Conspiracy Theories, Skepticism, and Critical Thinking

 " Give me control over a nation's currency, and I care not who makes its laws."                                                                                 Mayer Amschel Rothschild                                                                                  (1743-1812) Conspiracy theorists do this weird thing where they will use one of their villains' full names. It's not merely Rothschild, it's Mayer Amschel Rothschild. It's not Rockefeller it's Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller. It's not a compliment, ...

I often tell people that I have to be a little bit of an expert in everything. The claim here isn't that I am the smartest person in the room, but that I have to know about so many different subjects because I study conspiracy theories. My fellow PhDs who study the metaphysics of personal identity just have to know that one subject. They do know other things, because they teach other courses sure, I'm not ragging on them. For their work, the thing that is their chosen subject is just the one subject. The problem that I have is that I can't just know about conspiracy theories. I have to know about their subjects, the mainstream story that they are in opposition to. and the academic research on the meta-topic itself. In some cases, it's too much, people will ask me about conspiracy theory minutiae that takes me a long time to remember because there is so much.  The further complication is that the conspiracy theorist themselves think that they are experts in everything. T...

The most important scene in the Netflix documentary "Behind the Curve" (2018) is toward the end where an actual scientist laments the rise of the Flat Earth conspiracy theory stating that every person who bought into it represents a loss. Every person that spent hundreds of hours researching the mathematics trying to find a hole in gravitational theory could have spent that time on a worthwhile discovery. One group of people in that documentary spent 10k dollars on a laser gyroscope and then encased in basalt (to block wifi interference) to prove that Earth was flat only to find out that even then it showed the Earth as being round. This represents not only a loss of time and effort, but also the money.  People like Cooper make me sad. They are not bad writers; indeed, they impart a sense of urgency and panic that could be better spent somewhere else. Cooper would have made a good historical writer if only he wasn't caught up in this kind of nonsense. Allen would have mad...

Before we even begin the first chapter I have to make something clear: this Cooper's book, but he didn't "write" it. What he's done for the most part is compile other works and then offer commentary on it. Think of it like the framing of the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien sets up the book as though he was not the author. Rather it is framed as though the Hobbit, whose actual title is "There and Back Again," is a book by Bilbo Baggins that was "found." Everything in this book is something that he found or something that was sent to him by another individual--with some exception. His contribution is commentary and emphasis. So let's dive in:  " Chapter 1: Excerpts From Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars, copy furnished by Mr. Tom Young A fellow warrior in the cause of Freedom ."  This is what I mean, the book's self-serving introductory chapter leads us to believe that Cooper is going to regal us with the stuff that he lea...