essentialsaltes | Entries tagged with nonsense

Plastic, by Scott Guild is a pretty wild idea.

Both a crypto-comedic dystopian fantasy [definitely that] and a deadly serious dissection of our own farcical pre-apocalypse [not sure it's quite that], Scott Guild’s debut novel is an achingly beautiful, disarmingly welcoming, and fabulously inventive look at the hollow core of modern American society—and a guide to how we might reanimate all its broken plastic pieces.

Hard to summarize, but in this universe, people are essentially animate Barbie dolls -- hollow and plastic. Rather than living in a Barbie world, theirs is a bit darker, with eco-terrorists carrying out deadly attacks to draw attention to the "heat leap", the analogue of global warming caused in this case by using chicken bones as fuel (as we might use plastic doll oil feedstocks in our own self-created problem). Another odd point of the world is our doll-people speak in a simple caveman-esque diction. Fortunately, our heroine Erin has a rich internal monologue that fleshes (or plastics) out her thoughts in more compelling prose. Enjoyable characters, gonzo presentation. And while I appreciate the farcical/satirical elements, I didn't care for the ending, which just kind of rammed the dial into 11 and crashed the plane rather than trying to attempt a landing.

The Storm is Upon Us, How QAnon became a movement, cult, and conspiracy theory of everything by Mike Rothschild

I picked this up from a Little Free Library. It was published in May 2021, so it tells the story, in journalistic fashion, of the rise of QAnon from its origins to its role in January 6th. Obviously, we've had almost another 4 years of history after that. QAnon has gotten a bit quieter, but in some ways, as soon as it became the theory of everything, now some pieces of that (say election denial) have practically become GOP orthodoxy now. Really useful as a history of the origins and original threads of the movement, but (hey, not it's fault, I'm reading it 3 years too late) not that applicable to the situation now. Has some nice sections with how 'cult' experts think of QAnon, and some material from Mick West about how to pull your friends and loved ones out of the rabbit hole (and how not to).

The Glass Hammer, by KW Jeter, bears the stamp of Jeter's mentor Philip K Dick, both thematically and in a character that seems very much like a stand-in for PKD. There are some thoughtful idea about reality and media scattered throughout the science-fictiony tropes and Dickian paranoia of post-whoops America, psychic computers (or are they?), new religions, and the messiah (or is he?).

A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy

Nancy L. Rosenblum and Russell Muirhead

The book makes the case (pretty well) that what we're seeing now, most notably typified by Trump, but by no means confined to him, is a changing nature of conspiracies in modern political life. And that it is corrosive to democracy and the nation and the very idea of that 'knowledge' and 'expertise' are possible.

The new conspiracism is something different. There is no punctilious demand for proofs,4 no exhaustive amassing of evidence, no dots revealed to form a pattern, no close examination of the operators plotting in the shadows. The new conspiracism dispenses with the burden of explanation. Instead, we have innuendo and verbal gesture: “A lot of people are saying …” Or we have bare assertion: “Rigged!”—a one-word exclamation that evokes fantastic schemes, sinister motives, and the awesome capacity to mobilize three million illegal voters to support Hillary Clinton for president. This is conspiracy without the theory.

For JFK and 9/11 conspiracy theorists, there was always a lot of talk about the evidence. Magic bullets, grassy knolls, the melting point of steel and so on. Now it's just smoke and bluff and bare assertion. Millions of illegal ballots? What's the evidence? At best you get allusions to affidavits that assert millions of illegal ballots. Referencing the claim itself is now tantamount to evidence for the new conspiracists. Obviously, this allows for a free-floating phantasmagoria of fraudulent claims. That lead to people shooting up pizza parlors or storming the Capitol. Anyway, more quotes that resonated with me.

The most striking feature of the new conspiracism is just this—its assault on reality. The new conspiracism strikes at what we think of as truth and the grounds of truth. It strikes at what it means to know something. The new conspiracism seeks to replace evidence, argument, and shared grounds of understanding with convoluted conjurings and bare assertions. Among the threats to democracy, only the new conspiracism does double damage: delegitimation and disorientation.

the new conspiracists call for repeating and spreading their claims—“liking,” tweeting, and forwarding. Repetition takes the place of organized political action. What Trump, for instance, wants is not the architecture of an organized political party or even an organized movement but a throng that assents to his account of reality. “You know what’s important,” he said about his fantasy of illegal Clinton votes, “millions of people agree with me when I say that. Affirmation of his reality is the key act

Representative Bryan Zollinger perfectly capture the ethos of true-enoughness in his suggestion that the Democratic Party might very well have brought white nationalists to Charlottesville in 2017 to create a violent clash: “I am not saying it is true, but I am suggesting that it is completely plausible.” The new conspiracism sets a low bar: if one cannot be certain that a belief is entirely false, with the emphasis on entirely, then it might be true—and that’s true enough.

When it comes to true enough, what matters is not evidence but repetition. Participation in conspiracist social networks triggers assent. Echoing, repeating, sharing, liking, and forwarding a conspiracist claim is a show of affiliation with others who are angry and confident that things are not as they seem. Conspiracist narratives refresh these passions by reminding members of the group of what they feel with renewed energy.

modern democracy depends on expert knowledge. This comes to bear especially in what has come to be called the administrative state, which comprises the myriad agencies staffed by career professionals who rely on specialized knowledge they create or draw on from research institutions and from civil society groups outside government. This is the basis for formulating, implementing, and enforcing public policy touching everything from safe water to consumer protection to interest rates and banking rules. These scientists, statisticians, economists, and ethicists are not elected; they are insulated to a reasonable extent from political controversies and partisan influence. They are “disinterested” as a matter of professional discipline and seek to apply impartial standards in the general interest.

These experts, of course, are the focus of a lot of the ire of the conspiracy-minded. Climate scientists, Dr. Fauci, our intelligence agencies, ivory tower academics

It turns out that conspiracist claims are easy to create, and easy for officials to embellish, endorse, or just allow to play out. What lies behind complicity by insinuation, equivocation, or silence? As we detail in chapter 7, representatives are vulnerable to angry constituents who subscribe to conspiracy. When reelection is in jeopardy, or an official is haunted by the specter of a potential primary challenge, silence or coy encouragement seems a safer posture than correcting the record and offending one’s supporters.

Closed to the world of shared understanding, conspiracism distorts what it means to know something. At a deeper level, the new conspiracists claim to own reality, and in doing so, they assault our common sense of reality. We experience a special form of anxiety and disorientation. We have been unwillingly drafted into a contest over who owns reality.

if the community in which we place our trust gets it wrong or is corrupt, then what we take to be knowledge may be unjustified and erroneous. Some put their trust in a community of scientists and public health officials who affirm that vaccines do not cause autism; others put their trust in an internet community of anonymous conspiracists who affirm that Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman is running an international child sex-trafficking ring out of a pizzeria. What is the difference? At the level of the individual who gets his or her knowledge from others, there is not much difference.

The difference is found at another level, in the characteristics that define the community whose authority we accept on trust. In one case, these communities are defined by their commitment to publicize the evidence on which their conclusions are based, and thus to subject them to the scrutiny of others. In the other case, the community is defined by access to private knowledge that is unsharable,

When we decide what community is worthy of epistemic trust, we are implicitly also deciding what it means to know something.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/973812.html

subtitled: Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience

I was maybe suckered too much by the subtitle, hoping for some good hulk smash of nonsense, and didn't read the fine print before buying. McIntyre is a philosopher of science, and so much of the book is more about not-solving the demarcation problem, i.e. how do you tell science from nonscience. In the main, I'm sympathetic to his treatment. It's just not a question that keeps me up at night.

As much as I've seen creationists and other pseudoscientists approvingly quoting Popper and Kuhn, I'm glad McIntyre craps on both of them. Or at least craps on Popper and what people generally think Kuhn said.

I say he not-solves the problem, because he doesn't find a 1-to-1 definition that would include all science and exclude all non-science. And I agree with him that this is probably a fools errand.

But he does find something to help, what he calls "The Scientific Attitude", and this is something that is found in science (but not exclusively in science). So one might be able to bake cakes with the scientific attitude, but that doesn't necessarily make baking a science. On the other hand, if you can show that a creationist is NOT adopting the scientific attitude, then we know that her version of creationism is not science.

In brief, phrasing things somewhat my own way, if you're doing science, then the ultimate decider is the universe. The scientific attitude is to be humble in the face of empirical data. If the data slays your theory, the scientific attitude is to take it with good grace, and modify your opinions and ideas, rather than trying to modify the data (fraud) or ignore the data (denialism) or play pigeon chess (pseudoscience).

He addresses how economics and the other social sciences could make better use of the scientific attitude (without having to become particle physics in the process). This is probably the most thought-provoking chapter of the book.

And he does hulk smash some stupidity, which is always agreeable.

Crossposts: https://essentialsaltes.livejournal.com/968124.html

How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect

Mick West helped found the videogame company Neversoft, and after Tony Hawk's Pro Skater made him a bajillionaire, he could turn his time to more important things, like fighting conspiracies about chemtrails on the internet.

The book is intended as a real How-To guide in helping someone out conspiracy theories. It's a little idiosyncratic (in a good way) in that it is really intended as a guide for you to use on "your friend". West literally crafts this as how to help a close friend or loved one, so it's more intended that way instead of dealing with random people on the internet (though that's where many of his ideas were honed).

In the briefest sense, his advice is to foster honesty and respect -- understand that just as you know what's true and want to convince your friend to discard his false ideas, your friend also knows (or thinks he knows) what's true and wants to convince you to discard your false ideas. So just standing on I'm right and you're wrong doesn't get you anywhere. He suggests fostering more discussion where you explore the matter together and then...

Stick to the facts. Find something key to your friend's worldview that you can address in black and white.

One of the excellent details in the book are a few personal stories from people who have put their conspiracy theories aside and they describe how it happened to them. Or at least to move where they are on the conspiratorial scale.

My personal interest in not so much in conspiracy theories, per se, but scientific nonsense and political 'fake news'. But obviously there is a lot of overlap. If 9/11 was a conspiracy carried out by George W Bush, that has political overtones. If the schools are indoctrinating children with EVILution, and fluoridating their brains, or vaccinating them with poisons, there's a scientific conspiracy afoot. So I think the techniques and insights in West's book can easily apply to related situations.

Escapes by sudden realization come only after a build-up of new information that is initially strongly resisted. While they are learning new things, they are rejecting those things as false disinformation. Eventually their knowledge of the evidence against their theory builds up and leads to a more sudden realization they were wrong, a breaking of the dam, and a rapid movement over their own demarcation line. But there’s a single prime mover here in both routes: exposure to new information. Conspiracy theorists flourish in walled gardens. When asked where they get their news they will often point only to alternative fringe sites like Alex Jones’ Infowars, or more esoteric conspiracy theory sites like Rense.com, or even David Icke’s reptilian Illuminati related news.

Something I see on occasion in the creation/evolution battles is that a creationist has finally decided to accept the gauntlet. He's going to defeat evolution using the power of science by studying science the honest way and showing where the mistakes are. Most creationists are happy to play it safe and just listen to the professional creationists who just feed them what they want to hear. But these brave souls who venture into science expose themselves to new information, and sometimes the dam breaks. A recent case involving a former creationist now astronomer has been making the rounds. So in my own involvement in these debates online, I try to help spread information and facts, hoping to be part of the solution for some of them. Most of the frequent participants are pretty set in their ways. West sees that as well, but sometimes there's still hope:

There’s some people you definitely cannot get through to, there’s just too much ego, too many Thanksgiving dinners they have invested in. There was one guy I was just explaining how claims have counterclaims, and there was this great process of critical thinking. I had been showing him the NIST 9/11 slides and he realized he was wrong at that moment. This guy just started screaming. It stuck in his head that he would have to go back to his family and explain that he was incorrect. He almost had a nervous breakdown.

Although he's ultimately hopeful, he sees a lot of dangers in the online world. First off... YouTube:

Sometimes they watch the same video over and over again. You get the sense from talking to them that it’s something like a drug, that the “truth” they feel is in the video is activating some kind of function in their brain, resonating with them
...
The data-driven algorithm has evolved to recognize that the way to get people to watch more videos is to direct them downhill, down the path of least resistance. Without human intervention the algorithm has evolved to perfect a method of gently stepping up the intensity of the conspiracy videos that it shows you so that you don’t get turned off, and so you continue to watch. They get more intense because the algorithm has found (not in any human sense, but found nonetheless) that the deeper it can guide people down the rabbit hole, the more revenue it can make.

Obviously, we've seen a lot of false propaganda being spread as facts recently, and West thinks it will get worse as AI improves and fake people and bots start to spread more and more disinformation. We've seen just this week how some crudely slowed video of Nancy Pelosi can be used to suggest she's drunk, and you'll get a retweet from the President. Imagine how things will get when 'deep fakes' become possible. Seeing is believing, they say, but it will become more and more important to source your photo and video evidence.

Or am I just being paranoid? [Cue Twilight Zone music]