Psychology of Conspiracy Theorists

Schmelzer said:
Not really. With a lot of completely artificial rules to forbid them to post almost anything. And that what is allowed to post will be answered by the staff without giving time to reply. At BA times it was more reasonable. Today it is simply "how to get rid of posters with any alternative ideas".
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In other words, "I couldn't make a coherent case for my claim." The rules aren't hard to follow if you have something that doesn't consist mostly of phlogiston.
 
The rules aren't hard to follow, but the discussion starts, a lot of time nobody answers, and a day before the end you receive some objections. And you can be happy if you succeed to write one reply. After this is end of discussion. Possibly the admin writes some completely stupid summary of the discussion before closing it.

So, no, I was able to make a coherent case, but not allowed to make replies to some misguided, easy to reject objections.
 
Schmelzer said:
The rules aren't hard to follow, but the discussion starts, a lot of time nobody answers, and a day before the end you receive some objections. And you can be happy if you succeed to write one reply. After this is end of discussion. Possibly the admin writes some completely stupid summary of the discussion before closing it.

So, no, I was able to make a coherent case, but not allowed to make replies to some misguided, easy to reject objections.
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A lot of time nobody answers because the topic has been done to death and the poster hasn't said anything new.

Frequency of responses would be needing some hard numbers rather than just impressions.
 
LOL, I was presenting there an ether theory giving the Einstein equations of GR in some limit, and an ether model which allows to compute the SM gauge group and fermions with all their charges. For string theory this would be a wet dream, but they were never able to reach something similar. Nothing new.
 
Schmelzer said:
LOL, I was presenting there an ether theory giving the Einstein equations of GR in some limit, and an ether model which allows to compute the SM gauge group and fermions with all their charges. For string theory this would be a wet dream, but they were never able to reach something similar. Nothing new.
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And you presented your theory effectively with all the proof asked for, right? That's why they tossed you, you were intimidating them.

Or something.
 
The thing about conspiracies theories is that they are based secrets.

No secrets no conspiracies .

government secrets are the problem .
 
river said:
The thing about conspiracies theories is that they are based secrets.

No secrets no conspiracies .

government secrets are the problem .
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Actually, they're based on a desire to attack a person or group. Conspiracy nuts are immune to the fatal flaws in their theories because facts aren't important, they just want to damage.
 
Gawdzilla Sama said:
And you presented your theory effectively with all the proof asked for, right?
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Judge yourself. Here are my challenges I have been able to find again:

https://forum.cosmoquest.org/showthread.php?92447-A-generalization-of-the-Lorentz-ether-to-gravity

https://forum.cosmoquest.org/showthread.php?93944-Why-quantum-gravity-requires-a-background

https://forum.cosmoquest.org/showth...-indirect-observation-of-the-preferred-foliat

I'm sure that I have at least tried to present my ether model for the SM too, but do not find a link to it. Maybe it was not allowed because not about cosmology or so. Any additions to any of the arguments made there are welcome. The appropriate place would be the following threads:

http://www.sciforums.com/threads/an-ether-theory-of-gravity-compatible-with-modern-physics.153203

http://www.sciforums.com/threads/an...the-standard-model-of-particle-physics.153207
 
Simply read the conditions of the ATM section. There is automatic thread closure in this part after 30 days. So, if you think it is reasonable to close every thread about every theory which is not 100% accepted by the mainstream, ok, you have a quite different opinion about what is reasonable in a scientific discussion.

And in other parts it is completely forbidden even to refer to theories published in peer-reviewed mainstream journals. So, I have officially received the following clarification:
I think you're hung up on the word "against." As we use it, the term doesn't strictly mean "opposed to" the mainstream. Our editorial stance here is that ATM claims are those that are against, outside, beyond, or alternative to currently accepted mainstream theories. Even if you break totally new ground in an area not even remotely addressed by mainstream theories, it's still considered an ATM claim in these forums because it is not mainstream. So, yes, it's essentially a binary division. If you still want to make your case, please report my post in that thread and clearly explain how you think your theory qualifies as mainstream, beyond the fact that it has been published.
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My issue is that it is a stupid and unreasonable form of censorship to close automatically all threads with any alternative theories or proposals. From time to time it may be reasonable to close one or another thread or to ban one or another spammer, but such a general and automatic censorship simply shows, imho, an anti-scientific, dogmatic direction of the forum.
 
Schmelzer said:
My issue is that it is a stupid and unreasonable form of censorship to close automatically all threads with any alternative theories or proposals. From time to time it may be reasonable to close one or another thread or to ban one or another spammer, but such a general and automatic censorship simply shows, imho, an anti-scientific, dogmatic direction of the forum.
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And you didn't read the rules.
 
Borrowed from elsewhere:
https://content.dollarshaveclub.com...ies-science-says-theres-something-wrong-brain


They posted this article which they talk about research on people who believe conspiracy theories and how they might have something wrong with the pattern recognition part of their brain.

The title: IF YOU BELIEVE IN CONSPIRACY THEORIES, SCIENCE SAYS THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOUR BRAIN

And man were they proven right in the comments section of their facebook page.

Finding these little gems in unexpected places has become quite pleasing.
 
Gawdzilla Sama said:
The title: IF YOU BELIEVE IN CONSPIRACY THEORIES, SCIENCE SAYS THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOUR BRAIN
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The typical way to lie with statistics.

Let's look, first, at the facts presented in the article. There is some "mental disturbance called “illusory pattern perception.” This is defined as the mind’s ability to identify “a coherent and meaningful interrelationship among a set of random or unrelated stimuli.” In other words, finding patterns where none exist."

First of all, how problematic is this? Problematic enough to be named "mental disturbance"? The ability to identify patterns is an extremely useful thing, and almost a necessity for a successful scientist. And it does not really matter if there is some overproduction of such pattern identification. What distinguishes the good scientist is not that he has no such overproduction of patterns, and does not see patterns if there are none in reality, but that he is able to evaluate the patterns he observes and finally recognizes and rejects the wrong ones.

Let's take into account also the dangers of error: If you identify a wrong pattern in a random sequence, the harm is not big. If you don't recognize a meaningful pattern, the harm can be quite large, if not deadly. So, from point of view of survival, it makes a lot of sense to err on the side of overidentification of patterns.

But, of course, everything can become extreme, and in some extreme cases too much of such misguided pattern identification may be worth to be named a "mental disturbance". But read the description of the experiment: Nothing suggests that what was measured was such an extreme overproduction of pattern identification. One can, of course, say that a pattern recognized in a random sequence is wrong, but so what? This is the usual way pattern recognition works: We start with identifying patterns. After this, we start to test if there is really something behind this, by testing if the same pattern is repeated in our future observations. Usually it is not, and we throw away that pattern as a funny accident, and forget about it. This normal way to identify meaningful patterns essentially depends on the ability to overidentify patterns, to observe some even in random sequences.

So, this is manipulation 1: Name something quite normal and unproblematic a "mental disturbance".

Of course, it is quite plausible that this particular "mental disturbance" is correlated with belief into various nonsense theories. Ok.

Manipulation 2: The belief in such nonsense theories is combined with belief into theories which are politically unwanted, by naming both "conspiracy theories". Some statistical connection will remain between those witha "mental disturbance" and those believing in what one has named "conspiracy theory". Moreover, it is quite plausible that good pattern recognition (the "disturbance") also makes it easier to identify government lies.

Manipulation 3: Transform a statistical correlation (however weak, if you can name it "statistically significant", it sounds as important) into a causal, one-sided relationship: If you believe in conspiracy theories, then you have a "mental disturbance".
 
Please comment on post #436.
http://www.sciforums.com/threads/psychology-of-conspiracy-theorists.144995/page-22#post-3481937

That seems to be a case in which the conspiracy theory turned out to be true and the sophists* trying to obfuscate the issue just ended up looking silly because the anomalies were too clear. There's a point at which things are so clear that sophistry simply becomes ineffective.

If there were sophists on that thread, there may be sophists on a lot more threads on a lot more sites.


*
http://www.whale.to/m/disin.html
https://openheartedrebel.com/2012/0...-confessions-of-a-paid-disinformation-poster/
 
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