Favorite Conspiracy theory
- Thread starter schrodinger
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I can still condemn them for those beliefs. Would you stop me from condemning racists simply because they believe what they do is for the good of all?Bobic said:
And one can apply simple logic to things like Birthers or Truthers and see how far from reasonable they are. The theory that your dead family member is secretly alive and pretending to be dead is not respecting those who died. Nor is it helping their families.
"It's okay, Timmy. Your dad didn't die. He's just pretending he did because the government needs dead people. But he can't ever see you ever again and he totally accepted that. I wanna help by exposing this fact to the world. I'm a good guy."
As for crazy, that does not excuse one's actions. It doesn't excuse one from doing terrible things.
Well yeah, I never claimed that they were helpful, far from it. But I don't see how this in any way connects to being disrespectful, disrespectful is in a totally different ball park.Saltyk said:
And I'd argue you shouldn't condemn someone for something they can't control. You say you can apply 'simple logic' to defeat their argument, but of course you can. They can't, logic doesn't work against delusions, that's what makes them so delusional. Taking steps to educate them is the right path, though it will almost inevitably fail. You've just kind of got to take a live and let live attitude with them, like with your racist old Grandparents, arguing only entrenches people further into their beliefs, the best solution is to simply nod and politely change the topic.
But yeah, my main point was that it doesn't connect with disrespectfulness.
Respectfully, I have to disagree. The very core of philosophy is debate, and without it, it's extremely difficult for a culture to progress. To give you more background on myself, I am an American, a concealed-carry permit holder, and a gun owner.Bobic said:
I often meet people who are either undecided or fully anti-gun, in varying degrees of rabid devotion to the concept. To be absolutely honest, I enjoy talking to these people. I won't go into specifics of the conversations I've had, I don't want to derail the thread, but sufficed to say, many of these people were absolutely die-hard in their belief structure on the topic. No ifs, ands, or buts, guns are bad and you're a terrible person for owning a firearm or thinking otherwise. Rabid, rabid devotion. I still enjoy talking to them.
The first, and most important thing to remember is that you want to foster debate, not argument. They sound like the same thing, but are, in reality, very different; not only that, but they differ depending on each individual in the conversation. To sum them up simply, however, I like to describe them like this:
Argument can be described as the attempt of an individual to convince the other party that they are right. My idea is right, here are the facts, this is why my idea is right and yours is wrong. Debate, on the other hand, can be described as completely abandoning the idea of right and wrong, at least initially. Exploring the issue is the key. You've presented your idea, I understand it, now what would happen if we implemented it? What about these problems that might arise? I don't necessarily agree with this point of view over here, but it's something that someone could logically argue; what would be the counterpoint to that? So on, and so forth.
As I said, I've met many, many people who are anti-gun. Dozens, if not a couple hundred over the years, I've talked to, debated with, thought with; and many of them are not so anti-gun now. I cannot count the number of times I've heard the phrase, "Huh. I never thought of it that way.", or something similar. Education through intelligent discourse and debate is, I believe, the key to moving our society forward. These people that I've talked to, some just hadn't been exposed to a 'gun guy' outside of the rabid 'HANDSOFFMYGUNS' crowd. Some just hadn't thought much about it. Others had, but hadn't had someone come along that would say anything more than 'that's a stupid idea, and you should be ashamed of yourself for thinking it'.
I don't believe there is ever a point where one should stop talking to people and encouraging that kind of dialogue. I'm not saying you should badger someone who extremely set in their ways, but never write them off as completely done. Again, that kind of dialogue is unique to each person, but continue to be willing to talk to them, and eventually you may find the door to the intelligent discussion that might lead that delusional person to some sense.
Accomplish that, and we can continue moving forward as a culture, one person at a time.
The flat-earthers.
They believe the Earth is flat and videos and images are faked or worse. It's mental, I just can't wrap my head around how stupid you have to be to think the Earth is flat when even math alone can probably say it's flat, you can tell by the bloody horizon.
People who think we didn't land on the moon.
Well, if you believe that you're wrong, why do I say that so smugly? Photos have been taken of the landing sight, FROM Earth, FROM countries other than the U.S. ...oh wait that's probably the stuff they put in toothpaste fooling us to believe so. Besides the mounds of evidence against the counter arguments people still think we didn't, so it's not even a belief it's just refusal to be wrong.
I'm going to get a glare from this one: The earth is 10,000 years old. <= I can't begin to explain how insane this is, I'm no scientist, but even casual reading of articles will tell you why this is impossible.
They believe the Earth is flat and videos and images are faked or worse. It's mental, I just can't wrap my head around how stupid you have to be to think the Earth is flat when even math alone can probably say it's flat, you can tell by the bloody horizon.
People who think we didn't land on the moon.
Well, if you believe that you're wrong, why do I say that so smugly? Photos have been taken of the landing sight, FROM Earth, FROM countries other than the U.S. ...oh wait that's probably the stuff they put in toothpaste fooling us to believe so. Besides the mounds of evidence against the counter arguments people still think we didn't, so it's not even a belief it's just refusal to be wrong.
I'm going to get a glare from this one: The earth is 10,000 years old. <= I can't begin to explain how insane this is, I'm no scientist, but even casual reading of articles will tell you why this is impossible.
HAHAHAHAHAHAAngloDoom said:
Oh my god I just came from that thread. Thank you.
Goddamned Skyfall, the alien conspiracy to rule our minds into watching OBJECTIVELY BAD BAD MOVIES
AAAAAAAAAA HOW WILL I THINK FOR MYSELF WHEN MAKING TOTALLY ARBITRARY CHOICES BASED ON PREFEREEEENNNNNCEEEEEEEE
OT:
Uh...
I can't decide. A lot of the ones in this thread are pretty hilarious. I think the moon landing one would be it if I wasn't an idiot some 10 years ago and thought it was TOTALLY REAL MAN.
I'll keep browsing until then.
My favourite one recently was about the comet Ison, mainly because a supervisor and co-worker of mine talked about it constantly.
Basically a comet was going to pass by earth extremely close which would making everything on earth slowly die or whatever. The best part was that a simple Google search would show scientific evidence proving that the comets path had been measured very accurately to pass earth 69 Billion miles away and that it was completely safe.
On top of that it was supposed to hit 5 days ago, and it of course never did. My supervisor came in the next day and told us some shit about how it was the wrong date and all that.
Chrystal Meth is a hell of a drug.
Basically a comet was going to pass by earth extremely close which would making everything on earth slowly die or whatever. The best part was that a simple Google search would show scientific evidence proving that the comets path had been measured very accurately to pass earth 69 Billion miles away and that it was completely safe.
On top of that it was supposed to hit 5 days ago, and it of course never did. My supervisor came in the next day and told us some shit about how it was the wrong date and all that.
Chrystal Meth is a hell of a drug.
First thing I noticed was that they were biting Extra Credits' style. Kind of insulting.Promethax said:
They had me at first with the pyramid thing ( I don't know much about them). Then a quick Google search pulled up an article where a professor explains how him and 19 of his colleagues pulled up a 2.5 ton block of granite on four ropes. So withing the first minute that video shows it's lack of knowledge.
First of, Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals are the same genus, their precursor was homo erectus IIRC. So it's the same one intelligence we are dealing with.2012 Wont Happen said:
Secondly, if Homo Sapiens murdered Neanderthals, how? Neanderthals were bigger and stronger, but Homo Sapiens was smarter. And so won.
Essentially adding evidence to the idea that Smart is evolutionary good.
Thirdly, if 65 million years was a big sausage, then slicing a single thin slice of would remove any intelligence that ever showed up, and so intelligence never happened.
Actually, that's not how evolution works. Darwin's theory isn't preventing intelligence, it's just that there are hundreds of useful adaptations for any given situation and most of them are easier paths to go down than intelligence.Faelix said:
And the truth is, we don't actually know what set of environmental factors are most likely to produce high intelligence because no other life that we know has developed as far as we have, so we don't have a lot of other creatures to look at for comparison to find common variables. We're kind of in the dark on the subject.
Trying to say that intelligence doesn't increase chances of survival is just plain openly wrong in my view. And the smart guy would be the one who min/maxes the chances of coming face to face with the tiger. And the dumb guy would be eaten.Twenty Ninjas said:
I agree that Homo Sapien brain is complex and have layers within it. But how can you say that this is a necessity, for intelligence. You are basically stating that this is the only way. So we can't meet anything in the universe who is intelligent but with a different brain structure than us?
Answer is that we don't know. We only have ourselves as observation, but this isn't a conclusive answer, as much as it just points back to the original question, why 65 million years before intelligence happened.
It's a question which is repeated in Homo Sapiens itself infact. We were there as a species 150.000 years ago, but anthropoligsts can't find any signs of us actually doing something. We just sat there with out intelligence, and came up with nothing at all.
Then 35.000 years ago, we invented... The drawing! Cave paintings.
Incredible. And then nothing again.
Untill about 6000 years ago, when it suddenly took of like a rocketship, we invented cities and streetnames and mailboxes and there was no end to it.
And it is the exactly same people, that sat for over 100.000 years unable to think of one single thing to do except eat.
Also that is a scientific mystery.
The usefull adaptations are exactly not easier paths to go down. Like wings from no wings. Feathers to fly with. New stuff. And you are also implying, that if an animal is in the million year long process of changing in one aspect, it is set and static in another. That the brain don't change because everything else is changing.RJ Dalton said:
And yet here is the brain, all have it, and mutations happen there too. A mutation that increases the amount of dendrites on a nervecell? Bingo, it works you're smarter. Just one random mutation.
Another one that makes your cells smaller, so there can be more of them in same space? That's what Einstein had. Bingo, one mutation makes something better!
Now how you get from no wing, to a feathered wing, with all intermediates being better than the one before, and better than not changing at all. That's for the cartoonists to explain.
Bottomline is, it is much easier to sit around for 150.000 years doing nothing, then invent a helicopter , than it is to sit around and wait for you to grow wings. That would take 10 or 100 times as long. Growing wings is much more complicated.