Detecting B.S.

"I Am A Golden God!"

Well this is an important skill to have. If you're into conspiracy theories, this will definitely make you no longer into conspiracy theories. If you learn the following you’ll never fall for a con like ‘masks are bad’ and kill people with your ignorance:

You can just forget about everything in this page if you care about what other people think. Richard Feynman wrote a great book about this, and Ayn Rand wrote several. You want to become an idiot real fast? Care even a little bit too much about what other people think. We are not a smart species, but we're a hundred times worse in big groupthink groups. Doubt it? Take a look around you.
The biggest problem with truth is that it is hard and often impossible to truly find it. Usually you have to settle for 'this is as close as it gets to the truth, for now, until something disproves this really good educated guess of mine.' On the other hand, bullshit is easy to find, easy to create, sounds good, feels good, seemingly doesn't take any effort to deal with, and is a great way of controlling huge sections of the population. As Hitler said, "Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it." Also note this guy practiced in front of a mirror for hours to get the right emotional impact from his acting. This can easily be seen in a large crowd at a protest with some guy that has a bullhorn. He can say anything he wants, such as "Rice is bad for you!" and if he's charismatic enough, soon he might have the crowd chanting it repeatedly. Try it yourself if you don't believe me. See what happens.
The second biggest problem with truth is that lies are so much easier to propagate. It's really easy to lie, and even easier to keep a lie going, and soon enough everyone is saying it and re-perpetuating what seems like truth because "everyone says so." But it's really difficult to disprove a lie. Since this often flusters the victims of slander, a good liar often uses the victim's confusion as further "proof" of whatever they are trying to lie about. And the very best liars are so good at it that they've even convinced themselves.
One very-often-used technique that any Witch can tell is being used right off the bat is attempting to lull a crowd into a trance. Witches induce these for spiritual rituals on themselves, usually to heal traumas and improve self-esteem. It's much like self-hypnosis. Here's how it's done to a crowd. First you have to talk about some innocuous subject to pretend it is a normal speech. Then, you have to use the kind of rhetoric and persuasion, with much acting, vocal intonation, and presentation, to induce a specific emotional state in the audience. Don't inform; entertain. Keep it simple and as emotional as possible. Essentially, make that crowd into toddlers again mentally speaking; dumb down everything to the lowest common denominator.* You have to pretend to them that you have all the answers too, and that you're some kind of god. If you can add things like incense, music, chanting, impressive grand theater/ritualistic crap, beautiful or colorful visuals (especially with colors carefully chosen for psychological impact) and call-and-response stuff, that's even better; you want to induce an ecstatic state where the viewers feel they are part of something greater than themselves aka not thinking independently. The more people the better; peer pressure makes it more likely the outliers will fall in. Moving in unison is good to unify a crowd as well. You want them to feel, not think; you want them drugged. And if you're a real asshole like the former guy, you want them to feel as strongly as possible in order to be their Dear Leader, and you don't give a damn what they feel so long as it's overwhelming = terror, inadequacy, brotherhood, hate, loneliness, desperation, hope. Above all, you want them to trust you. Once you get them to that point, that is when you give them the affirmations and suggestions, things like 'Mexicans are bad' or 'they'll take our jobs,' using as much imagery in language as possible to make the charade you're pulling on them seem "real." Use a carrot and stick approach: the bad guys are bad, but we have the solution. (incidentally, this is how drug pushers operate). Above all you want to make the audience feel good so they keep coming back for more and so you can keep poisoning their minds for your own gain. You can also use this for specific purposes, such as to force a person to associate one seemingly unrelated thing with another (i.e. Mexicans associated with bean shortages in New Mexico) for whatever political purposes you want (i.e. you want to cover up how many beans you stole in New Mexico for your fast food franchise). (Scapegoats are really handy for this.) A person in a trance state cannot think clearly, but they damn well take suggestions to heart - and all without a single shred of independent thought, because while in a state like this, you aren't filtering things in through conscious thought, you're just going on instinct. Why go to all this trouble? Money, power, personal gain. Some truly persuasive people have mastered all these techniques without even studying the psychology of it, and these people are often high-pressure salespeople for various shitty companies, or they like to womanize, or gold dig. This is also how all politics works because most people have never been taught how to avoid being snookered and in politics, the majority rules. That's a major reason why otherwise wonderful people can suddenly turn to Fascism. You can also induce this trance state via sex, which is why abusive relationships are so damn awful. Once you successfully induce a trance state like this, you've got your audience hooked on your franchise. Brand loyalty. If you have enough of them hooked, you have yourself a cult, and that's great because the cult itself perpetuates the brainwashing and recruitment, doing your work for you. Cults also automatically produce benefits for their members because they desperately want everyone else to stay in the cult so they give everyone in it goodies, again, making it easier for Dear Leader. The more someone loves themselves the less likely they'll fall for this crap but many people hate themselves - and, suggestions to hate yourself are also often neatly packaged as part of the brainwashing deal to ensure that you fall for it. Often this brainwashing only works because it begins so early in childhood that people couldn't consciously decide to agree with it or not. The reason people watch shit news sources all day erryday is because despite how bad it makes them feel, deep down it makes them feel good, and now you've passed drug dealer 101, you're welcome.
I wasn't kidding. The Ten Crack Commandments In plain English Trump follows them all, with the drug he pushes being his own personal brand/cult, except the 'don't mix family and business' rule and the 'don't get high on your own supply' rule and look how well that's worked out for him. Also, take a look at the graphic novel adaptation of The Heroin Diaries if you can find it at a library or buy it. There are a couple scenes where Sixx's dealer convinces him to keep using, and there's a scene where Sixx goes "Behold! Krell!" and then proceeds to convince Axl Rose to snort cocaine before a show. It ends badly.
How do you make a perfect slave? By making a person hate themselves and be their own worst enemy. That way, while they're fighting themselves all the time and being abusive to themselves, they're distracted, and you can exploit them for your own ends. They'll give you all because they don't know who they are or what they want anymore. It also really helps to make them feel absolutely helpless and frustrated, because if they truly believe they're helpless, they won't try to rebel. In the end, they'll internalize all of your programming because of their unhappiness and desperation to make it all go away, making your job easier and then perpetuating the cycle on more innocent victims. Incidentally, this is the kind of indoctrination that happens in public schools, families, political philosophies or parties, and most religions. In schools, it's to "encourage" students to become workaholics with maximum productivity and obedience. In families, it's to force an atmosphere of resource sharing and/or force people to work for each other as slaves because "we're family and that's what family is for, and our 'love' for each other is more important than how badly we mistreat one another." In political parties or philosophies, it's usually to make a minority of people (who know the tricks of manipulating other people) get more power, money, and societal benefits without working for them (history is full of examples). In religions it's to "encourage" plenty of wealth and power either for a central agency or for the members of that religion. And of course in an abusive relationship it's to get money, social status, ego boosts, a free housekeeper or wage earner, and sex. These are not an exhaustive list of all the ways humans enslave their brethren; we often make immature high school cliques complete with Mean Girls pecking order relationships up until the day we're dead. Sociopaths preying on others to succeed is nothing new to our species and it's probably been around since the beginning; we simply haven't restructured society to make the system discourage as opposed to encourage such behavior. Often institutions attempting to enslave vast populations will condone abusive relationships as part of their deal in order to make their bullshit more attractive. When you find something that is making someone hate themselves, always look closely to see who's collecting the benefits. “You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion.” - quote often attributed to L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology (doesn't matter if he actually said it or not if it happens to be true). Certain philosophies are based on the notion of self-hate, couching it in terms of 'selflessness,' 'martyrdom,' 'love for others,' 'humility,' 'egolessness,' 'devotion,' 'loyalty,' and 'heart.' These include Communism, Fascism, and most religions.
Often, a person who has never learned the basics of science or logic literally doesn't have the ability to think in terms of rational reasoning and instead only responds to emotional arguments like the brainwashing listed above. Entire nations have been taught the emotional aka brainwashing method of thinking and none other. It is exceedingly difficult to get through to such a person using logical reasoning, but I hope not impossible. Despite that, in the immediate term if you absolutely have to get through to them RIGHT AWAY, I know of no other effective way besides using the same methods of brainwashing. Or you won't get through at all in time to prevent total disaster. It's disgusting but it's the way it is. Hopefully someone will figure out ways of un-drugging the druggies but until then, unless you have a period of years in which to nurture them back to good mental health (which by the way is much more ethical and healthier for both parties), if you desperately need them to change NOW you're probably stuck trying to use the same methods of drug pushing in order to get them to get the fuck out of that bad situation and get them un-brainwashed. By the way, this is a way lawyers often debate in order to win court cases, because they know the jury is often uneducated and thinks with their emotions.
Here's an explanation of a sick system, which is essentially linked to abuse, cults, and addiction Issendai article. I suggest you read everything psych related on that site.
Some of the arguments floating around these days that people actually believe are about as intelligent as this one so maybe you better not be like that, holy shit
Just watch this. Kill the Prime Minister of Malaysia!
A short list of things that make you really stupid, really fast: hatred, lack of preventative and/or palliative mental health care, not valuing yourself or listening to yourself, lack of mental and general self-care, constantly stewing in some kind of overwhelming emotion while you just keep feeding it and obsessing over it, believing that there's no way you can succumb to stupidity, envy, emotional breakdowns, inertia/resistance to all change even if it's positive, clinging to the same patterns of thinking and lifestyle and belief without ever questioning them or thinking of changing them even a little, having a closed mind, lying to yourself, thinking with certain parts of your anatomy instead of reason, lack of self-knowledge, addictions, refusing to let go of bias, hypocrisy, fearing the truth if it makes you uncomfortable or if it hurts, thinking yourself invincible and then not taking care of yourself despite the inevitable unraveling of one's body and mind, emotional/instinctive instead of logical reasoning, valuing idealism and your own egotistic thought process more than the fruits of experience aka science, narcissism and the resultant arrogance, denial, misguided loyalty, desire to fit in/tribalism, not thinking independently for yourself, the "fuck it, hold my beer" unnecessary risk-taking mentality. Any of these could make you someone's bitch. I've lived them all. It's... uh, not fun?
You should know that there are many medical conditions which cause confusion and/or addle your brains in some other way. It is important to find a really good doctor and a shrink to improve your odds you won't deal with that b.s. more than you have to. Also, drugs, alcohol, and other addictions are absolutely horrible for thinking clearly, and that is not freedom at all. Wandering around from one craving to the next, unable to figure out what's a lie and what's the truth, what kind of life is that? Plus, it makes you more stupider so stop it.
Regarding conspiracy theories: human nature is the biggest one on the planet, starting with your own dark side and negative tendencies especially ignorance and stupidity. After all, so many Qs are putting children at risk of death from coronavirus right now. Self-deception is a heck of a drug and pretending you're a perfect superhero is a recipe for mistakes you can't unmake. Badness exists. Human trafficking, drug cartels, parental child abuse, ritual abuse related to black magic (and probably Satanic ritual abuse in some rare cases), domestic abuse, international crime syndicates - these exist. And obviously despite all the paranoia QAnon isn't doing shit to ensure such abuse never happens again - not a damn thing. No results; just children dead of coronavirus and a pandemic threatening to engulf the US, and the results of literally everything else Q has done has been NEGATIVE, thanks a lot you bastards. Last time I checked civilians did not have the necessary skills to do FBI detective work, and oh boy it shows. Making up make-believe badness only distracts from the real problems and prevents us from solving them. Not to mention wasting your time wallowing in conspiracies and being paranoid... does it actually help anyone or save anything? For real. If you really want to "find the truth," then fucking learn this whole page okay, otherwise YOU ARE A FUCKING SHEEP. Yes, QAnon. YOU.
How do you know what the truth is? Well, there are four major things many people were never taught. 1. If you haven't experienced it yourself, and if a friend you trust with your life hasn't experienced it either, it's suspect. And despite this, you or your friend could still have fooled yourselves or otherwise misunderstood what you experienced. That's still better than taking anything on faith. 2. No matter what you think the truth is, if you cause harm to ANYONE, you better hope they're not innocent and that they actually deserved it or you'll pay the price and 3. Intuition is fallible. Just because something "feels right" or you "just know it is the way it is" doesn't mean it's true or good. Following your pleasure instincts instead of doing what's right can easily kill you or someone else. In particular, emotional arguments - arguments that tug at your heartstrings, such as "I love you, and that is why I am hurting you" - are absolute, utter garbage and should be ignored in favor of logic. See: 12 Angry Men, the movie. 4. The heart and the gut are inferior to the mind when making decisions, especially those intended to keep you or your loved ones safe. Think with your mind, not with your emotions. This is one I learned from experience. Learning formal logic and science is priceless when it comes to beefing up your mind's strength in order to protect you and yours. By all means use emotion as one set of inputs into your decisionmaking, but if you're being yanked around by your feelings without a shred of independent thought or even allowing yourself to make a conscious choice that is truly well considered, you're a slave to your instincts and that never EVER ends well. "But I'm an independent person." Are you really? Being independent means you have to be really and truly alone within your mind. Most people are too scared to even attempt that once, let alone for longer than that. Most notably, herd and family mentality is ingrained in us as a species. It's hard to break out of that but your freedom will not exist without it. Free your mind first and the rest comes later. 5. Constant vigilance to detect and get rid of cognitive dissonance (aka lying to yourself; self-deception) in yourself - "the first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool" - Richard Feynman. Therapy, introspection, and listening to loved ones trying to protect you from yourself are all good tools to help you not pull the wool over your own eyes. Once you have done that and become good at it, only then can you claim to be good at making ethical decisions (in daily life, when voting, when trying to protect the innocent, etc.), because otherwise you won't have a clue due to lack of real-life practice. And worse - if you don't master this, chances are that despite your best intentions you will not be a good person. After all, truth protects people because if you don't know what is going on, you don't have a snowball's chance in hell of changing it for the better (or of properly building projects that require science and math, but I digress).
Another way of learning how to detect truth? Learn how to lie and convince people that your lies are the truth. Debate team in high school is a good way of doing this, as is debating people on anonymous websites. That should teach you how easy it is to concoct utter bullshit and have people believe it's holy speech or something. Learning rhetoric is helpful here because politicians absolutely love the stuff - rhetoric is (unofficial definition I am making up but fits) a bunch of methods used to do your best to persuade people of something that might or might not be true with fancy words that sound good. Rhetoric is the language of the lawyer, the politician, and the snake oil salesman; it is in your best interests to learn it. Marketing is another realm of study worth learning about here since it's essentially rhetoric in audiovisual form; I like to include advertising under the umbrella of marketing. Psychology and sociology are also worth learning here because if you know how people's minds and social networks work, you have power over them - trust me, advertising executives are well aware of this; learn this stuff and take your power back. In fact, you could try to create your own bullshit conspiracy theory out of thin air, put it online, and see if it's disseminated with people actually believing it as fact. Go on. I'll pop the popcorn.
Evidence is a must when trying to determine the truth. What counts as good evidence that can be trusted? Well, the easy answer is nothing. Nothing at all. Be skeptical of everything, especially your own beliefs, ESPECIALLY if you are really attached to them because that curtails both your freedom and your freedom of thought and thus your impartiality (making it too easy to lie to yourself). The harder answer is 'whatever seems to be really going on, but it's still suspect' and the greater the accuracy with which you try to determine what is really going on, the better. You must scrutinize. You must have details. You must probe. Snap judgments that have been made from knee-jerk reactions instead of weighing all the evidence before coming to a decision is a prime example of that old saying, 'to assume makes an ass out of U and Me.' It's the shoot-first-ask-questions-later approach, never a good idea. And it's always good to remember that experiment is one of the best tests of truth - even superior to reason in some cases. So. High quality evidence, from our limited experience as a species thus far, is usually obtained from carefully set up scientific experiments that have been repeated many, many, many times using the scientific method, which have been isolated from complicated crap that could interfere with the experiment and mess up the results, and which have been run with the most highly precise numeric measurements possible, then analyzed with numbers and logic. Okay evidence is simply observation; using the five senses to observe something in person, which is not perfect because even you aren't fully trustworthy; memories can lie, thought patterns change, you might have colorblindness, etc. Mediocre evidence is literally anything anyone else has observed because you can't trust anyone. That includes everything in the news and from the grapevine. And bad evidence is stuff that you aren't sure anyone has experienced at all because it's so full of opinion and bluster that there are no actual claims in it, just opinions. The last one is the most dangerous of all the delusions because if you give someone a claim, they can go check it out to see if it's legit, but if you give someone an opinion, they can't check it out because they have nothing to go on; they can't call the bluff because there is no bluff. So it's really easy to shower people with opinions 24/7 in order to get them to think and behave a certain way. Worse, there are often people and sources that throw "news sources" and "research" at you and when you go to call their bluff by looking into it, THOSE sources don't have any claims either, just more opinion. Typical brainwashing method and often the only way things are taught within families and within certain schools. Who needs evidence when you've got emotions? Many believe that blind belief in getting news/observations from a loved one, a trusted ally, or a companion saves them from excessive work and is practical and I've been guilty of that before, but that is actually a recipe for disaster and way more work to clean up the resultant mess. Break yourself of the habit and you'll see situtions more clearly, more of the time. To make this super clear: beliefs ARE NOT EVIDENCE. No matter how many people believe in it, or how correct it sounds, how convincing its arguers are, or how good it feels, if there is nothing to prove beyond all shadow of a doubt that it is real, it's probably bullshit. And if you care to run this experiment, call this bluff: living a life as closely aligned to truth as possible can over time improve your life by leaps and bounds.
There is a bad tendency in many people, myself included, to discard all information from sources we don't like, or information that comes presented in a way we don't like. This is a nearly worthless tendency because truth doesn't have a side. However, we can easily ignore charlatans that are notorious for lying all the time in order to make a quick buck. The problem is that we often get angry at people who say things we don't like and then close our minds to everything else they are saying despite then missing out on all the truth bombs they lay on us. That closedmindedness might make you live like you're a paranoid geezer by the time you're in your late 20s.
When it comes to certain portions of life that have not yet been explained through rational inquiry and experiment, such as the mysteries of life, death, and spirituality, it is open season for every lie and liar because there's nothing around to conclusively disprove it (yet). Also, people/victims really want to believe in religion, something that gives pleasant answers to life's persistent questions (Guy Noir, Private Eye - please tell me you get that reference) because life is hard etc. In the Pagan community, people claiming messages from the Gods are seen as people spouting Unverified Personal Gnosis (UPG). Be extremely leery of this. Including anything from me. If it can't be proven, it's better not to believe in it. Period. However, this doesn't mean you should necessarily discard it out of hand; it is okay to keep in mind that "it's possible, but not likely." After all, science is the art of being skeptical about everything, including what you think you already know.
Be aware that right now multiple psychological manipulation techniques are being used on vast sections of the population through the news, social media, and general media sources. How do I know? Because large sections of the population are all saying the same thing all at once and claiming they believe it "because they're independent thinkers," and I can trace the sources of their claims to certain news sites, certain social media platforms, and the words of certain people on social media and the news. Yes, this is on both sides of the political spectrum. The real question right now is what are the direct results of such manipulation? Pop popcorn, try to stay out of the emotional minefield, and wait to see a. the results and b. who benefits the most
Possibly the most common way to manipulate someone is to make them react with their emotions and totally bypass their minds so they don't think twice or really think something through, causing people to overlook really important things that come to bite them in the future. Long terms of service and contracts with fine print are really good examples, but being smooth-talked by a high-pressure salesperson is another example. Whenever you are tempted to have a knee-jerk reaction to something, learn to force yourself to slow down and think it through: what are the long term consequences of my actions? If I do this thing now or believe it now, what will the results be in a month, a year, ten years, down the line? One way to train yourself to think longer term than just instant gratification is to play turn-based strategy games, such as chess, or Fire Emblem. Another is to work on your self-discipline for creating long term gains for yourself in various areas of life: fitness, mastery of a skill in your career, mastery of a hobby, ending addictions, etc.
Mental slavery is just as bad as physical slavery. Be on guard to determine if you are mentally reacting in a way that benefits someone else or a way that eliminates your personal freedom. People blindly reacting to external stimuli with knee-jerk reactions without any conscious individual thought and calling it freedom are a good example of what NOT to do.
Always ask yourself "Am I really thinking for myself?" One easy way of doing this is to determine if your thought patterns and beliefs match up with anyone else's, especially if many other people believe the same thing. Groupthink is a major flaw of our species. It's also highly addictive because feeling connected to others makes us humans feel good; so the more depressed or unhappy you are the more attractive it is. So if you believe the same things as your friend group, your country, your culture, your family, or even the rest of humanity, it is suspect! Groupthink might have helped us survive as tribes back in the day, but it also makes us more stupid on the whole and eliminates much personal freedom. More importantly, it is notorious for making you believe in bullshit instead of searching for the truth.
The difference between primary, secondary, and tertiary sources ***This is a major reason why people believe hearsay and confuse it with fact*** Reference.com
Further explanation CRK
Simple explanation: Primary source: you eat a bowl of delicious spaghetti and meatballs at a restaurant. You know it's delicious because you experienced it. Secondary source: you're the friend of the first person eating the spaghetti and meatballs. You ask "How is it?" and they say "Mmmmmm, awesome." You think it's delicious because your friend experienced it. You happen to be a reporter so you report "Person almost has a religious experience enjoying spaghetti and meatballs" and then that comes out in the paper. Tertiary source: a printed guide to the best spaghetti and meatballs restaurants in the town that includes the restaurant where the original person ate it, based on reviews from multiple sources like Google Reviews and Yelp. Perhaps for more publicity or out of a mistaken belief in what they're printing they'd say that some of these restaurants give you religious epiphanies if you eat their spaghetti and meatballs. Not a credible source: say for the purposes of this example that someone made a religion out of your experience eating your food Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster Zero sources: someone claims "I am a prophet of God because I am privy to higher information than you, only it's not the commonly worshipped God that's the true God but my dog, now give me dog biscuits"
Finding Trustworthy Sources Article for finding good sources for academic writing. Bear in mind that no sources are truly trustworthy, not even your own perceptions sometimes, but sources that are objectively closer to the truth are far better than sources that claim they are "perfectly truthful" while lying through their teeth.
Logical Fallacies
Science
Logic
Coming soon: Statistics. Mark Twain once said "There are three kinds of lies. Lies, damn lies, and statistics." But you won't be hoodwinked, not if you know statistics.
Correlation versus Causation is something to keep in mind. Correlation means something associated with something else. Causation means something directly caused something else. Therefore, just because something is correlated with (associated with) something else does not mean it caused that, or even necessarily has anything to do with, that something else.
Introduction to Rhetoric and Rhetorical Devices Further explanation For examples, read any politician's speech, Shakespeare, or the Communist literature of your choice, and see how many rhetorical devices you can find in one page
The good old "pretend you know more than you do" which is closely linked to the "use as many fancy words as possible" strategies are good old fashioned tried and true ways of lying through your teeth.
TV Tropes A listing of many groupthink beliefs often depicted in TV
Occam's Razor: the simplest explanation is often the most likely one. Here's another thing to consider: most of the time you do not need conspiracies to determine what's going on when human error and stupidity provide an adequate explanation. One good example of this is the fossil fuel industry and its viability in the short and long term - it is generally not the smartest idea to make your customers crave the sweet release of death when they buy or rely on your product. That doesn't really sell. Imagine that. So of course they have to cover up what's really going on and hoodwink and power play their way into commercial viability. It just makes sense. Yeah, the fossil fuel industry did really well fifty to sixty years ago, but that was then, this is now, and I suggest you invest in renewables the instant they IPO because once they do, I am fairly certain the explodey-dead-dinosaurs product market will be obsolete no matter what within 20 years. Max. I'm calling it now.
Questions you should ask yourself upon finding a piece of information, on top of everything else on this page:
1. Who has provided me this information, and do they have any agenda, bias, or anything else about them that would make what info they provide questionably accurate? What's the likelihood they'd spin the truth if they stumbled on it? The likelihood they'd flat-out make something up?
2. Why is this information source telling me this stuff? Do I know their motivations?
3. What kind of way is this source presenting its information? Is it using emotional arguments, rhetoric, and persuasive language to try to make me believe something, or is it just laying out information in a dry and unbiased way? If it is using the former to try to persuade me of something, what is it trying to persuade me? If I was persuaded, why would the information source care - what's in it for them?
4. What are the credentials of this author and this publisher? Do they know what they're doing or are they just some uneducated idiots?
5. What are their sources? Are they even bothering to reference them? Can I actually look at these sources or are they inaccessible to me? (look at these sources if you value the truth...) Big tip for knowing what sources people like to spout off: be very, very well-read and understand popular movements, fandoms, and other cultish things. One of the most popular scams done by charlatans is to reword scriptures from various religions or other impressive and famous publications and spin them as their own. It's easier to fleece people of their money, time, and efforts if you aren't starting from scratch trying to make something totally original. After all, scamming people is done by people who do not want to work.
6. Do I want to believe this or otherwise engage in self-deception? Do I have any reasons for believing this that are not wanting to know the truth and that's it? More importantly, how gullible am I - have I been a victim of scams and charlatans in the past? For instance, have I been taken advantage of by family or friends who stole from me or otherwise used me? Have I bought things that I didn't need or which ruined my finances thanks to slick advertising instead of just focusing on the features of the product or service and my needs? Given that experience with myself should I trust this source?
7. Is there a person or group who wants me to believe this? If so, what do they gain from my belief? As Ayn Rand said, 'who's collecting?'
8. What are the results of this conspiracy theory in myself and in others? In the New Testament there's this line about judging a tree by its fruits because bad trees don't bear good fruit and vice versa. It's a wise piece of advice.
9. Is this a credible source? Has it lied to me before or been wrong, half-true, or otherwise not that reliable?
10. Take whatever information sources you find to their logical conclusions; work out possibilities in your mind. If this is true, then what will likely happen in the future? What are the possible future paths this could take, if this was true? Focus on one issue at a time. For instance, let's say that the entire population of the United States starts believing in QAnon. Let's focus on the 'vaccines are bad and the virus isn't real' attitude for this example. What would happen? There are several options. 1. Let's say QAnon is correct about the vaccines being bad. If people are dying like flies two weeks after vaccination, that would be proof. If people are getting sick as a dog after it and not recovering, that would also be proof. And of course, if people were not dying like flies from coronavirus, that would also be proof. Death doesn't lie. So in this case, having the whole US believe in QAnon would result in a good outcome. 2. Let's say QAnon is wrong about the vaccines being bad. Then we'd have a situation much like the one in the United States right now. 600K+ dead of coronavirus, however, let's say the mortality rate for the Delta variant is something like 10%. We'll give it a worst case scenario estimate. So all the mask mandates would be gone, everything would open up, no one would get vaccinated, and let's say 80% of the US catches it. 80% of 330 million is 264 million. 10% of that dead is 26.4 million deaths. Bad outcome. You get NOTHING! You LOSE! Good DAY, sir!
11. Think about all of your options when faced with a difficult choice and conflicting sources of information, and the possible best and worst case scenarios based on evidence. For instance, let's say you're against vaccinations because you 'just don't want to get one.' Think about all the evidence you have seen in person first: let's say it's that no one you know who got the vaccine died, that a friend you know spent the weekend in the ER thanks to what looks like and tested as coronavirus, and that you buried your grandma because she died of what tested as coronavirus. Focus on the evidence. Discard everything that pretends to be evidence such as that video on Youtube which claims all kinds of random stuff about "vaccine bad" without evidence. Now think through the logical possible outcomes. They are: 1. Your family gets sick as a result of your anti-vaxx attitude and anyone who gets unlucky dies, especially the elderly. Even if you don't give a damn, you could die or get long covid if the "sheep" just happen to be correct. 2. You get the vaccine despite your reservations, because if you die it's for a good cause, if you get sick it's for a good cause, and if you survive you'll protect your family. You'll protect your family in all three cases. Wa la. Logical thinking. Learn to apply this to every serious choice you make especially ones with a lot of importance, always focusing on trying to bring about the most positive outcome, and your life will improve. This method can be applied to choosing dinner, choosing a career, and in general making good choices that don't ruin your ever-loving life.
12. What are my strengths? What are my weaknesses? How can my weaknesses be exploited by someone peddling information for their own gain? What do I need to do to fortify my defenses so I don't get taken advantage of?
13. Am I really thinking clearly and intelligently enough to not get snookered by everything and everyone? If not, what do I need to do to fix it?
14. What is my background? My lifestyle, upbringing, and so on? What may have wormed its way into my mind and personality that I wasn't even aware had wormed its way in there? Do I have subconscious or unconscious habits lurking in the background that I assimilated into myself without conscious thought or my own personal choice? For instance, am I racist in any way? Am I classist? Do I believe all people act a certain way because those in my town did, despite having moved out long ago and seen evidence to the contrary? Do I prefer the Barbie model of beauty because society conditioned me to? Exactly how much did my upbringing program me, and what were the results? Am I a slave to them? etc.
15. In order to think clearly, do I need therapy, especially to get over past traumas? Is there even a small chance of that?
16. How hypocritical is this news source? How hypocritical are you? This can really destroy credibility. Can you trust them? Yourself? How much?
17. How much inconsistency is in this source's ideas? If they're contradicting themselves, that's a really bad sign.
18. Does this source or agency primarily target those with little life experience, the gullible, the uneducated, or people who are helpless in one way or another? In particular, does it specifically target the under-18 crowd at all? If it does so at all, even if it doesn't seem like it, such as by showing its shit on websites or news sources known to be primarily viewed by young folks, it is extremely suspicious. Ask yourself if it would be able to spread such stuff on websites and news sources viewed by those with high education levels who are over 18 without extreme amounts of criticism. Religion is particularly notorious for recruiting young, before people have any idea what kind of morality is involved in the decision to convert. Fast food, candy and soda manufacturers, vaping manufacturers, media conglomerates, and fashion manufacturers also target the young. Just like if someone under the age of 18 was dating someone way older, this same old saying applies: you're not mature for your age, they're just a predator.
19. Does this source or agency primarily target people who don't have a good relationship with the truth, who aren't very educated, or who come from poor and therefore uneducated backgrounds? In particular does it insist that 'higher education bad' or 'science bad' in order to keep its customers hooked?
20. Does this source target those who desperately need and want to believe what it's saying? For instance, is it promising cures to the desperately ill, money to the desperately poor, rights and freedoms to those who don't have many? Is it making big, possibly overblown claims for what it can deliver, such as salvation from things that aren't easy to fix or solutions to problems no one has figured out yet? In particular do these desperate people make up the majority or totality of its audience?
21. How big is the following? Unfortunately, the larger the following, the more likely it's a cult, because people are very often prey to the logical fallacy that the more people are following a thing, the more it's worth following. Suspicious.
22. Does it fall prey to emotional ploys instead of simply presenting facts and as much evidence as possible? How often does it do this? What's your rough estimate on the percentage of logical versus emotional arguments or statements presented?
23. Does this source use circular reasoning, specifically referencing its own arguments to fortify future ones? Does it reinforce itself in other ways, such as by making members recruit their own kids and family members or by demanding pledges, loyalty, badges, dog whistles, buzzwords, in-jokes, uniforms, rallies, or absolute loyalty to a manifesto, ideology, or book?
24. How much would you, if you joined this group or accepted this ideology, resemble others who accepted it? The greater the resemblance, the greater the likelihood you've been snookered
25. How much would you have to sacrifice if you swallowed this? How much have you already sacrificed? The greater the sacrifice, the greater the likelihood you've been snookered
26. How much does this resemble other scams and spoofs you've seen in the past, such as MLMs, pyramid schemes, terrorist recruitment, the Nigerian Prince, the National Enquirer, and so on?
27. How much harm to the innocent could this source cause if it was believed, particularly if its claims happened to be incorrect?
28. How well do you think you follow the guidelines listed here and other common sense guidelines to keep you from fooling yourself? Think you follow them even a little bit? Think you are immune to self-deception because you're mentally in perfect health, got a Ph.D., don't act against your own self-interest as much as others, don't take drugs, are religious, have 85 years of living under your belt, a sky-high IQ? You're wrong. You aren't God and you are always going to fool yourself in much greater ways than you ever imagined were possible. Get that self-righteousness bullshit outta here. These guidelines are not absolute truth, just guidelines, and they aren't things to cram in your head as holy writ then forget about. They're things you have to seriously study, learn about as well as possible, and do your best to understand better and better as time goes on.
29. Do you even WANT to be able to perceive bullshit? Phrased more accurately, what is your pain threshold and patience level? Truth more often hurts than feels good, at first. And truth only feels good after a while (though it's pretty constant in its good feeling once you get on good terms with it), whereas lies and bullshit give you lots of instant gratification that can just be kept up in order to make you feel great perpetually as long as you keep lying to yourself. In other words, just how much self-discipline do you have? No, this isn't an attempt to glorify pain. The sad thing is that often a person will reach their personal mental pain tolerance threshold and then utterly ignore everything that could cause them more mental pain, despite the fact that they often cause themselves extreme suffering by such behavior. This actually seems to be a symptom of my own PTSD, and could be something other PTSD sufferers go through, therefore it could be something irrational people also suffer from to a much larger extent than is currently diagnosed. Consider that you might be suffering from a mental disorder of some kind if you have a low mental pain threshold and patience level.
30. Have you betrayed your own principles at any point? Take a long time introspecting on this and do it often. If you've never actually done so, then it might be helpful to actually define your principles in plain English, namely, the exact things that you consider sacred or really really important to value even if you are not religious. If your own principles match up too much with too many other people's, then ask yourself seriously if they are really your own principles or if you are just... a sheep.
You might also wish to play the card game "b.s.," poker, or Among Us.
Recommended reading: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, 1984 by George Orwell, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday, What Do You Care What Other People Think? by Richard Feynman, Mathematics in 10 Lessons by Jerry King, Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Recommended viewing: all of the entire Original Series, Deep Space Nine, and The Next Generation Star Trek series. If you fail to watch any other episodes, watch The Drumhead in TNG. Also, American History X (movie)

*There is a common belief in a lowest common denominator. In my opinion and experience this is absolutely untrue because each and every individual I met had incredible talent, potential, and smarts, but in different ways and often ways not understood or appreciated by society. However, the belief in a lowest common denominator has actually created a lowest common denominator by unscrupulous individuals trying to dumb down a population and by blindly-believing individuals teaching classes of students, and for the most part succeeding. What a waste.

Specific conspiracy theory stuff: Additional section added 11/10/24

Ok, so beyond the usual Antisemitism, which is what a lot of conspiracy theories boil down to and what I have the "luxury" of knowing is not true thanks to a large portion of my family being dead and the rest of it being nice but boring (Jewish Israeli family, you regular readers know this, I covered this in the Religion section), a lot of conspiracy theories revolve around Freemasonry. This is embarrassing to admit, but because I had repressed trauma from something horrible that happened to me as a kid, I used to absolutely dig for information on that particular conspiracy. Here's what I found that I found any evidence whatsoever for. A. Being born psychic, I know that Freemasonry temples themselves tend to be, energy-wise, anywhere from slightly good to really bad, usually falling on the not-good side. I think that they used to be neutral when I was younger, but that they got worse since, if I can trust my own memory. B. Actual Freemasons I have met were wonderful, kind, helpful people. Never treated me wrong, never did my family or friends wrong. The ones I met only momentarily were trying really hard to become better people. C. More than a couple Freemasons on the Internet (whether they actually were or claimed to be) lamented the lack of applicants over the years. D. There have been historically a range of extremely beneficial to society Freemasons, such as Arthur Conan Doyle, George Washington, and many of the Founding Fathers of the United States. So here's what I suspect has been going on based on... educated guesses. My suspicion is that since the Masons need members, they may have relaxed admission requirements too much over the years, admitting people who shouldn't have been members. My suspicion is also that the whole organization is entirely ethically neutral and always has been, but that any organization too desperate for members admits all kinds of people who will then taint the whole thing. How did I go about this research? At first, like any conspiracy theorist, with unmanaged psychic abilities on top. With completely uneducated blaming, irrational paranoia and fear and hate. Gradually, the same way I went about researching the Army. Questioning people in person. Keeping my eyes open. Trying to keep an open mind.
You can assess many other conspiracies with the same metric that Ayn Rand gave us in her books. Whenever someone is telling you "give up, give up, give up," see who is doing the collecting. Who benefits from conspiracy theories? If you can trace who gets the most benefit from each conspiracy theory, you can probably tell who's trotting them out. For instance, I see Russia behind a lot of the stuff nowadays. Incidentally, Ayn Rand was an immigrant from Russia.
Yes, 9/11. Let's talk about it. The only thing I am fairly certain of after all these years is that it was a terrorist attack. Now I've had many years to think about this, and it appears that other peoples' definition of "terrorist" differs from the one I made for myself. Here's how I see it: other peoples' definition of "terrorist" runs the gamut from "person with brown skin who is obviously from the Middle East and aiming to kill as many people as possible for Islam and/or to kill America the country" to "a person with suspicious intentions who seems like they will (or already has) bomb or shoot up a mall, church, or school" to "someone who sneezed on me and I angy." The definition I made for myself (terrorist: someone who intends to kill a bunch of innocent people for any reason, usually some stupid political one, and usually to cause some sort of negative emotional state in everyone who hears about it to send some kind of evil/stupid "message") matches up very well with at least the first definition in each of the dictionary definitions of Terrorist and Terrorism here. The Urban Dictionary definitions run the gamut, as I explained, and which you can see here. Here's a metric I made for myself to determine if something is really as bad as terrorism even if it is not technically classified as such, because the dictionary definition can miss some important crimes. If any person or group intends to seriously hurt or kill at least three people who have not committed a crime as serious as a felony, it is potentially as evil as terrorism. This can help you remember what is and what isn't worth destroying as much as that sort of thing. And here is a pretty decent definition of terrorist provided by Urban Dictionary, which doesn't have the weird "unlawful" word in it that implies that if it's legal, terrorism is a-ok: "1. A person engaging in planning and execution of heinous acts intended to kill innocent people and scare everyone else." Now bear in mind that it doesn't matter if the terrorist believes they are killing people who are not innocent. Terrorism is terrorism, and if there's someone innocent dead, intentions do not matter. - section added 11/11/24

Additional section added 10/7/24 specifically for conspiracy theorists and those who deal with them. Also for people who truly believe in something, such as for instance that women are dumb as fuck, or that their religion is the best one, and everyone human has bias like that. Reminiscing a little bit about the Jews (my family is Jewish, I was raised Jewish, am good Witch/Pagan now) who were "helped to see the Light of Jesus" by people torturing them in the Spanish Inquisition, which in itself was a bunch of people supporting a cult with conspiracy theory-like ideas.

Ask yourself the following questions:
Am I trying to cope with a repressed trauma through this?
How much evidence is there, really, for what I'm reading and believing?
What are the odds someone just made this up?
How much am I helping myself and others with this?
How much am I hurting myself and others with this?
How much of this is me trying to feel better about myself?
How many people have I hurt already with this, and does that number include innocents and/or children?
Are there victims of this sort of thing in the world, or people who have suffered due to what I am describing or believing in? How exactly am I helping or harming them?
Have I lectured someone, with their permission, about this, or otherwise dumped it all on them? What were my intentions with that, exactly?
Have I lectured someone without their permission about this, including with sending out bad vibes or negativity to force them to "understand"?
What consequences of my actions are likely for the people I have exposed this to, including the people I have affected with this, myself, my family, my friends, the people they know, my community and the country?
What consequences of my beliefs, lifestyle and overall state of being are likely for the people I live with, for the people they know, for myself, and for the commmunity at large?

Specifically for the people who have to deal with conspiracy theorists or zealots usually getting high on their own supply:

Ask yourself the following questions:
How much of this am I willing to take?
How much have I already taken?
What am I willing and able to do about it?
What am I going to do about it?
What consequences have I already seen from this?
If I do nothing, what will be the most likely short term and long term consequences to myself, to my loved ones, to the people they know, to the community, to the country, and to the planet?

Big Brain Time

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