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A new Bigfoot documentary helps explain our conspiracy-minded era

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Re: A new Bigfoot documentary helps explain our conspiracy-minded era

#71

Post by AnthonyMouse »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #69
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not actually how the measles thing happens. What really happens is that the one nutter stands in the town square ranting about lizardmen and 99.99% of people ignore him, or an actual scientist gets bored and challenges him to a debate and then lizardmen guy gets trounced and further discredited, and everything is fine. Until someone with an authoritarian streak gets tired of winning debates with lizardmen guy…

> That's not actually how the measles thing happens. > What really happens is that the one nutter stands in the town square ranting about lizardmen and 99.99% of people ignore him, or an actual scientist gets bored and challenges him to a debate and then lizardmen guy gets trounced and further discredited, and everything is fine. My observation (in Germany) is rather that many antivaxxer (and sceptics of forced measl…

So there are two separate issues here.

One is the "do vaccines cause autism" sort of thing, which, basically, they don't, but there are a lot of wrong people who think they do for bad reasons. That's the thing where if you try to censor things you're screwing yourself by creating the breeding ground for bad conspiracy theories. And how you get enough people refusing vaccines for bad reasons to cause problems etc.

Then there's the policy debate on whether vaccines should be mandatory, where people can make some pretty non-crazy arguments that they shouldn't be. Or the question of whether a specific person in a specific circumstance should get a specific vaccine, to which a reasonable answer could occasionally be no. But the people making those arguments aren't even necessarily wrong and having them push back on something when they have a reason to push back on it is perfectly legitimate and the people wanting to stop them are the baddies.

Re: A new Bigfoot documentary helps explain our conspiracy-minded era

#72

Post by rob74 »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #69
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not actually how the measles thing happens. What really happens is that the one nutter stands in the town square ranting about lizardmen and 99.99% of people ignore him, or an actual scientist gets bored and challenges him to a debate and then lizardmen guy gets trounced and further discredited, and everything is fine. Until someone with an authoritarian streak gets tired of winning debates with lizardmen guy…

> That's not actually how the measles thing happens. > What really happens is that the one nutter stands in the town square ranting about lizardmen and 99.99% of people ignore him, or an actual scientist gets bored and challenges him to a debate and then lizardmen guy gets trounced and further discredited, and everything is fine. My observation (in Germany) is rather that many antivaxxer (and sceptics of forced measl…

Those "well-read antivaxxers" are the same as e.g. people with a fear of flying: they spend too much time looking at extremely rare catastrophic outcomes (dying or being seriously injured because of a plane crash or a vaccine side effect) and then think that it will surely happen to them or their children. The only difference is just that when someone who's afraid of flying doesn't take a plane, it only affects very few people (if that), whereas lowering herd immunity affects us all.

The difference between yesteryear, when everyone ignored the nutter ranting about lizardmen in the town square, and today is that the nutters can now find company and reinforcement for their beliefs thanks to the Internet. And ultimately it leads to people like Elon Musk getting high on their own supply of toxic disinformation and causing the death of thousands of people by shutting down USAID because they believe some far-right nutter on X more than what "the establishment" has been saying for decades...

Re: A new Bigfoot documentary helps explain our conspiracy-minded era

#73

Post by qsera »

rob74 wrote: post #72
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's not actually how the measles thing happens. > What really happens is that the one nutter stands in the town square ranting about lizardmen and 99.99% of people ignore him, or an actual scientist gets bored and challenges him to a debate and then lizardmen guy gets trounced and further discredited, and everything is fine. My observation (in Germany) is rather that many antivaxxer (and sceptics of forced measl…

Those "well-read antivaxxers" are the same as e.g. people with a fear of flying: they spend too much time looking at extremely rare catastrophic outcomes (dying or being seriously injured because of a plane crash or a vaccine side effect) and then think that it will surely happen to them or their children. The only difference is just that when someone who's afraid of flying doesn't take a plane, it only affects very…

> a fear of flying..

Flying is safe, but I think it is not because some rules/regulations or due to "science".

A plane falling out of sky is a pretty big event and cannot be suppressed or silenced. It affects a large number of people at once. If planes starts to fall out of sky often, then the commercial aviation will come to a halt in a month. Given this eventuality, if you want to make money by flying people, it in imperative that there is no other way than to * do everything possible to make sure* planes don't fall from the sky.

If planes could fall out of sky without everyone knowing about it (For example, imagine that when a plane crashes, instead of killing the passengers right away, they only get hit after a month or so, and it is hard to link the deaths with the flight they took a month before), and affecting their business, then I bet that flying will no longer be very safe as companies will start cutting expenses with maintenance etc and paying off regulators/inspectors..

Re: A new Bigfoot documentary helps explain our conspiracy-minded era

#74

Post by rob74 »

qsera wrote: post #73
rob74 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those "well-read antivaxxers" are the same as e.g. people with a fear of flying: they spend too much time looking at extremely rare catastrophic outcomes (dying or being seriously injured because of a plane crash or a vaccine side effect) and then think that it will surely happen to them or their children. The only difference is just that when someone who's afraid of flying doesn't take a plane, it only affects very…

> a fear of flying.. Flying is safe, but I think it is not because some rules/regulations or due to "science". A plane falling out of sky is a pretty big event and cannot be suppressed or silenced. It affects a large number of people at once. If planes starts to fall out of sky often, then the commercial aviation will come to a halt in a month. Given this eventuality, if you want to make money by flying people, it in…

A stock market crash is also a pretty big event that cannot be suppressed or silenced, but they still happen regularly. The sad truth is that people (and companies) are greedy and will gladly cut corners with safety if it means making more money. So regulations (and enforcement of those regulations) are needed to prevent a race to the bottom that will eventually lead to a crash. Coming back to aviation, you only have to look at countries like Nepal (https://kathmandupost.com/money/2025/11/10/nepali-sky-remain...) to see what happens when there are no regulations, or regulations are not enforced.

Re: A new Bigfoot documentary helps explain our conspiracy-minded era

#75

Post by ourmandave »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #71
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's not actually how the measles thing happens. > What really happens is that the one nutter stands in the town square ranting about lizardmen and 99.99% of people ignore him, or an actual scientist gets bored and challenges him to a debate and then lizardmen guy gets trounced and further discredited, and everything is fine. My observation (in Germany) is rather that many antivaxxer (and sceptics of forced measl…

So there are two separate issues here. One is the "do vaccines cause autism" sort of thing, which, basically, they don't, but there are a lot of wrong people who think they do for bad reasons. That's the thing where if you try to censor things you're screwing yourself by creating the breeding ground for bad conspiracy theories. And how you get enough people refusing vaccines for bad reasons to cause problems etc. The…

In the "do vaccines cause autism" sort of thing, they don't.

But then frauds like Wakefield somehow got a bullshit paper published saying they do and it's off to the toon races.

The paper wasn't censored, it was disproven by multiple studies and discredited by investigation. The Wakefield paper studied 12 children (multiple who had siblings with autism) and was funded by lawyers suing the vaccine companies at the time.

Today Wakefield is on the anti-vax circuit giving talks and continuing to lie.

Measles is a Solved Problem. Polio is a Solved Problem.

But the toons are running the Fed now, canceling science and telling lies. So we'll have to wait until 2028 to get a final death count, assuming anyone is still tracking it.

Re: A new Bigfoot documentary helps explain our conspiracy-minded era

#76

Post by lowdownbutter »

jibal wrote: post #46
mikert89 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wild to think Q anon could have been truth mixed with wild fiction to throw people off. Thats really only something I thought happened in movies, or novels. I'm willing to believe alot more than i ever thought I would

> I'm willing to believe Well there you have it. That has nothing to do with truth, only an emotional inclination. For instance, you are strongly inclined to believe the claims in the comment you responded to, despite it being almost entirely BS.

What do you believe? The news?

Re: A new Bigfoot documentary helps explain our conspiracy-minded era

#77

Post by GJim »

Braxton1980 wrote: post #16
adzm wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the comments on that video to see how many conclude the opposite!

Is the number of people high enough to make them right? For example if one doctor says I have cancer but 100 electricians say I don't I'm cancer free

> Is the number of people high enough to make them right?

The term you are looking for is 'an argument to popularity'. It's one of many such logical fallacies.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Logical_fallacy

Re: A new Bigfoot documentary helps explain our conspiracy-minded era

#78

Post by qsera »

rob74 wrote: post #74
qsera wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a fear of flying.. Flying is safe, but I think it is not because some rules/regulations or due to "science". A plane falling out of sky is a pretty big event and cannot be suppressed or silenced. It affects a large number of people at once. If planes starts to fall out of sky often, then the commercial aviation will come to a halt in a month. Given this eventuality, if you want to make money by flying people, it in…

A stock market crash is also a pretty big event that cannot be suppressed or silenced, but they still happen regularly. The sad truth is that people (and companies) are greedy and will gladly cut corners with safety if it means making more money. So regulations (and enforcement of those regulations) are needed to prevent a race to the bottom that will eventually lead to a crash. Coming back to aviation, you only have…

>A stock market crash is also a pretty big event that cannot be suppressed or silenced, but they still happen regularly.

I don't see the connection. Are you implying that it should have stopped people from investing?

Re: A new Bigfoot documentary helps explain our conspiracy-minded era

#79

Post by GJim »

scoot wrote: post #12
garciasn wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? Because plenty of other hoax-based bullshit, like Flat Earth Conspiracy Theorists and those who believe that the Earth is only 6,000 years old continue on in their bubbles regardless of how much evidence is provided to the contrary.

I've always assumed that committed conspiracy theorists are just trolls rolling with it (because nobody could be so stupid as to actually believe in the conspiracy's premise). So no amount of evidence is going to "convince" them, because they already know the truth, and don't care. But then perhaps over time, they somehow attracted people who genuinely are that stupid, and uncritically believe? That demographic is ob…

> I've always assumed that committed conspiracy theorists are just trolls rolling with it

As a schoolkid, our physics teacher was a flat earther. He drove us kids mad arguing with him that the earth is spherical.

Canny bloke.

Re: A new Bigfoot documentary helps explain our conspiracy-minded era

#80

Post by stevenhuang »

heavyset_go wrote: post #32
mikert89 wrote: post #18

I used to look down on conspiracy theories, now I think many are actually true, or are mixed with truth. Its really unlikely that a theory circulates widely but has no basis in reality

Popular conspiracy theories are psyops to either discredit people, movements or ideas The government spent a lot of time and energy pumping up UFO conspiracy theories to hide sightings of classified aircraft, and they're getting pumped up again in the age of developing cheap weaponized drones. I would not be surprised that the whole human sex trafficking and Qanon related conspiracy theories are also psyops to hide w…

Oh there is truth behind the phenomenon of UFOs. Public perception is changing but many still understandably view this topic as conspiracy. This won't be the case for long.

Checkout this recently made documentary on the Phoenix lights https://youtu.be/7y1XhyTe4Zs

Note that ridicule as way to discredit sightings of classified craft was the purpose of project blue book. Don't let a good disaster go to waste etc.

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