Philosophy Now Forum

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: ↑Sat Jan 13, 2024 4:47 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Jan 13, 2024 4:27 am
The fact that the least-overreacting countries had the best results is pretty good "scientific" evidence, too.

Please show your evidence for that.

Click the link.

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: ↑Sat Jan 13, 2024 4:47 am Please don't insult my intelligence with hindsight 'knowledge'.

"Hindsight" just means "now we know the truth."

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Jan 13, 2024 4:50 am

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: ↑Sat Jan 13, 2024 4:47 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Jan 13, 2024 4:27 am
The fact that the least-overreacting countries had the best results is pretty good "scientific" evidence, too.

Please show your evidence for that.

Click the link.

That link is just weird. What is it even saying??

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: ↑Sat Jan 13, 2024 4:56 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Jan 13, 2024 4:50 am

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: ↑Sat Jan 13, 2024 4:47 am

Please show your evidence for that.

Click the link.

That link is just weird. What is it even saying??

Reading is something one has to do for oneself.

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: ↑Sat Jan 13, 2024 4:56 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Jan 13, 2024 4:50 am

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: ↑Sat Jan 13, 2024 4:47 am

Please show your evidence for that.

Click the link.

That link is just weird. What is it even saying??

It's a long rambling article which offers no specific conclusion. The writer, as per final paragraph, explicitly states regarding lockdowns Whether or not they are sound is an important empirical question, which deserves more study.

He at least gives it some doubt as to what would have been more feasible. What it relates are simply his opinions; nothing more. It doesn't endorse the idea that the whole thing was nothing more than a scam, an attempt to shut down the world.

Why it was presented as proof or its probability, I have no idea.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Jan 13, 2024 4:27 am know now that the whole thing was a scam.

What was the reason for this "scam" that most of the world participated in?

Harbal wrote: ↑Sat Jan 13, 2024 9:36 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Jan 13, 2024 4:27 am know now that the whole thing was a scam.

What was the reason for this "scam" that most of the world participated in?

To inconvenience IC and Henry.

The Grumpy (now fangèd) Grampa has fully charged his rhetorical wheelchair and plows-over the local denizens. Up and down the forum passages he has raced bonking aside all who mildly peep against him!

Meanwhile, the terrifying Grouchy Grandmama, our moral savior, maintains her verbal barrage against the supporters of demonic baby-bakers and those Hamas enthusiasts with necklaces of baby-heads ripped from raped kibbutz mothers.

Get some rest this weekend you Terrible Two as the world-stage lights up! There will be much ground to cover next week as Hashem lowers the historical boom and heats the pot in which we all swim …

Harbal wrote: ↑Sat Jan 13, 2024 9:36 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Jan 13, 2024 4:27 am know now that the whole thing was a scam.

What was the reason for this "scam" that most of the world participated in?

Those events occurring in the world today, all require interpretation. The flooding of Europe and the US with immigrants for example, are seem by some factions as engineered events by “elites” who have the power to run the show. Examine each hot-button issue (referred to as conspiracy theories) and you will find interpretation.

The pandemic, though a real thing, is seen by some as a plandemic for ulterior purposes related to wide-scale political and social control. Not that the virus was not contagious, and deadly for some, but that its advent dovetailed with other semi-totalitarian (authoritarian) projects. Thus it became a vast control-scheme which, for powerful elites directing the world, they employed to their advantage. The big players have big plans ….

Now this is all interpretation. Hermeneutics. It could have elements of truth but it certainly has elements of paranoid phantasy. Paranoid phantasy is so rampant that it overpowers sound, reasoned analysis.

See A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America by Michael Barkun. In an intensely religious and post-religious culture like America, different strains of theory get blended: lizard-rulers, space aliens, the Return of Jesus. It is paranoid and fantastic, but interpretive. People without power, and without a capacity to see the world realistically, fall prey to wild & whirling tales that seem to them plausible because they seem to explain incomprehensible events.

Interpretation is power — especially for the powerless.

But, the manipulation of pandemic events by government and Big Pharma is not to be glossed over.

And remember: the world is now at war: but forth and fifth generation warfare that involves the manipulation of conceptual models. It’s bound to get much much weirder.

See Chapters 9-12 of The 10-Week Email Course and also grab a Metaphysical Protector Ring (US $99.00) which I highly recommend in these troubled times. (One for each hand is best.)

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sat Jan 13, 2024 3:23 pm

Harbal wrote: ↑Sat Jan 13, 2024 9:36 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Jan 13, 2024 4:27 am know now that the whole thing was a scam.

What was the reason for this "scam" that most of the world participated in?

Those events occurring in the world today, all require interpretation. The flooding of Europe and the US with immigrants for example, are seem by some factions as engineered events by “elites” who have the power to run the show. Examine each hot-button issue (referred to as conspiracy theories) and you will find interpretation.

Conspiracy theories start with the deliberate propagation of misinformation by movements such as QAnon. Someone has an agenda, and manipulating as many people as possible by feeding them lies is part of a strategy to further it; this much is obvious. In whose interests is it for people to believe the Covid conspiracy theory, and what could the nature of those interests possibly be? This is what puzzles me. Maybe I'm looking for something that isn't there; perhaps the purpose is to create social disorder merely for its own sake.

Harbal wrote: ↑Sat Jan 13, 2024 9:36 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Jan 13, 2024 4:27 am know now that the whole thing was a scam.

What was the reason for this "scam" that most of the world participated in?

Well, THAT it was a scam is beyond question. If it had been the real deal, we'd all be social-distancing, masking and vaxxing to this day. But we aren't: and even the most ardent advocates of the COVID crisis aren't doing it now; nor are they still trying to sell their old story that COVID 19 is a "pandemic" or some kind of impending plague of Biblical proportions. We've all changed our tune. And that proves conclusively we all know now we were wrong.

But WHY? Why did it get started, and why get the overblown reception it did? Was the worldwide health infrastructure just that incompetent? Were the politicians all just stampeded into panic at the first sniffle of a bad cold? I don't think either of those things sounds right. So there were other reasons; and I have ideas about what they might have been, as do many others...but nothing we can prove beyond all possibility of doubt.

However, none of that is really to the present topic, so it should probably be moved to a thread about COVID, shouldn't it?

Conspiracy theories start with the deliberate propagation of misinformation by movements such as QAnon. Someone has an agenda, and manipulating as many people as possible by feeding them lies is part of a strategy to further it; this much is obvious. In whose interests is it for people to believe the Covid conspiracy theory, and what could the nature of those interests possibly be? This is what puzzles me. Maybe I'm looking for something that isn't there; perhaps the purpose is to create social disorder merely for its own sake.

Conspiracy theories don't require lies. They merely require attributing reasons for events to individuals or groups with some particular intent. These reasons may be correct or incorrect.

Lies are ancillary.

Harbal wrote: ↑Sat Jan 13, 2024 4:26 pm
Conspiracy theories start with the deliberate propagation of misinformation by movements such as QAnon. Someone has an agenda, and manipulating as many people as possible by feeding them lies is part of a strategy to further it; this much is obvious. In whose interests is it for people to believe the Covid conspiracy theory, and what could the nature of those interests possibly be? This is what puzzles me. Maybe I'm looking for something that isn't there; perhaps the purpose is to create social disorder merely for its own sake.

“Conspiracy theory” is a deprecatory term for those who interpreted the Kennedy assassination as a multi-person hit-job.

But we actually live in a world of conspiracies. That is, arrangements made outside of the public eye and kept hidden from the public (or other governments).

“The nature of those interests”? Monetary gain, power, political domination. Go back and read your Machiavelli.

The pandemic was real, no doubt. But it is said to have been used by political elites for a range of other purposes.

9/11 was real, however the Patriot Act was created for many other ulterior purposes: the advance of the American Century project (American domination in the third millennium).

(Seems to be working out differently but “of mice and men” et cetera et cetera.)

phyllo wrote: ↑Sat Jan 13, 2024 5:19 pm

Conspiracy theories start with the deliberate propagation of misinformation by movements such as QAnon. Someone has an agenda, and manipulating as many people as possible by feeding them lies is part of a strategy to further it; this much is obvious. In whose interests is it for people to believe the Covid conspiracy theory, and what could the nature of those interests possibly be? This is what puzzles me. Maybe I'm looking for something that isn't there; perhaps the purpose is to create social disorder merely for its own sake.

Conspiracy theories don't require lies. They merely require attributing reasons for events to individuals or groups with some particular intent. These reasons may be correct or incorrect.

Lies are ancillary.

We also have a new phenomenon today: the use of the phrase "conspiracy theory" to damn any criticism before the actual reasons for it can be produced. The term "conspiracy theory" has now become a tool of obscurantism by the mass media, just as "disinformation" has become the excuse for silencing dissent in other areas. In both cases, the point is to shut down the critique before it can even begin, and discredit the discussion before it can be had, without having to justify the silencing or censorship beyond that it's preventing a theory allegedly already known to be hair-brained to be aired.

Example: The fact of Joe Biden's cognitive decline has been abundant and impossible not to recognize. Let's face it: at this point, not just Republicans but Democrats too are very apprehensive about Biden's possible re-election. And a rudimentary cognitive test performed on Biden would show whether or not such anxiety was even remotely justified...but the Democrats will not allow such a test to be made, or made public.

Did the Democrats know, during the last election, that they were putting up a cognitively impared candidate? Of course they did. We all knew. We just had to see the man on TV for five minutes, and every one of us could see there was something badly wrong with the guy. However, that has not at all stopped the defenders of that choice from claiming any statement about Biden's incompetence is a "conspiracy theory." And that speaks to just how extreme the weaponized use of the term has become -- it's used to prevent a public discussion of the most powerful man in the world's mental competence, even when every last one of us knows he's got a problem.

That's a fair bit of power for a propagandistic term to have, isn't it?

Harbal wrote: ↑Sat Jan 13, 2024 4:08 amWhy do you think they did it, henry? Why do you think governments all round the world put massive holes in their economies by taking measures that were completely unnecessary?

Let me rephrase your question...

Why did thousands of mediocre men, elected and appointed, adopt asinine public heath policies that ultimately did nuthin' to stop the spread and severity of a cold virus and gave economies a thumping?

Becuz these gray lil men, these glib puppets, these mediocre used car salesmen don't know what they're doin'. They each are gifted with extraordinary authority and outside of the purely pedestrian applications of that power, they have no clue what to do with it. They're told a biological disaster is just around the corner by folks who mostly don't know what they're doing either and they flail about lookin' for fixes.

There's corruption and agenda in there as well, but mostly, bottomline, it's incompetence.

I know you expected a rant about lizard people from Planet X or extra-dimensional demons or The Devil or Corporate Cabals or sumthin' worthy of tinfoil whackadoodlism, and, from time to time, I entertain such notions, but, as I understand things, shit happens not as result of world-girdling EVIL conspiracies but becuz dumbasses up and down the line fuck up and then fuck up more trying to save face.