Conspiracy Theories, Skepticism, and Critical Thinking

We're back with no more interruptions. Grading is done and I can certainly carve out the time to write these updates...until the next grading season that is.  We come back with Allen focusing on a familiar target to 90s era conspiracy theorists: the Rockefeller family. The Rockefellers are one of those people/families that are so wealthy that the word "wealth" doesn't apply anymore. They aren't rich, they are beyond it. So this makes them a frequent target of conspiracy theorists, anarchists, socialists, and a bunch of other people that normally wouldn't agree on anything. The central idea that all of these groups agree on is: someone like them shouldn't have that much influence when they are largely unaccountable. Nelson Rockefeller was accountable when he was NY governor, but that's not what people like Allen mean. He means overall they have so much money that nothing can happen to them which is a bad thing.  And I, agree. Pre-Covid, I worked as a va...

 I play a lot of strategy games on my computer. For some reason, they just make sense there, where the console is for all of the other types of games. One thing that I never neglect, is establishing a web of spies (when I'm able). In the old Red Alert, I would spend an inordinate amount of time training spies because sure, the Russians were coming but I wanted to know every single thing they had in production. I just like it. The new Civ has a really great espionage mechanism, and I love sabotaging and stealing all of my rival's stuff. Sure, they own two continents and our trade is so intertwined that war between us is almost impossible...but for some reason, they just can't get that spaceship built can they. The reason that I bring this up is because of one important feature about espionage: it doesn't work if the enemy knows it is happening. So when Allen tries to link the trade with the USSR (which is one of the things that prevented the outbreak of a hot war) with t...

 No post this week. It's the end of the semester and I must focus on grading. 

 Books like this aren't meant to be read slowly. They really aren't meant to be read, they're meant to be skimmed. There are a few reasons for this, primarily being that the authors know they aren't factual they appeal emotionally. If you take your time to read through the book you become emotionally detached and the book betrays itself. It's repetitive and bland. By chapter 2, we get the point, but emotionally we're bound to its claims because the writing angers up the blood. In the modern age, the reason that the book isn't meant to be read slow is that fact-checking is so easy now. If I stop at each paragraph, I can easily find how many false claims are being made. This is not why this type of book was written.  We begin chapter 6 "Rockefeller and the Reds" with a heavy head because even though I was never going to jump in to these claims, it was fun to run through all of them...until I took a week off, and now I'm so emotionally detached th...