Thanks for this framework, Dr Jack. I can use this immediately.
Also for consideration: Those CTs that I’d once categorized in the Nutso bin can (in light of new evidence) move out of the nuthouse and closer to Certain [& vice-versa].
Of course what one will accept as “proof” is a philosophical question (epistemology) and that is an entire different rabbit hole with its own complexity.
Of course what one will accept as “proof” is a philosophical question (epistemology) and that is an entire different rabbit hole with its own complexity.
Thanks you, mr. Lyons Weiler. Very instructive (at first sight) to remove any remnants of brain fog that keep creeping in, even after you think you see through the - well, the conspiracy.
One succinct definition of 'conspiracy' I learned from a Shawnee-Lenape scholar. "A long range plan made in secret.' [Steven Newcomb, author of "Pagans in the Promised Land"]. By close-reading various legal cases on First Nations issues in terms of conceptual metaphor, Newcomb traces them back to the 15th century papal bulls, which in turn suggest that a sort of proto-New World Order emerged in the Age of Discovery.
Quite a sobering notion, now that the US Constitution, a robust antidote against totalitarian rule, is itself under attack from the WHO and 'the Powers that Ought Not Be' [James Corbett].
This exercise is difficult--yet quite worthwhile. This is what I learned in last 10 minutes.
First I had a hard time thinking of a conspiracy. All I want to think about is mRNA vaccines because I'm terrified that getting them will destroy my health. (Is this certain? Can I still "enjoy" living even if I'm exhausted, partially paralyzed, unable to think clearly, etc.)
By questioning my inordinate fear in this way, I become a tiny bit less paranoid. Because great fear leads to great mistrust or even blame. (Those nasty unvaccinated people are going to kill us all with their transmission of Covid , defiance of communal safety, and destruction of herd immunity!)
So. Insight number 1 is that anything I think will harm me destroys my faith in those who offer it. ESPECIALLY if they seem uncaring. Here, lets get you vaccinated because risk of Covid trumps any other alternative such as "effective" treatments, right to informed consent, right to bodily integrity, etc. Also my fears tend to escalate in order to "force" the opposition to leave me alone. Don't even talk to me! I don't want to hear it! I just want to be immediately safe!
Insight number 2 is that everything I believe that doesn't agree with mainstream media is automatically a conspiracy theory. For example, what did I write down for my conspiracy? I wrote, "mRNA vaccines are not safe." So then you surprised me when you asked me to put down who was conspiring. What do you mean conspiring? I feel crazy and "bad" just for questioning the medical "consensus." Anybody who distrusts authorities is obviously a conspiracy theorist because they are thinking in a "paranoid" way.
For example, I read yesterday that my mayor, Eric Adams, has passed a regulation that will force public institutions who provide food to reduce or eliminate meat and replace meat protein with vegetable (soy?) products in order to help reduce the carbon footprint. He's going to use credit card (surveillance) data to do this.
Of course I overreacted. How can I feel healthy without an adequate diet? My two true blue friends immediately warned me not to become paranoid or stop I'm paranoid.
I started to become offended before I realized that, yes, this regulation doesn't (YET) apply to me because I buy my own food--I don't get it from the NYC city government. I should immediately stop worrying and making unfounded assumptions. I am in danger of becoming (I probably already have become) a (shudder) conspiracy theorist.
So it follows that any time you don't believe that the government is helpful and supportive, you then are believing that the government is conspiring against you. It's this vague feeling of outrage, hate, distrust--they shouldn't be DOING this! Help me! People are conspiring against me! "What do you mean, conspiring?" I don't know, and I don't care! The authorities are against me!
What's it like to live in a situation where your fears/concerns are automatically dismissed as crazy, and you feel rejected/marginalized/vulnerable? What's it like to suffer--and have your community dismiss your concerns and tell you to stop worrying because you are otherwise a conspiracy theorist?
A Dutch poet showed me one way. Ramsey Nasr was the Poet Laureate of the Netherlands when he wrote a poem 30 April 2009, the day a Dutchman Karst T, drove a Suzuki Swift full speed into a crowd of people in order to target the bus containing the royal family. Instead, he ended up killing himself and 6 other people. The poet wrote about how people, doing "good" ignore the unfortunate consequences of their "goodness." No conspiracy, merely the focus only on benefits and dismissal of any negative consequences.
In the Land of Kings
I live in a land
where the animal lover decides
from sheer goodness to shoot a fellow man.
I live in a land
where the righteous believer decides
from respect to plant the knife in the heretic.
I live in a land
where our lads for the hell of it sometimes
kick the shit out of the train guard.
I live in a land
where a smartly-dressed man, thirty-eight, blond,
takes the liberty of mowing down other peole in his car.
“At the Boston Marathon in 2013, behind the barriers where spectators were standing, two ‘explosions’ went off – 210 yards and 14 seconds apart. The event was reported in the media as a terrorist attack allegedly killing three people, injuring hundreds of others, including 17 who allegedly lost limbs. This film provides proof that the entire event was a carefully planned hoax using crisis actors and various other operatives. The film exposes how such hoaxes are ran and managed. In relation to terrorism events globally, it is important because from around the 2012/2013 time period, fabricated terror incidents switched from real deaths to incidents using hoaxed deaths, sometimes known as ‘phantom’ terror. Subsequent hoaxed terror attacks, ie after 2013, have been carried out in places with poor oversight, such as on bridges, within controlled areas inside buildings, or in more remote locations. This is why this film is so important because it comprehensively captured the event, and shows how these kind of attacks are staged. It is essential to carry the knowledge gained from this attack when considering all subsequent terror attacks.” ?
May 18, 2023·edited May 18, 2023Liked by James Lyons-Weiler
Good article. I know people who have bought the idea that conspiracy theories and hypotheses are automatically false. Even Steve Bannon has a sign in his office that says "there are no conspiracies" and "there are no coincidences." Sorry, Steve. You have it 180 degrees backwards.
I ask those that I know, then how is it that we have laws on the books about conspiracies and lawyers have to provide evidence of them in court to get convictions? And I remind them that Occam's razor is one of the most powerful principles of logical induction, and that inductive criteria for plausibility is all that a rational person should use when evaluating causal claims.
Then they hit me with "well, what about giving people the benefit of the doubt?" And I remind them that even Aesop's fables tell us that some people clearly DON'T deserve any such benefit, because they've proven themselves untrustworthy BEYOND reasonable doubt to REASONABLE (i.e., ethical) people. And that has to be factored in to the analysis if an ethically-behaving society is your goal. And how else could we decide between two parties that make contradictory claims if the only other evidence you had about them, other than their credentials, was what you knew of them from their history? Like Robert Malone and Anthony Fauci, e.g.?
I'm so glad someone is trying to legitimize the idea of holding to a conspiracy theory. I've been a conspiracy theorist for over 40 years and only received ridicule for it except for a very few like-minded individuals. Covid taught people that all the major institutions in society can collaborate on a giant lie. I'm so glad to see people waking up. To me, the first step in identifying conspiracies is to ground oneself in the truth of the Bible. There is ample evidence for the truth claims of Christianity if you bother to research them. Then whatever idea or philosophy contradicts the Bible is likely to be propagated by Satan, whose name means "adversary" in Hebrew, and people that Satan and his demons have influenced, who hate God and hate the Bible and believe it's okay to use deception and conspiracy to undermine belief in Christianity and work towards a humanistic utopian society without any reference to God. The mother of all conspiracies is the New World Order, New World Religion, and New World Leader. This has been mankind's dream since the fall of man in the Garden of Eden, and the first attempt to realize that dream in building the Tower of Babel. The NWO is nothing more than the attempt to finish the Tower of Babel, or the modern-day version of it. Secret societies, the wealthy, the royal families, the politically ambitious, the ideologues, the occultists, are all plotting to create the NWO. To do this they must eliminate the barriers to this, which are Christianity, Judaism, Israel, free republics, liberty, the rule of law, free markets, conscience, natural law, and so forth - any practice that an individual uses to obey the God of the Bible directly, without coercion by government or society. In the early days of Christianity, the Roman Caesars wanted to unify the empire by forcing everyone to say "Caesar is Lord." Christians would not do that, because they believed that only the God of the Bible is Lord and everything and everyone else is a counterfeit god. It's the same today. Today this is expressed as political correctness, and anyone who won't go along is "cancelled". It's the same thing that happened under Caesar - it's the forcible acceptance of a unifying code in society that rejects the God of the Bible. This is the great battle of history and the great battle of the people of God today.
I know that I tend to believe that I already get too much info from the "other side", MSM, CDC, etc and therefore don't need to go looking more deeply into their points of view. However, by doing this I can miss out on information from studies and from knowledgeable scientists who go into more specifics beyond the basic narrative, many of whom speak of those with my views in a derisory way. It's much easier to read the info form like-minded people that reinforces my stance. It's not easy, but I reluctantly do this to gain further perspective.
I think the proposed definition of conspiracy is too broad ("an idea or hypothesis that poses that two or more people were involved in the planning of specific events.") It must include having an aim that is either illegal (assuming the law is just) or immoral, i.e., something which, if exposed, would be considered immoral in light of God's law or natural law.
This is an honest description of how to evaluate the honesty of a claim of "conspiracy theory". Lately that phrase has been irritating me, now I realize why: the conspirators are not named. All sorts of things are labeled as conspiracy theories, when what is really meant is that they are lies. For some reason, some people cannot bring themselves to say something is a lie. I believe that most of the COVID story is a lie. I do not pretend I can imagine who initiated it, or even why. Many of us have spent the last two years learning who and how the lies might have been perpetrated. Our vulnerability to the lies is what really needs thought.
That’s not an interview she “Jr Krystal” brings up vaccines to Robert F Kennedy Jr then interrupts his answer and says I don’t wanna get bogged down with that issue , she just shut him down that’s not interview she was in attack mode as soon as she asked him the question on his position , he begins to explain his position she doesn’t wanna hear it
Obviously she has no knowledge whatsoever of the hundreds of studies on the therapeutics that were working on the front lines the adverse reaction of the vaccines in the first rollout by Pfizer’s own studies she just kept on repeating her opinion who cares about her opinion
this so call interview piece was a jokeY
You don’t go into an interview to learn about something when you already stated that you already made up you mine, that’s going into the discussion with a closed mind ,you never learn anything by doing that !!!
I can't see where you define or describe EPOE. What does it stand for?
I take issue with your characterization of Occam's Razor, which is ubiquitously and fallaciously over-reduced. The Razor advises: "do not multiply causes without necessity." The moment human events and human behavior are under the microscope there is a reliable expectation of motive, conflict of interest, and/or self deception, and therefore you have all the necessity one should need to multiply the hypthetical cause of cheating, deception, collusion, or coverup, either from an individual or by those who "breathe together," ie con-spirare.
If this more precise translation of Occam's advice were actually applied verbatim, there would be no taboo against conjecturing conspiracy in every aspect of human endeavor, and we'd be able to see them everywhere laying plain before us.
To use the Razor as a bludgeon to discourage and suppress circumspection & curiosity, as is typical, is not science, scientific, or even remotely philosophical (in the spirit of loving wisdom), but it most surely is evidence of priestly orthodoxy & a gaslight by entrenched illegitimate power.
Thanks for this framework, Dr Jack. I can use this immediately.
Also for consideration: Those CTs that I’d once categorized in the Nutso bin can (in light of new evidence) move out of the nuthouse and closer to Certain [& vice-versa].
Of course what one will accept as “proof” is a philosophical question (epistemology) and that is an entire different rabbit hole with its own complexity.
Of course what one will accept as “proof” is a philosophical question (epistemology) and that is an entire different rabbit hole with its own complexity.
Oh, James Lyons-Weiler - THIS was truly stellar!!!
Thank you! 👏👏👏
Thanks you, mr. Lyons Weiler. Very instructive (at first sight) to remove any remnants of brain fog that keep creeping in, even after you think you see through the - well, the conspiracy.
One succinct definition of 'conspiracy' I learned from a Shawnee-Lenape scholar. "A long range plan made in secret.' [Steven Newcomb, author of "Pagans in the Promised Land"]. By close-reading various legal cases on First Nations issues in terms of conceptual metaphor, Newcomb traces them back to the 15th century papal bulls, which in turn suggest that a sort of proto-New World Order emerged in the Age of Discovery.
Quite a sobering notion, now that the US Constitution, a robust antidote against totalitarian rule, is itself under attack from the WHO and 'the Powers that Ought Not Be' [James Corbett].
As there are NEVER enough details available, except in man-made systems like mathematics, the path to any conclusion requires conjecturing.
I applied it to you and you are category 7: nutso grifter.
This exercise is difficult--yet quite worthwhile. This is what I learned in last 10 minutes.
First I had a hard time thinking of a conspiracy. All I want to think about is mRNA vaccines because I'm terrified that getting them will destroy my health. (Is this certain? Can I still "enjoy" living even if I'm exhausted, partially paralyzed, unable to think clearly, etc.)
By questioning my inordinate fear in this way, I become a tiny bit less paranoid. Because great fear leads to great mistrust or even blame. (Those nasty unvaccinated people are going to kill us all with their transmission of Covid , defiance of communal safety, and destruction of herd immunity!)
So. Insight number 1 is that anything I think will harm me destroys my faith in those who offer it. ESPECIALLY if they seem uncaring. Here, lets get you vaccinated because risk of Covid trumps any other alternative such as "effective" treatments, right to informed consent, right to bodily integrity, etc. Also my fears tend to escalate in order to "force" the opposition to leave me alone. Don't even talk to me! I don't want to hear it! I just want to be immediately safe!
Insight number 2 is that everything I believe that doesn't agree with mainstream media is automatically a conspiracy theory. For example, what did I write down for my conspiracy? I wrote, "mRNA vaccines are not safe." So then you surprised me when you asked me to put down who was conspiring. What do you mean conspiring? I feel crazy and "bad" just for questioning the medical "consensus." Anybody who distrusts authorities is obviously a conspiracy theorist because they are thinking in a "paranoid" way.
For example, I read yesterday that my mayor, Eric Adams, has passed a regulation that will force public institutions who provide food to reduce or eliminate meat and replace meat protein with vegetable (soy?) products in order to help reduce the carbon footprint. He's going to use credit card (surveillance) data to do this.
Of course I overreacted. How can I feel healthy without an adequate diet? My two true blue friends immediately warned me not to become paranoid or stop I'm paranoid.
I started to become offended before I realized that, yes, this regulation doesn't (YET) apply to me because I buy my own food--I don't get it from the NYC city government. I should immediately stop worrying and making unfounded assumptions. I am in danger of becoming (I probably already have become) a (shudder) conspiracy theorist.
So it follows that any time you don't believe that the government is helpful and supportive, you then are believing that the government is conspiring against you. It's this vague feeling of outrage, hate, distrust--they shouldn't be DOING this! Help me! People are conspiring against me! "What do you mean, conspiring?" I don't know, and I don't care! The authorities are against me!
What's it like to live in a situation where your fears/concerns are automatically dismissed as crazy, and you feel rejected/marginalized/vulnerable? What's it like to suffer--and have your community dismiss your concerns and tell you to stop worrying because you are otherwise a conspiracy theorist?
A Dutch poet showed me one way. Ramsey Nasr was the Poet Laureate of the Netherlands when he wrote a poem 30 April 2009, the day a Dutchman Karst T, drove a Suzuki Swift full speed into a crowd of people in order to target the bus containing the royal family. Instead, he ended up killing himself and 6 other people. The poet wrote about how people, doing "good" ignore the unfortunate consequences of their "goodness." No conspiracy, merely the focus only on benefits and dismissal of any negative consequences.
In the Land of Kings
I live in a land
where the animal lover decides
from sheer goodness to shoot a fellow man.
I live in a land
where the righteous believer decides
from respect to plant the knife in the heretic.
I live in a land
where our lads for the hell of it sometimes
kick the shit out of the train guard.
I live in a land
where a smartly-dressed man, thirty-eight, blond,
takes the liberty of mowing down other peole in his car.
And in this red, red twilight land,
where boundaries have been totally erased
where responsibility's professed ad nauseam
where sixteen million kings have been raised
A new order naturally starts
along festively cordoned-off lanes
a last queen will see her last subjects' remains
run over like animals' parts.
Please forgive me, Father, for I am unvaccinated.
“At the Boston Marathon in 2013, behind the barriers where spectators were standing, two ‘explosions’ went off – 210 yards and 14 seconds apart. The event was reported in the media as a terrorist attack allegedly killing three people, injuring hundreds of others, including 17 who allegedly lost limbs. This film provides proof that the entire event was a carefully planned hoax using crisis actors and various other operatives. The film exposes how such hoaxes are ran and managed. In relation to terrorism events globally, it is important because from around the 2012/2013 time period, fabricated terror incidents switched from real deaths to incidents using hoaxed deaths, sometimes known as ‘phantom’ terror. Subsequent hoaxed terror attacks, ie after 2013, have been carried out in places with poor oversight, such as on bridges, within controlled areas inside buildings, or in more remote locations. This is why this film is so important because it comprehensively captured the event, and shows how these kind of attacks are staged. It is essential to carry the knowledge gained from this attack when considering all subsequent terror attacks.” ?
https://www.richplanet.net/richp_genre.php?ref=303&part=1&gen=2
Good article. I know people who have bought the idea that conspiracy theories and hypotheses are automatically false. Even Steve Bannon has a sign in his office that says "there are no conspiracies" and "there are no coincidences." Sorry, Steve. You have it 180 degrees backwards.
I ask those that I know, then how is it that we have laws on the books about conspiracies and lawyers have to provide evidence of them in court to get convictions? And I remind them that Occam's razor is one of the most powerful principles of logical induction, and that inductive criteria for plausibility is all that a rational person should use when evaluating causal claims.
Then they hit me with "well, what about giving people the benefit of the doubt?" And I remind them that even Aesop's fables tell us that some people clearly DON'T deserve any such benefit, because they've proven themselves untrustworthy BEYOND reasonable doubt to REASONABLE (i.e., ethical) people. And that has to be factored in to the analysis if an ethically-behaving society is your goal. And how else could we decide between two parties that make contradictory claims if the only other evidence you had about them, other than their credentials, was what you knew of them from their history? Like Robert Malone and Anthony Fauci, e.g.?
Then they change the subject.
I'm so glad someone is trying to legitimize the idea of holding to a conspiracy theory. I've been a conspiracy theorist for over 40 years and only received ridicule for it except for a very few like-minded individuals. Covid taught people that all the major institutions in society can collaborate on a giant lie. I'm so glad to see people waking up. To me, the first step in identifying conspiracies is to ground oneself in the truth of the Bible. There is ample evidence for the truth claims of Christianity if you bother to research them. Then whatever idea or philosophy contradicts the Bible is likely to be propagated by Satan, whose name means "adversary" in Hebrew, and people that Satan and his demons have influenced, who hate God and hate the Bible and believe it's okay to use deception and conspiracy to undermine belief in Christianity and work towards a humanistic utopian society without any reference to God. The mother of all conspiracies is the New World Order, New World Religion, and New World Leader. This has been mankind's dream since the fall of man in the Garden of Eden, and the first attempt to realize that dream in building the Tower of Babel. The NWO is nothing more than the attempt to finish the Tower of Babel, or the modern-day version of it. Secret societies, the wealthy, the royal families, the politically ambitious, the ideologues, the occultists, are all plotting to create the NWO. To do this they must eliminate the barriers to this, which are Christianity, Judaism, Israel, free republics, liberty, the rule of law, free markets, conscience, natural law, and so forth - any practice that an individual uses to obey the God of the Bible directly, without coercion by government or society. In the early days of Christianity, the Roman Caesars wanted to unify the empire by forcing everyone to say "Caesar is Lord." Christians would not do that, because they believed that only the God of the Bible is Lord and everything and everyone else is a counterfeit god. It's the same today. Today this is expressed as political correctness, and anyone who won't go along is "cancelled". It's the same thing that happened under Caesar - it's the forcible acceptance of a unifying code in society that rejects the God of the Bible. This is the great battle of history and the great battle of the people of God today.
I know that I tend to believe that I already get too much info from the "other side", MSM, CDC, etc and therefore don't need to go looking more deeply into their points of view. However, by doing this I can miss out on information from studies and from knowledgeable scientists who go into more specifics beyond the basic narrative, many of whom speak of those with my views in a derisory way. It's much easier to read the info form like-minded people that reinforces my stance. It's not easy, but I reluctantly do this to gain further perspective.
I think the proposed definition of conspiracy is too broad ("an idea or hypothesis that poses that two or more people were involved in the planning of specific events.") It must include having an aim that is either illegal (assuming the law is just) or immoral, i.e., something which, if exposed, would be considered immoral in light of God's law or natural law.
This is an honest description of how to evaluate the honesty of a claim of "conspiracy theory". Lately that phrase has been irritating me, now I realize why: the conspirators are not named. All sorts of things are labeled as conspiracy theories, when what is really meant is that they are lies. For some reason, some people cannot bring themselves to say something is a lie. I believe that most of the COVID story is a lie. I do not pretend I can imagine who initiated it, or even why. Many of us have spent the last two years learning who and how the lies might have been perpetrated. Our vulnerability to the lies is what really needs thought.
That’s not an interview she “Jr Krystal” brings up vaccines to Robert F Kennedy Jr then interrupts his answer and says I don’t wanna get bogged down with that issue , she just shut him down that’s not interview she was in attack mode as soon as she asked him the question on his position , he begins to explain his position she doesn’t wanna hear it
Obviously she has no knowledge whatsoever of the hundreds of studies on the therapeutics that were working on the front lines the adverse reaction of the vaccines in the first rollout by Pfizer’s own studies she just kept on repeating her opinion who cares about her opinion
this so call interview piece was a jokeY
You don’t go into an interview to learn about something when you already stated that you already made up you mine, that’s going into the discussion with a closed mind ,you never learn anything by doing that !!!
I can't see where you define or describe EPOE. What does it stand for?
I take issue with your characterization of Occam's Razor, which is ubiquitously and fallaciously over-reduced. The Razor advises: "do not multiply causes without necessity." The moment human events and human behavior are under the microscope there is a reliable expectation of motive, conflict of interest, and/or self deception, and therefore you have all the necessity one should need to multiply the hypthetical cause of cheating, deception, collusion, or coverup, either from an individual or by those who "breathe together," ie con-spirare.
If this more precise translation of Occam's advice were actually applied verbatim, there would be no taboo against conjecturing conspiracy in every aspect of human endeavor, and we'd be able to see them everywhere laying plain before us.
To use the Razor as a bludgeon to discourage and suppress circumspection & curiosity, as is typical, is not science, scientific, or even remotely philosophical (in the spirit of loving wisdom), but it most surely is evidence of priestly orthodoxy & a gaslight by entrenched illegitimate power.