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is this really the kinds stuff we need to post in this sub. just patting ourselves on the back for shit we already believe.

🙏🏾💎✨

I couldn't think up a more low tier bait comment if i quit my job and committed to trying full time

The problem I feel is that what was once a conspiracy theory many times turned out to be confirmable fact - too many times, so it is left up to the conspiracy theory itself and the data available that can be looked at objectively to determine the level of "craziness" tin foil hat wearing allegations being made in any given conspiracy theory.

Thanks for taking the time to reply - it’s a topic that interests me too. However I’ve come to slightly different conclusions. First I think that conspiracy theories can be accounted for by the psychological function they perform rather than the fact people are susceptible to cognitive biases. In this I mean they make you feel better or perhaps resolve a conflict (which also feels good). Some examples:

1. Covid origin conspiracies or anti-Semitic conspiracies give the holder special knowledge or prestige but can also give a sense of order which may be reassuring (over randomness).
2. Jan 6th conspiracies among Republicans allow the holder to avoid unpleasant facts about Trump or some of his supporters. These would be difficult to reconcile with their worldview but conspiracy theories provide a way out. Claims about voting help them too.

This describes what people get out of believing in conspiracy theories but it doesn’t say how belief in conspiracy theories is maintained when there is so little (no) evidence for them. In this I think it’s possible that (cognitive) biases do not cause people to believe conspiracy theories but are instead utilised (not necessarily deliberately) to maintain the conspiracy belief. Here I’d generalise this to other deeply held beliefs, which is where individuals like Oz come in (although many tip over into outright conspiracism too).

In short people try to maintain a core set of beliefs about the world and desire consistency from events, because maintaining core beliefs feels good and having a world of facts that do not contradict them feels good too. Cognitive biases work to achieve this. However knowledge of cognitive biases and arguments can also be used to attack (all the) counter evidence/arguments. In this way otherwise thoughtful, intelligent people can cling to conspiracy theories. Educating them on critical thinking is therefore not always effective because the critical thinking strategies can be employed with a desired goal (to maintain those core beliefs). It can therefore be hard in practice for critical thinking to overcome biases because we can be biased in our critical thinking too.

Philosophy has given me the toolkit to understand why one dead white guy was more logically consistent than the dead white guy who came before him. Not sure what I’m supposed to do with this though.

Isnt this posted already?

While it is true that people are capable of understanding different languages, that does not mean it is not subjective. People have greatly different understandings of different words. This has been evidenced in your discussions with various people, I am sure, as many people have different conceptions of the words you use (freedom, objectivity etc.). To say words are presented to everyone equally and with equal comprehension is false. They are comprehended differently, based on everyone's own experiences with the words in the past. This makes them subjective. They may hold similar meaning to what others believe the words mean, but to say they hold they exact same meaning (which is what would be required to call them objective) is false.

haha, also true.

If everyone lies about an event….

I have been thinking about this for awhile and asking other people about it but no one wants to entertain my thoughts so I thought I would post it here. This I think is quite similar to the ‘if a tree falls’ philosophical problem. But here goes: When an event happens everyone recounts the story to relatives and friends in a slightly altered way. They may slightly exaggerate or under exaggerate certain parts of the story to fit a narrative or fit a perception they want other people to have of them.

For example: Two people in a car park have a minor fender bender. They both are pretty calm and exchange insurance details. But when each person goes back home and tells relatives or friends in the future they will slowly adapt and change the story over time whether intentionally or not…

I hope at this point you understand where I’m going with this.

If everyone’s account of the story is slightly changed did the original version of the story ever really happen?

And a follow-on question that is slightly easier to pick one side of is, if you lie about a dream you had last night it is technically no more true or false then what your dream actually was seen as all of it happened in your head?

I advanced no claims about the criteria of personhood as I merely wished to point out the fact that (1) cannot be translated into a well-formed formula (and thus its truth value would be indeterminate) without my modification - in which I rearranged the position of 'iff' such that it is between the two atomic propositions implicitly contained within the original premise.

To make my interpretation (the motivation of which is to sort out the logic) of what OPs malformed premise was trying to express even more clearly, I give the following formalization of the rectified argument:

Domain: all entities Predicates: person(x) - 'x is a person', righttolife(x) - 'x has a right to life', murderer(x) - 'x is a murderer"

1. ∀x (person(x) <-> righttolife(x)) (premise)
2. ∀x (murderer(x) -> person(x)) (premise)
3. murderer(a) -> person(a) (∀E 2)
4. person(a) <-> righttolife(a) (∀E 1)
5. person(a) -> righttolife(a) (<->E 4)
6. | murderer(a) (assumption: want righttolife(a))
7. | person(a) (->E 3)
8. | righttolife(a) (->E 5)
9. murderer(a) -> righttolife(a) (->I 6-8)
10. ∀x (murderer(x) -> righttolife(x)) (∀I 9)

I considered 'people in favor of capital punishment' broadly similar with 'capital punishment proponents' in terms of their moral intuitions and used these terms interchangeably. While there may be instances where drawing a distinction between these groups would be useful, I do not see the need to do so for the purposes of determining whether a given premise is likely acceptable to their moral intuitions.

It's the same slave minded attachment you always see in groups with these sorts of rhetorics. Both an incessant need to feel like they have a great knowledge of their world and their environment, and to prove that they're right they convince themselves they're being oppressed. This is the sort of political decision that will tear this civilization apart by the seams..

Rebecca Roache, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Royal Holloway, argues that philosophy provides us with a set of valuable strategies, tools and techniques that can be applied to real
life situations to help us lead better lives. Firstly, philosophical logic
allows us to have substantial and meaningful arguments with people, because
rather than blindly talking past people and simply pronouncing our own
position, we learn to identify the hidden assumptions and flaws in the others
argument. Secondly, in philosophy we learn to ask why ad infinitum, allowing us
to get deeper into the foundational claims that justify what someone is saying.
Thirdly, it allows you to argue via analogy, to explain why certain like
situations should be treated alike. Through exploring her personal experiences,
Rebecca Roache unpacks how these tools can be used to help us tackle the
challenges we face every day. For example, philosophy allows us to see how we
don’t see the world as it really is, we see it through a kind of subjective
lens. But this idea is also applicable to how we see ourselves. We have
deep-seated ingrained beliefs about ourselves that aren’t immediately visible
to us, but they show up in the choices we make. Using the philosophical toolkit
to examine these choice enables honest reflection on the underlying factors
that have shaped past decisions and allows us to make more free and informed
decisions going forward.

I really enjoy the investigation of concepts such as the right to life and the inevitability of death. Do you realize that it is only humans that commit murder for whatever reasons? Animals kill but they do not murder, they do not hate, they do not judge. I find that interesting.

I would suggest that this is an oversimplification and presents a fairly narrow perspective. Yes, we can believe that everyone has the right to their life, but what is not addressed is what happens when this ‘murderer’ (which infers that there was no accident nor an act of self-defense) takes the life of his victim, who, I hope that we can agree, also has that same right to life? I, of course, assume that this was a completely ‘innocent’ individual with no culpability in the act.

I find it disturbing that the narrative immediately begins the process of painting someone who may disagree with some ‘absolute’ right as ‘people in favor of capital punishment’. I think that is unfair and inconclusive. This is not a simple concept of black and white. There are multiple issues that must be considered, contemplated, and concluded.

Can an individual commit murder with abandon and then claim some nebulous and undefined right to life? Is there no responsibility or obligation that is inherent in every law? The victim could be the father of twelve children with parents and grandparents, not to mention another dozen brothers and sisters and a hundred relatives, all replete with children of their own. They may all be impacted by this horrible act. Does this person who commits murder have any culpability at all? The family may well be destitute without their ‘breadwinner’. How are all these things addressed?

Without a ‘lot’ more information, I would not judge those in favor of capital punishment too harshly, they are not the individuals that killed without compunction and I would tend to think without ethics or morality as well. Where does justice play its part?

So, let me weigh in on this, because I think your theory isn't far from the truth.

There is an increasingly common belief in the idea of stochastic terrorism (the idea that if you reach enough unhinged people with enough propaganda, and if you can create enough emotional arousal in that group, one (or more) of them will eventually act in a way that, while not entirely predictable, will be violent and it will be against your target.

I believe that stochastic terrorism is a thing, and I believe that it is the aim of many of the backers of right wing fringe media.

It is only natural that the far right effluvia would ramp up near critical times, such as elections, and that would naturally increase the chances of such attacks.

Unfortunately, my belief in the theory of Stochastic Terrorism is just that, a belief. There is absolutely no scientific evidence (to my knowledge) that such a thing really exists. SO far, all I have read about it has been speculative. So If you were to gather data, in a scientific manner, I would be really interested in seeing it.

“Everyone believes in at least one or a few conspiracy theories.”

I am getting pretty tired of this bullshit. Do I hold some beliefs in some conspiracy? Sure, I'll cop to that. But it requires some dishonest equivocation to make that stick.

First, there is a large gap between "belief" and "Knowledge." I "believe" that today is going to be slightly warmer than yesterday, based on what I saw on my weather app yesterday. If it turns out that it's actually colder today, then I am not going to defend that belief, I'm going to discard it. In other words, I treat my beliefs as provisional, as most of us do. In contrast, an Evangelical Christian does not treat his belief in his salvation as provisional, yet because the English language doesn't make a distinction between the two uses of the word "belief" we somehow end up in the same epistemological category. My "faith" in the accuracy of Yahoo Weather is not of the same character and degree as that of the Evangelical's belief in eternal salvation.

Whatever "belief" I hold in a conspiracy theory is just my best guess based on what I know to be true, and other beliefs which I hold, some strong (my belief in the universality of gravity, or the earth's shape*), other's casual (my belief that large news media outlets make editorial decisions in accordance with the values of their owners). So, sure, I believe in some conspiracy theories, but my belief in them is subject to change as I learn more, or as my beliefs in other supporting ideas to that theory change.

The discussion is confusing enough without muddying the waters with sloppy language and easy equivocations.

&#x200B;

[* largely spherical]

I personally have little interest in the debate on capital punishment, but I am interested in people being accountable for their actions. We don’t seem to teach or even believe this to be true anymore. The right to life is inarguably an ‘absolute’, but unfortunately so is the concept of ‘death’, and no one seems to be representing the victim who was, I again assume, completely innocent of any wrongdoing or the precipitation of the act of the murder.

The discussion of legitimate concepts, taken out of context, tends to only confuse and obfuscate the debate, and invariably an incapability of coming to valuable insights and conclusions. I think we should continue to think deeply about the issues involved and attempt to achieve some semblance of fairness and justice in our determinations.

Where did the ‘if it is a person’ enter the conversation? When did ‘people in favor of capital punishment’ become ‘capital punishment proponents’? Can we talk about issues of import without letting our ideology and prejudices get in the way of a reasoned argument? It would be interesting to understand what you mean by ‘being a person’ and what determines that state of being.

Just to be clear I would posit that:

Yes, all people have the right to life, and I would have to agree that all murderers are people, therefore deserving the right to life. They are also responsible for their actions and have to live with those consequences. The social paradigm will determine the ramifications and punishment for those actions, and whether or not one agrees with the determinations made we have to make a decision: Does society have the right to negate life as that punishment, or is this right to life inviolate?

What happens when the ‘murderer’, as in the case of Parkland which was just in the news last week, we have a young man who shot and killed 17 children? The issue of mental competence is somewhat moot since I believe that anyone who kills is to some degree damaged goods. What do you do with such an inhuman human? What if it were your child, your wife, your mother or your siblings? Would that change the determination?

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believing the earth is round and being vaccinated does not automatically make you a sane person

No doubt, I'm definetely oversimplifying. Il go into some depth here since you had a great response.

I think it usually comes down to two main things: some sort of bias and lack of critical thinking in a certain area.

I think wanting for special knowledge is the most common bias. But there are near endless biases: religion, politics, tribalism, etc. I think being stupid is the most common reason for lack of critical thinking but bias often drives inconsistent epistemology.

I like to use my own conspiracy prone relatives for examples. They demand double blind clinical research for anything they dont like, yet are convinced by the slightest anecdotal evidence for virtually any idea that confirms their biases. Its a matter of bias and epistemological inconsistency. Ex. The US govt sent something to india for covid relief and didnt release the details. To them, this is proof that the US govt is shipping ivermectin to India because they know it works, yet is hiding it from their own population. An argument from ignorance is sufficient 'evidence' in this case, but the same person says epidemiological studies arent enough to prove adverse effects of the carnivore diet(even though tons of clinical research does exist). Shout out Joe Rogan for the misinfo on that one. The standards are scattershot.

They often take partial truths to illogical conclusions driven by their bias and lack of knowledge. Example people like Kanye:

Fact: Jews per capita are often wealthy people, own a lot of businesses and banks and often successful people. Conspiracy: well... theres a lot, im sure uve heard many Result: rampant anti semitism and a world war.

I've thought a lot about whats the problem with their thinking. I think the problem occurs when biases are stronger than your epistemology.

A common bias is wanting for special knowledge. These same people constantly fall for the "They don't want you to know this" type videos and literally fall into nft scams, and day trading scams, religious scams, you name it.

Whether its pure stupidity like Terrance Howard or taking facts and applying inconsistent epistemology like my relatives, the conspiracy is driven by bias and lack of knowledge in basically all cases.

Poor understanding of science is also super common. For smart people like Oz i think its excessive bias creating inconsistent episetomology(with some dishonest grifting on top), but its hard to know. The less intelligent or educated they are, the easier it is to see what makes them tick.

IMO its a scale of bias to epistemology. Stupid people don't need a lot of bias to tip that scale the wrong way, and smart people can still be really biased.

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You are not nihilistic, since nihilist people don’t get depressed for very long. There is really no point to be depressed since nihilism don’t value anything over anything. What you have is a reluctance to accept reality.