aren’t generating these theories nor am I suggesting we take their conclusions into consideration - my point is they have value as relays which are connected to networks you otherwise would not have access to, and as alternative relevancy ranking algorithms over the set of published information. For example, this WSJ article gets an increased weight in being exposed to me as a side effect of not masking out this person who is promoting it based upon their own, more widely scoped, conspiracy theory.
    - adkadskhj 5y ago
      I don't know if reading about how someone is the devil or how vaccines put 5G computer chips in my arm will ever not be draining.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  Something else to be skeptical of: skepticism. A good amount of skepticism is great. Questioning everything is belligerent and actually close-minded rather than open.
  - gfodor 5y ago
    There's no objective measure for one to define what is a "good amount" of skepticism. The trap of using this as an excuse to shield yourself from people who have a higher level of conspiratorial or counter-consensus thinking than you prefer or have yourself is one worth trying to be mindful of. Claiming there are people who "question everything" is a yellow flag, imo, because that literally doesn't exist, though I know you were speaking hyperbolically. But having the capacity to bucket people into a group who "questions everything" despite the reality such a person literally cannot exist, may mean you are over-weighting this mental model.
    - JKCalhoun 5y ago
      It sounds like you agree that there is a "bad amount" of skepticism but no way to measure that either? Then it is as easy for me to say you have fallen into the trap of being overly skeptical but are using an excuse to shield yourself from people that would call you a raving nutter. I don't worry too much about finding a way to measure what a "good amount" of skepticism is. Like pornography, I know it when I see, er, smell it.
      - gfodor 5y ago
        No, I reject the over-simplified model in general, but my argument is that whatever terms you are, in your own model, using to mean "good" and "bad" and "too much" and "too little" are irrelevant to the question of, even if you could define them clearly, if you can also place and measure a valid threshold. Given the problem here specifically is the epistemological value of consuming views you currently disagree with, by setting yourself up as judge and jury of who is considered worth listening to you're just begging the question, regardless of your framework to act as said judge. At the end of the day, you have scarce attention, so there are necessarily heuristics you need to use to navigate information and consuming it due to opportunity costs. But my argument is that pegging some people and not others as "too skeptical" is low on the list of good heuristics.
- TheCowboy 5y ago
  Conspiracy proponents act like the lab leak theory being true is some game changer. It's the stupidest thing. Even if it wasn't leaked, China sure did a lot to mess up and exacerbate the early response to the pandemic for the world. Additionally, people have been critical of wet markets in China from early on, one suspected source of where it first spread to humans. I have no problem with investigating if it was a lab leak or anything else, but enough with trying to turn this into some political wedge issue that people wield as a cudgel against 'the sheeple'. Skepticism here isn't some neutral point of view.
  - gfodor 5y ago
    > trying to turn this into some political wedge issue that you wield as a cudgel against 'the sheeple' This thing you did here is mind-reading - nothing you wrote here is present in my original comment. You may be living in a small set of filter bubbles compared to the average.
    - TheCowboy 5y ago
      I changed "you" to "people" since I meant it in the general sense of how self-proclaimed skeptics treat this topic and say condescending things like this: > You may be living in a small set of filter bubbles compared to the average.
      - gfodor 5y ago
        Understood - I rescind my comment since the way it was written I interpreted it to mean you were accusing me personally of doing this. I am not sure why, if your original comment was properly interpreted the way I did, it would be unfair to posit the idea of you living in limited filter bubbles. It's nothing to be ashamed of since we are all continually being victimized by social media algorithms into being exposed to information they feel will drive changes in our behavior. Everyone lives in filter bubbles. I don't know how to properly engage someone with the idea they ought to consider they're in a particularly narrow set without them feeling attacked. The best I've seen in some areas of inquiry is a tool you can use to analyze your twitter account to understand the scope of news sources you interact with, but that's limited obviously given the domain constraint. Even then it's hard to convince a person they are living on a overly-constrained information diet.
- Workaccount2 5y ago
  That's a broken calendar is right once a year situation.
  - gfodor 5y ago
    This is a false mental model because there is no singular calendar. If you are actually exposed to a variety of ideas there is no obvious, universal set of narratives you can point to as having a clean bisection between one or two 'calendars.' Tribalism does cause things to increasingly cut that way, but the mental model is still a false one.
mrzimmerman 5y ago
They also push the idea of "The Great Reset" in that thread, which is another conspiracy theory that is tied up with FEMA putting people in camps in abandoned Walmarts, Bill Gates chipping us through the Covid-19 vaccine, and Q-anon. As soon as they brought up "The Great Reset" I found the whole thread lost credibility.
- devmunchies 5y ago
  great reset is not a conspiracy theory[1]. however, attributing abandoned walmarts to the great reset is a theory. 1: https://www.weforum.org/great-reset https://www.weforum.org/great-reset
- no-dr-onboard 5y ago
  > "The Great Reset" in that thread, which is another conspiracy theory" Curious to see the argument _against_ "The Great Reset" tbf.
president 5y ago
Dismissing someone because they hold a viewpoint you disagree with is childish and dangerous to our society. By that logic we should all be dismissing CNN reporting because they were peddling Covington kids and russian collusion among other things proven to be false. We should all be striving to take in all sources of information and use our best judgement to judge and interpret them.
- mrzimmerman 5y ago
  There is a host of terms used in that thread that point to the person as a conspiracy theorist. "The Cabal", "The Great Reset". These are terms used in the Qanon community constantly. It has to do with the person lacking credibility based on their own statements than them holding an opposing viewpoint.
  - president 5y ago
    I have no idea what those things are and I'll give you the benefit of the doubt but the twitter post referenced a wsj.com article. I don't think we should shoot him down for linking to a trusted source.
- mullen 5y ago
  > Russian Collusion There is really strong evidence that there is Russian Collusion. The Muller report is full of actions by the Trump election team that point to them working in conjunction with Russia and Russian Agents.
beervirus 5y ago
Do you cast aspersions like this on people who think the 2016 election was stolen? They tend to be a lot more respected, but they’re just as incorrect.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  I haven't heard that one. 2000 election stolen? Absolutely.
  - beervirus 5y ago
    That seems unlikely. Here’s one high-profile example: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-trump-is-an-illegitimate-president/2019/09/26/29195d5a-e099-11e9-b199-f638bf2c340f_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-trum...
    - JKCalhoun 5y ago
      Wow, how is it I had forgotten the FBI Director, James Comey, announcing just days before the election that Hillary Clinton was being investigated? It's been a strange past 4 years....
dang 5y ago
This comment refers to the original URL, https://twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1402434266970140676 https://twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1402434266970140676, which we've since replaced with the article it points to (in keeping with the site guidelines).

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

gfodor 5y ago

I follow this account and others like it because it allows one to be exposed to things like the idea that COVID leaked from a lab a year ago. Skepticism is warranted in all cases, of course, but I think it's extremely healthy to keep in tune with a variety of subcommunities who are in and of themselves skeptics of many mainstream narratives.

adkadskhj 5y ago
I don't understand how you can manage, honestly. The absolute swarm of conspiracies around COVID and the election overwhelmed me and i wasn't even trying to stay informed on them. Furthermore, even if i was trying to stay informed on them it seems like a full time job trying to discern the "maybe not entirely moronic" conspiracies to the completely batshit ones. Most are batshit, it seems. Sounds exhausting.
- gfodor 5y ago
  I find that the times it is exhausting is when I've been overly attached to my own beliefs such that there's an emotional response to being exposed to claims in conflict to them. The best way to overcome this inhibitor to open mindedness in my opinion is to just ensure you have a broad exposure such that it becomes normal and unimpactful to read many things you strongly disagree with regularly.
  - lolc 5y ago
    While I agree that it's healthy to keep a broad set of sources, I find that once a source has shown to be untrustworthy on some topic, I discount them on other topics too. There is a difference between having a certain worldview and twisting facts to your narrative. Unfortunately, a good chunk of the Republican party in the U.S. is happily ignoring facts around the last presidential election. There is little use in exposing yourself to their faux complaints. Much like it was not useful to read up on the "Russian connection" that was invented to attack Trump. So when people fall prey to these ideas, I discount their opinion. I stop reading them. No reason to willingly absorb noise.
    - gfodor 5y ago
      These people you mention aren’t generating these theories nor am I suggesting we take their conclusions into consideration - my point is they have value as relays which are connected to networks you otherwise would not have access to, and as alternative relevancy ranking algorithms over the set of published information. For example, this WSJ article gets an increased weight in being exposed to me as a side effect of not masking out this person who is promoting it based upon their own, more widely scoped, conspiracy theory.
  - adkadskhj 5y ago
    I don't know if reading about how someone is the devil or how vaccines put 5G computer chips in my arm will ever not be draining.
JKCalhoun 5y ago
Something else to be skeptical of: skepticism. A good amount of skepticism is great. Questioning everything is belligerent and actually close-minded rather than open.
- gfodor 5y ago
  There's no objective measure for one to define what is a "good amount" of skepticism. The trap of using this as an excuse to shield yourself from people who have a higher level of conspiratorial or counter-consensus thinking than you prefer or have yourself is one worth trying to be mindful of. Claiming there are people who "question everything" is a yellow flag, imo, because that literally doesn't exist, though I know you were speaking hyperbolically. But having the capacity to bucket people into a group who "questions everything" despite the reality such a person literally cannot exist, may mean you are over-weighting this mental model.
  - JKCalhoun 5y ago
    It sounds like you agree that there is a "bad amount" of skepticism but no way to measure that either? Then it is as easy for me to say you have fallen into the trap of being overly skeptical but are using an excuse to shield yourself from people that would call you a raving nutter. I don't worry too much about finding a way to measure what a "good amount" of skepticism is. Like pornography, I know it when I see, er, smell it.
    - gfodor 5y ago
      No, I reject the over-simplified model in general, but my argument is that whatever terms you are, in your own model, using to mean "good" and "bad" and "too much" and "too little" are irrelevant to the question of, even if you could define them clearly, if you can also place and measure a valid threshold. Given the problem here specifically is the epistemological value of consuming views you currently disagree with, by setting yourself up as judge and jury of who is considered worth listening to you're just begging the question, regardless of your framework to act as said judge. At the end of the day, you have scarce attention, so there are necessarily heuristics you need to use to navigate information and consuming it due to opportunity costs. But my argument is that pegging some people and not others as "too skeptical" is low on the list of good heuristics.
TheCowboy 5y ago
Conspiracy proponents act like the lab leak theory being true is some game changer. It's the stupidest thing. Even if it wasn't leaked, China sure did a lot to mess up and exacerbate the early response to the pandemic for the world. Additionally, people have been critical of wet markets in China from early on, one suspected source of where it first spread to humans. I have no problem with investigating if it was a lab leak or anything else, but enough with trying to turn this into some political wedge issue that people wield as a cudgel against 'the sheeple'. Skepticism here isn't some neutral point of view.
- gfodor 5y ago
  > trying to turn this into some political wedge issue that you wield as a cudgel against 'the sheeple' This thing you did here is mind-reading - nothing you wrote here is present in my original comment. You may be living in a small set of filter bubbles compared to the average.
  - TheCowboy 5y ago
    I changed "you" to "people" since I meant it in the general sense of how self-proclaimed skeptics treat this topic and say condescending things like this: > You may be living in a small set of filter bubbles compared to the average.
    - gfodor 5y ago
      Understood - I rescind my comment since the way it was written I interpreted it to mean you were accusing me personally of doing this. I am not sure why, if your original comment was properly interpreted the way I did, it would be unfair to posit the idea of you living in limited filter bubbles. It's nothing to be ashamed of since we are all continually being victimized by social media algorithms into being exposed to information they feel will drive changes in our behavior. Everyone lives in filter bubbles. I don't know how to properly engage someone with the idea they ought to consider they're in a particularly narrow set without them feeling attacked. The best I've seen in some areas of inquiry is a tool you can use to analyze your twitter account to understand the scope of news sources you interact with, but that's limited obviously given the domain constraint. Even then it's hard to convince a person they are living on a overly-constrained information diet.
Workaccount2 5y ago
That's a broken calendar is right once a year situation.
- gfodor 5y ago
  This is a false mental model because there is no singular calendar. If you are actually exposed to a variety of ideas there is no obvious, universal set of narratives you can point to as having a clean bisection between one or two 'calendars.' Tribalism does cause things to increasingly cut that way, but the mental model is still a false one.

mrzimmerman 5y ago

They also push the idea of "The Great Reset" in that thread, which is another conspiracy theory that is tied up with FEMA putting people in camps in abandoned Walmarts, Bill Gates chipping us through the Covid-19 vaccine, and Q-anon. As soon as they brought up "The Great Reset" I found the whole thread lost credibility.

devmunchies 5y ago
great reset is not a conspiracy theory[1]. however, attributing abandoned walmarts to the great reset is a theory. 1: https://www.weforum.org/great-reset https://www.weforum.org/great-reset
no-dr-onboard 5y ago
> "The Great Reset" in that thread, which is another conspiracy theory" Curious to see the argument _against_ "The Great Reset" tbf.

president 5y ago

Dismissing someone because they hold a viewpoint you disagree with is childish and dangerous to our society. By that logic we should all be dismissing CNN reporting because they were peddling Covington kids and russian collusion among other things proven to be false. We should all be striving to take in all sources of information and use our best judgement to judge and interpret them.

mrzimmerman 5y ago
There is a host of terms used in that thread that point to the person as a conspiracy theorist. "The Cabal", "The Great Reset". These are terms used in the Qanon community constantly. It has to do with the person lacking credibility based on their own statements than them holding an opposing viewpoint.
- president 5y ago
  I have no idea what those things are and I'll give you the benefit of the doubt but the twitter post referenced a wsj.com article. I don't think we should shoot him down for linking to a trusted source.
mullen 5y ago
> Russian Collusion There is really strong evidence that there is Russian Collusion. The Muller report is full of actions by the Trump election team that point to them working in conjunction with Russia and Russian Agents.

beervirus 5y ago

Do you cast aspersions like this on people who think the 2016 election was stolen? They tend to be a lot more respected, but they’re just as incorrect.

JKCalhoun 5y ago
I haven't heard that one. 2000 election stolen? Absolutely.
- beervirus 5y ago
  That seems unlikely. Here’s one high-profile example: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-trump-is-an-illegitimate-president/2019/09/26/29195d5a-e099-11e9-b199-f638bf2c340f_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-trum...
  - JKCalhoun 5y ago
    Wow, how is it I had forgotten the FBI Director, James Comey, announcing just days before the election that Hillary Clinton was being investigated? It's been a strange past 4 years....

dang 5y ago

This comment refers to the original URL, https://twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1402434266970140676 https://twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1402434266970140676, which we've since replaced with the article it points to (in keeping with the site guidelines).