Filters are an important part of life. We filter what we choose to listen to. We develop matrices that enable us to perform thought shortcuts, to get to the point of a matter, and not get lost in obfuscation.*** Those who are accustomed to socializing with a wide variety of people, usually in business, are often quite "smarter" than the stay-at-home person, who can easily fall victim to parlor tricks, like those performed by door-to-door salesmen or magicians. Manipulative tricks most often go unrecognized by those not accustomed to using a critical eye. Magicians use this principle in toto. Thousands of years of human recorded history have not reduced the basic gullibility of man, at least without formal education. Magic shows are proof of that. I suggest watching a few. One of the key things people learn in the corporate world are things like "Murphy's Law", etc. that reveal how one weak link in a chain creates the weak link in giant megastructures as well. The FBI knows that well, and look at the lengths it has gone to in order to conceal its weaknesses. Yet they have been compromised many times. ANYONE WHO THINKS THERE IS SOME CADRE OF MEN SOMEWHERE THAT CAN ESCAPE THIS PROCESS IS TOTALLY DECEIVED. That's it! SOMEONE will expose it, especially nowadays! Look at the entertainment industry and say, "Kid Rock's new album, which is rather dismal, yet you got all the Feds on this for pirating!" People are HOT for secrets! You REALLY BELIEVE that some secret "governing body" like the illuminati directs the world's affairs? PLEASE. SELL ME A BRIDGE, PEOPLE. Give me a deck of cards, I want to play you! Do you have any idea how TEMPTING such secrets are to divulge, especially in the digital age? What do you think is the half-life of secrets like this, nowadays? If you have a rebuttal, let's hear it. If you have a TRADE SECRET that enables such a high level of secrecy to continue without great fear of imminent exposure at any time, I can sell it to Hollywood, and make MILLIONS! Please make me rich. This Week's THE WEEK (Oct. 10, 2008, p. 3) had an outstanding comment regarding conspiracy theories like 9/11. It follows: "The U.S. government destroyed the World Trade Center and made it look as if terrorists did it. The CIA killed Kennedy. A secret cabal runs Wall Street and the world's banks, cleverly manipulating the levers of finance for its everlasting enrichment. What these conspiracy theories all have in common is the presumption that the world is run by a small coterie of super-competent people—people so smart they make no mistakes, and can hide their elaborate machinations from the rest of us. It's a comforting belief, providing order in the place of chaos. But it's not the way the world actually works. If you poke your nose into any large institution—government, medicine, universities, newspapers, Hollywood, major corporations—you'll find that even the most successful of them is plagued by the same spasms of stubborn foolishness, shortsightedness, and rank incompetence that you and I see in our own lives every day. Even the smartest among us can succumb to periods of collective madness, in which people cannot see what is right in front of their eyes. "Now it is the titans of finance who stand humbled before us, having invested lavishly in financial instruments neither they, nor virtually anyone else, truly understood. Century-old corporations are in ashes. Trillions of dollars in paper wealth have evaporated in a matter of weeks. And how did the sage statesmen who run Washington respond? By bickering like children over abstract ideologies and blame and hurt feelings, as another trillion or so in stock market wealth disappeared. It's small consolation, as our 401(k) plans melt like ice cream cones dropped on a hot sidewalk, but we now know this about the cabal that runs the world: It's no smarter, or wiser, than the rest of us." William Falk OBFUCATION *** From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search For the term as used in computer science, see Obfuscated code. Obfuscation is the concealment of meaning in communication, making it confusing and harder to interpret. Obfuscation may be used for many purposes. Doctors have been accused of using jargon to conceal unpleasant facts from a patient. American author Michael Crichton has claimed that medical writing is a "highly skilled, calculated attempt to confuse the reader".[1] B. F. Skinner, noted psychologist, commented on medical notation as a form of multiple audience control which allows the doctor to communicate to the pharmacist things which might be opposed by the patient if they could understand it.[2] Similarly text-based language, like gyaru-moji and some forms of leet are obfuscated to make them incomprehensible to outsiders. In cryptography, obfuscation refers to encoding the input data before it is sent to a hash function or other encryption scheme. This technique helps to make brute force attacks unfeasible, as it is difficult to determine the correct cleartext. In network security, obfuscation refers to methods used to obscure an attack payload from inspection by network protection systems.
Why many "conspiracy theories" can be written off within reason
by Dogpatch 40 Replies latest jw friends
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Dogpatch
Sorry, I'll try an reformat that. New Google browser. :-)) Randy
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Dogpatch
Filters are an important part of life. We filter what we choose to listen to. We develop matrices that enable us to perform thought shortcuts, to get to the point of a matter, and not get lost in obfuscation.*** Those who are accustomed to socializing with a wide variety of people, usually in business, are often quite "smarter" than the stay-at-home person, who can easily fall victim to parlor tricks, like those performed by door-to-door salesmen or magicians. Manipulative tricks most often go unrecognized by those not accustomed to using a critical eye. Magicians use this principle in toto. Thousands of years of human recorded history have not reduced the basic gullibility of man, at least without formal education. Magic shows are proof of that. I suggest watching a few. One of the key things people learn in the corporate world are things like "Murphy's Law", etc. that reveal how one weak link in a chain creates the weak link in giant megastructures as well. The FBI knows that well, and look at the lengths it has gone to in order to conceal its weaknesses. Yet they have been compromised many times. ANYONE WHO THINKS THERE IS SOME CADRE OF MEN SOMEWHERE THAT CAN ESCAPE THIS PROCESS IS TOTALLY DECEIVED. That's it! SOMEONE will expose it, especially nowadays! Look at the entertainment industry and say, "Kid Rock's new album, which is rather dismal, yet you got all the Feds on this for pirating!" People are HOT for secrets! You REALLY BELIEVE that some secret "governing body" like the illuminati directs the world's affairs? PLEASE. SELL ME A BRIDGE, PEOPLE. Give me a deck of cards, I want to play you! Do you have any idea how TEMPTING such secrets are to divulge, especially in the digital age? What do you think is the half-life of secrets like this, nowadays? If you have a rebuttal, let's hear it. If you have a TRADE SECRET that enables such a high level of secrecy to continue without great fear of imminent exposure at any time, I can sell it to Hollywood, and make MILLIONS! Please make me rich. This Week's THE WEEK (Oct. 10, 2008, p. 3) had an outstanding comment regarding conspiracy theories like 9/11. It follows: "The U.S. government destroyed the World Trade Center and made it look as if terrorists did it. The CIA killed Kennedy. A secret cabal runs Wall Street and the world's banks, cleverly manipulating the levers of finance for its everlasting enrichment. What these conspiracy theories all have in common is the presumption that the world is run by a small coterie of super-competent people—people so smart they make no mistakes, and can hide their elaborate machinations from the rest of us. It's a comforting belief, providing order in the place of chaos. But it's not the way the world actually works. If you poke your nose into any large institution—government, medicine, universities, newspapers, Hollywood, major corporations—you'll find that even the most successful of them is plagued by the same spasms of stubborn foolishness, shortsightedness, and rank incompetence that you and I see in our own lives every day. Even the smartest among us can succumb to periods of collective madness, in which people cannot see what is right in front of their eyes. "Now it is the titans of finance who stand humbled before us, having invested lavishly in financial instruments neither they, nor virtually anyone else, truly understood. Century-old corporations are in ashes. Trillions of dollars in paper wealth have evaporated in a matter of weeks. And how did the sage statesmen who run Washington respond? By bickering like children over abstract ideologies and blame and hurt feelings, as another trillion or so in stock market wealth disappeared. It's small consolation, as our 401(k) plans melt like ice cream cones dropped on a hot sidewalk, but we now know this about the cabal that runs the world: It's no smarter, or wiser, than the rest of us." William Falk OBFUCATION *** From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search For the term as used in computer science, see Obfuscated code. Obfuscation is the concealment of meaning in communication, making it confusing and harder to interpret. Obfuscation may be used for many purposes. Doctors have been accused of using jargon to conceal unpleasant facts from a patient. American author Michael Crichton has claimed that medical writing is a "highly skilled, calculated attempt to confuse the reader".[1] B. F. Skinner, noted psychologist, commented on medical notation as a form of multiple audience control which allows the doctor to communicate to the pharmacist things which might be opposed by the patient if they could understand it.[2] Similarly text-based language, like gyaru-moji and some forms of leet are obfuscated to make them incomprehensible to outsiders. In cryptography, obfuscation refers to encoding the input data before it is sent to a hash function or other encryption scheme. This technique helps to make brute force attacks unfeasible, as it is difficult to determine the correct cleartext. In network security, obfuscation refers to methods used to obscure an attack payload from inspection by network protection systems.
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Gill
My eyes are recovering very slowly, Dogpatch!
I don't agree with you, as good and excellent as your argument is.
For one simple reason I say this, and that is the small example of something as simple as the WTBT Society.
It is run from the top by total idiots who keep the rest of the pyramid in line by only revealing so much information to each level until we get to the well meaning idiots at the bottom. But everyone in the WT Pyramid is manipulated and controlled DESPITE all the idiotic mistakes by the people at the top,
We all want to believe that we couldn't be fooled and it is always a shock to discover that we were.
By the way the so called 'Titans of Finance', the real ones at the very top, are not humbled before us, they're running off with our cash and laughing all the way.
Their 'machinations' are never 'hidden' but are out in the open and the accusations either ignored or denied like the best masters of deception. Even when something hidden is 'exposed' people do not want to believe that they happened......and for their own comfort, they don't believe it.
I'd like to believe the world is ruled by 'nice people', but I'd be a real fool to trust any of them because the people at the very top are the parasites who need us, the people at the bottom to provide and do and give to them, and as with anything 'used', we are easily dispensible.
But I respect your right not to believe that there are bad people ruling the world.
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Dogpatch
Hi Gill,
point taken, but my note is that things are changing. While dictators abounded 50 years ago, they are not as tolerated today. Much more so are old parlor tricks, when the internet can expose them. Why do you think the internet is taking down all these religions, as far as any serious credibility? To remain a JW nowadays is to hide your head in the sand, and it is plainly embarassing in the world scene. Why? It is a mark of obstinence and poor education. A Witness today is no different than the ones they used to ridicule of whom they put words in their mouth: "I was BORN a Catholic, I'll DIE A Catholic!" Is being a JW really any different now? With all the EVIDENCE of their moral and logical stupidity?
Another mind matrix: Look first for the arbitrary spirit, one disinclined to normal logical processes, before you attempt to interpret what they say. (Parents understand such things best, I would think).
Randy
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Dogpatch
ooops forgot this Gill.
You said,
But I respect your right not to believe that there are bad people ruling the world.
You have me wrong on that one. I don't divide the world into good and bad. It's a social evolution, and good or bad is rather subjective. I am merely offering observations about life and people. :-))
peace my brother, good discussion.
Randy
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Gill
Randy - Where have all the dictators gone? Are you sure that they've gone?
You people said, yelled, screamed, etc 'No Bail Out' and yet YOUR money has been given to the richest of the rich.
It would appear that Mr Bush did NOT win the last election, and yet, he rules!
Britain is going down the toilet with stupid rules, regulations, fines, to such an extent that you can get a criminal record in the UK for putting the wrong item in your recycling bin!
Our Police shot and killed an innocent man in London......and walked free!
Are you sure there are no dictators and 'crushed people' any more?
I would suggest, we are more controlled, punished and deceived than ever before. Even when we can talk about what is happening we have no POWER to do anything to stop our abuse by our dictators who are taxing us to death in the UK!
Going back to the JW parallel however, JWs remain JWs because they WANT to believe what the GB tell them, just as people want to believe that their govenernments mean well for them when infact they are choking them to death.
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Gill
Randy - It appears to me that the humble every day people are like a battered wife who reasons with herself in her poweless position, 'he does this to me becuase he can't help it, and because I deserve it. I have to put up with it because sometimes he is so kind to me.'
Like my mother the people say, 'Sometimes he makes me feel as if I'm in heaven and other times I feel like I'm in hell!'
The government seemingly provide services for us but not without us paying many times over the odds for everything and their punishing us nowadays in the extreme for the slightest error ie going back to the criminal record for putting the wrong rubbish in your bins, here in the UK.
Every step we take is monitored and while criminals go free, poor people who can't or won't pay extrotionate council tax bills ..... GO TO PRISON!
The tyrants are so powerful now and so big, that they really do appear to be kindly big brother, until you put the wrong rubbish in your bin!
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Big Tex
Interesting post Randy.
Let me respond first by saying I do believe conspiracies are possible. For example, Lincoln's assssination was the result of a conspiracy amongst 9 people led by John Wilkes Booth. More recently we have Watergate. The past few years have revealed a coverup involving the military testing atomic bombs, and their effects on the civilian population.
Just a handful of course. But some conspiracies never come to light or are solved. Richard III was blamed for the murder of the Two Princes, his nephews. Did he, or was his rival Henry VII responsible? No one knows to this day, but cleary a conspiracy to murder and coverup took place.
But I do think your point is spot on regarding global, controlling conspiracies. It is much easier centuries ago for a secret cabal to control a fiefdom, or a kingdom, or even a country. But there are over 6 billion people around the globe, that's an awful lot to control. From what I've seen even the most efficient or ruthless government cannot control every facet of the randomness of life.
You mention specifically the 9/11 conspiracy hypothesis. What I've found about trying to discuss this with believers, is that logic and reason are actually considered to be negatives. It's a sign that you're "drinking the koolaid". 9/11 conspiracy talk is like a Chinese box -- you open it to find another box and another and another until you get to the end and there's nothing. 9/11 believers make random claim after random claim, one leading to another until at the end of the discussion you realize therer is not one shred of proof, or fact, in their belief system.
I'm starting to subscribe to the idea that some find the idea of global conspiracies comforting; as a way to explain away how life can be radically changed for the worse in an instant. 19 cult members didn't fly airplanes into a building, it was really the government. Wall Street didn't succumb to greed and incompetence, it was really a handful of men who manipulated things so they can make even more money. And on and on.
I'm starting to think it's similar to what attracts people to religious cults, especially doomsday cults. The person is now in on The Secret. They now have special knowledge no one else has, and so rather than looking at a situation, processing the facts and coming to a conclusion -- they go backwards. They make the conclusion, look for data that back up their claim and voila! They have now "explained" the tragic, or the disaster, where no one else could. So instead of accepting the concept that some loser could change the course of history with a rifle from the 6th floor, it's more comforting to believe in a Grand Conscpiracy because that makes the tragedy make more sense.
Funny thing Randy, when I was a Witness I bought into nearly every conspiracy idea there was. It's been nearly 20 years that I'm out and the further away I get the less I believe in "secret" conspiracies. FDR really didn't know the Japanese were going to bomb Pearl Harbor. Oswald really did get lucky and killed a President. Marilyn Monroe really did just overdose. And American airport security and counterintelligence really was that lax and that bad and so allowed 4 planes to get hijacked.
I forget which philospher said it, but someone once said: "There is that which is, and there is that which we would like it to be."
Chris
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Big Tex
I'd like to believe the world is ruled by 'nice people', but I'd be a real fool to trust any of them
Gill I don't think any government on this planet is run by "nice people". I think the majority are self-serving, egotistical, and arrogant. The difference in countries depends on their competence. My country, for example, has been run for 8 years by an overgrown frat boy whose administration drove this country into the ground.
Bush is dumb, not part of a global consiracy run by the Masons or Skull and Bones or the Illumanati or the Council of 300 or the Bilderbegers or Lord Voldemort.
Of course the result is the same, the U.S. is in a helluva pickle right now and prospects for the future are extremely limited and exceedingly grim.
Chris