Conversation

QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID 😷)
@QiaochuYuan
it IS critical thinking. there is NO DIFFERENCE between the mental activity a "conspiracy theorist" is engaging in and the mental activity of making sense of the world that we are all engaging in all the time
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Louisa 🌈👭
@LouisatheLast
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Reading a Reddit AMA with a former Q believer and he had a really insightful thing to say: “Conspiracy theory thinking hooks the brain because it feels like critical thinking.”
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID 😷)
@QiaochuYuan
the world is INSANE. people are INSANE. governments are INSANE. "conspiracy theories" are a COMPLETELY NORMAL response to INSANE states of the world. a frame that positions "conspiracy theories" as wrong by definition is straight up gaslighting and we can do better
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID 😷)
@QiaochuYuan
like... you remember the jeffrey epstein stories right? i know it was a century ago but that shit actually happened! that was incredibly fucked up! god only knows what else like that is going on that will never see the light of day!
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID 😷)
@QiaochuYuan
it is actually *hard* to have true beliefs, it is *so so so hard*, there are *so many things* getting in the way, and one of the biggest is refusing to entertain outrageous hypotheses because they would *seem unreasonable to your ingroup*
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID 😷)
@QiaochuYuan
Replying to
@QiaochuYuan
the inverse of "conspiracy theorists" is "sheeple" and obviously it's not the nicest word but it's pointing at a real phenomenon, a real way in which people *have their minds domesticated*, and it is every bit as harmful as "conspiracy theorizing," the harms are just much quieter
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sasha
@softminus
Replying to
@QiaochuYuan
pretty much every Western/international public health agency pushed (and still push, and openly admit to having done so to manipulate the public) utter lies/fabrications about the lethality/transmissibility/appropriate protective equipment for/origin of the virus. it's fucked up.
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sasha
@softminus
having a moral panic about disinformation or conspiracy theory without addressing the elephant in the room (lying governments and the sycophantic media) is like leaving food trash on the floors and being really angry about the ants that come in. like theres an obvious root cause.
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