Conspiracy Theorism on Facebook

Like the rest of the Wild Web Facebook is the stamping ground for a lunatic fringe who promote all sorts of off-the-wall ideas, in particular, need I say it, conspiracy theorism. They are exploiting a general malaise of counter-culture disaffection and distrust of the establishment, political and academic. In fact I have two Facebook friends who, although far from being originators of this claptrap, have nevertheless been attracted by and toyed with these ideas in their posts. So, let me introduce my two FB friends Frank Saucepan and Fred Shed (not real names of course) whose posts, with my comments, I reproduce below. It may be that their posts are no more than trollish mischief, hence some of my comments are themselves a little tongue-in-cheek. In response I used the simplest and most straightforward argument against conspiracy theorism; Viz: that it has a self-referencing instability; i.e.: If you accept the world view of conspiracy theorism then it becomes possible to continue multiplying entities to the point where any particular conspiracy theory itself is believed to be a false idea put about by another covert conspiracy for purposes of their own! What you might call a conspiracy of conspiracy theorism! See here for more on conspiracy theorism.

1^st May 2017

Frank posts on Flat Earth, an idea he is getting into!

The following is a partial repeat of the discussion on Frank's FB page I blogged on here

Frank Saucepan: All I did was say this flat earth business has caught my interest!

Timothy V Reeves It caught mine too, but it only works if you add huge dollops of conspiracy theorism. But conspiracy theorism has inner contradictions: Once you believe conspiracy theory A you can always find conspiracy theory B which explains conspiracy theory A as a product of a conspiracy of deception. In short conspiracy theorism completely phux-up any attempt to arrive at the truth. Any so called "truth" arrived at via conspiracy theory A is easily undermined by conspiracy theory B. Here's a video showing how easy it is to invent fanciful but plausible conspiracy theories : 

https://vimeo.com/61930750

5 July 2017

Frank posts a "Loose Change" video on the 9/11 conspiracy theory and adds the comment

Frank Saucepan: And people think others are mad for questioning things (My Comment: That's exactly what conspiracy theorism doesn't ask you to do - question things!)

Timothy V Reeves: "Luke's Change":  https://vimeo.com/61930750

Timothy V Reeves Just because you can construct theory which joins the known data dots by multiplying entities doesn't make it true.

Timothy V Reeves I'm not against conspiracy theorism for the sake of it but because it's a crap epistemic and can be evoked to explain away absolutely anything even itself: Its problems are: a) it arbitrarily multiplies entities and players as the pattern of data dots gets more complex to join. b) It doesn't take cognizance of randomness c) It requires a very water-tight cooperation between its imagined players - very unlikely with human beings d) It is motivated by human tribal and identification factors - "I don't identify with those guys, they are not in my tribe, therefore they are lying" e) Conspiracy theorism can be evoked in so many ways that it's possible to invent completely conflicting theories which "explain" the same facts.

Timothy V Reeves See "Luke's Change" for a very plausible sounding conspiracy theory, which of course in this case we know must be a piece of imagination. Just shows what the imagination can do! i.e. concoct crapola!

Jul 18^th 2018

Frank posts the "matrix" meme: 

Frank Saucepan: What if!?!

Timothy V Reeves WHAT IF I TOLD YOU: There are covert web agents putting these thoughts into people's heads in order to sow despair, disillusionment, disaffection and defection, thus promoting social breakdown and Apocalypse, from which point they will grab the opportunity to take control! 🤔🤔😁😁

Timothy V Reeves .....be careful: nothing in this world operates as you think it does:🤣

Timothy V Reeves Can't you see Frank that the kind of critique that this thesis is offering can be called upon itself? It is self-undermining! That is, it is liable to disappear up its own a*se!

June 10th 2018

Fred Shed posted on the moon landings. In this case I opted to "play the game"!

Fred Shed: Moon landing is fake:

Timothy V Reeves Must have been! We all expected them to bring back cheese: What did we get? Just a bit of dirt! I can get that from my back yard!

Fred Shed: Also in a vacuum there would be no way to stear.

Timothy V Reeves Rockets work in vacuum so that argument doesn't work; it's all to do with Newtons 3rd law. But the absence of quality Moon cheese is sufficient to clinch it as far as I'm concerned.

Fred Shed: Timothy V Reeves how do the rockets work though coz there's zero friction in space so surely rockets would not work.

Fred Shed: I get you could launch a rocket and generally aim it at the moon but that would be about all.

Timothy V Reeves Have you designed an experiment to show that rockets need friction in space? If rockets didn't work, neither would your motor bike.

Fred Shed Timothy V Reeves my motorbike is attached to the ground by gravity though.

Timothy V Reeves ....but your internal combustion engine pistons aren't attached to the ground!

Fred Shed Timothy V Reeves true but They are in a different type off vacuum

Timothy V Reeves ...what do you mean?

Fred Shed In space there is nothing in engine pistons there is everything.

Timothy V Reeves OK, so you're in space and you light up a barrel of gunpowder right in front of your space helmeted face (gun powder doesn't need oxygen, since it's got its own supply of oxygen). What do you think is going to happen to your space helmet?

Timothy V Reeves PS: Don't try this at home!!

Fred Shed Timothy V Reeves not a lot really

Timothy V Reeves .....OK, so now try lighting up a stick of dynamite that is INSIDE your helmet! What's going to happen?

Fred Shed: Head would get blown up

Timothy V Reeves ...right! So one bit of your head will travel toward the earth, another bit will travel toward the moon, another toward alpha centauri etc..... and so voila! We have succeeded in spreading the contents of your head to the four corners of the galaxy and it's all done in a vacuum!

Fred Shed Timothy V Reeves spose.

Timothy V Reeves There's a rumour going about that the Illuminati are creating youTube videos to make us believe that the moon landings were a faked: After all , they want us to believe that the Earth is flat and screw up our understanding of science so that they alone have access to valid science.

Fred Shed That I can believe  (Woops! I didn't mean him to respond like that!)

Timothy V Reeves As I always say: Kill a conspiracy theory with another conspiracy theory and so on ad infinitum!

June 15 2018

Fred Shed mischievously posted the following  picture from "Flat Earth Research": 

This picture can be found on FB "Flat Earth Research" here:
https://www.facebook.com/flatearthresearch/photos/a.1628044087506793/1953022505008948/?type=3&theater. In a response to a query as to why the dinosaurs appeared on this picture two Young Earthers left these comments on Flat Earth's FB page:

Michael McCarrey Leviathan and Behemoth. We called them "dinosaurs" There are more. They were on the Ark, probably as eggs. Some called them Dragons. Most died from being hunted or because the climate was different after the Flood. But, when half the FE proponents can't even figure out how to use a camera, this is not unexpected.

Reuel Zaire In ancient times they were called dragons and they are also mentioned in the holy scriptures. The term dinosaur was only created in the mid 19th century and its from the greek deinos(terrible)+sauros(lizard). Dinosaur theory was also used to support the fossil fuel term. And now they control the oil, whoever they are...

Reuel Zaire In ancient times they were called dragons and they are also mentioned in the holy scriptures. The term dinosaur was only created in the mid 19th century and its from the greek deinos(terrible)+sauros(lizard). Dinosaur theory was also used to support the fossil fuel term. And now they control the oil, whoever they are... Sam Clark Dinosaurs existed, they just didn’t go extinct MILLIONS of years ago like mainstream “science” says. They only died out thousands of years ago, which goes hand in hand with the biblical creation account. https://answersingenesis.org/dinosaurs/

However back on Fred Shed's FB page I responded as follows:

Timothy V Reeves ...ahh Fred me ole son! Those Flat Earth web sites are just part of a fake news conspiracy perpetrated by the Illuminati in order to befuddle your thinking and prevent you from grasping science. After all if you don't grasp science it means that you become less of a threat to their rule!

Timothy V Reeves ...What you've got to wrap you head around Fred is that there is big conspiracy to get us to believe in conspiracies. This is called "meta-conspiracy theory". That makes me a meta-conspiracy conspiracy theorist!

Timothy V Reeves ....but some hold the theory that meta-conspiracy theory is itself a conspiracy to stop us believing in conspiracies. But others point out that this can't be true because a meta-conspiracy theorist believes in a conspiracy theory, namely the big meta-conspiracy!

Timothy V Reeves ...hope you got all that Fred .....because I've totally confused myself!

POSTCRIPT

Interestingly, the QAnon conspiracy theorists in the following YouTube video used their conspiracy theory to dismiss the  Flat Earth conspiracy in a way similar to the way I sketched out above!