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...

I know that last week I said I was going to skip the very long introduction, though I did also say that there were some bits that needed to be explained...so we're going to cover the entire 40-page introduction in this post. There are some points that need to be covered as I think it gives us some insight into the author himself. One of my academic interests in this subject is how people got into it. What motivates a person to wake up one day and accept the conspiracy world as true. With Robison and Allen before him; the motivating factor seems to be a loss of control over the world. Not personal control but the shifting of the status quo for which they enjoyed an elevated position. In both works, the authors try their best to explain how it is that the world had changed around them and both blame it on nefarious controllers. So, with Cooper, it's going to be more interesting (hopefully).  The first 20 pages are a family history which is just biographical. It's not that int...

Well, we did it. It took us nine months, but we have closed the back cover on the first book to warn us of the dangers of a private club of 18th-century skeptics. So what did we learn? Well, we learned that conspiracy theory books are pretty much the same throughout time. Remember this is the first book to call the Illuminati out and it reads like a slightly better-written version of the books that get popped out today. This is an interesting difference because Robison doesn't have access to the vocabulary or the concepts that we do. Otherwise, there isn't a substantial difference other than the historical references that peppered Gary Allen's book. Yet they are still arguing against the same thing, the encroachment of "liberalism." The funny thing about that is Allen would be Robison's enemy, I don't think that Allen would understand Robison's complaints. As much as I dislike Gary Allen's book and the ideas of the John Birch Society, I don't t...

" Nor can it be said that these are vain fears. We know that the enemy is working among us, and that there are many appearances in these kingdoms which strongly resemble the contrivance of this dangerous Association." It's nice that it cannot be said that this is the case. It isn't exactly a vain fear, the fear that Robison has is without a warrant, but his fear is not the Illuminati. The fear is that the world is changing around him and he can't accept it. The fear is that the world is now more literate than it has ever been and new ideas are being tossed around that aren't the orthodoxy that he grew up with. Yes, Robison has a real fear, but the vanity is in thinking that the Illuminati are out there trying to target him.  For once we actually get a name of a book that is widely available even now, Thomas Paine's "Age of Reason." Here's what Robison claims about the book, " Till Paine's Age of Reason appeared, the most sceptical wr...