Dont get me started on the wars, and who financed and alas benefited from them.........., just about the same people who benefit from just about everything else.

O...k... I am done on conspiracy theories on the threads today, now I need to decide what to watch tonight, will it be Black Projects, Ancient Astronauts, Disclosure Project, or a dose of Terrence McKenna god bless his soul.

Nice evening y'all

So how do you explain this?

No, that's not what I said. Think Occam's Razor

http://www.canadaka.net/link.php?id=75838

OK - You guys want to read about a real conspiracy? Have a look at the case against Peter Sunde, one of the founders of Pirate Bay.

http://falkvinge.net/2012/07/06/afte...his-own-words/

It is quite amazing how technology is being used to erode what few civil liberties we have left. And government officials just deny it until people forget about it.

I NEVER thought I would start agreeing with the tinfoil hat brigade... but it is truly frightening what is happening all over the world. Electronic surveillance, cameras everywhere, rich getting richer and middle class disappearing...

I started taking a hard look at the Pirate Party when I was living in CH, and it all started in Sweden, where I lived many years ago. I really support what they are doing and hope they continue to gain seats in Europe.

Sorry for the mini-rant. Anyone else involved with the Pirate Party?

fduvall

This implies there is such a thing as a right and a wrong meme.

When you're looking at mathematics, there is indeed right and wrong and you can tell the difference by carefully analysis and going back to first principles (though if you want to get metaphysical, here too you can say the axioms on which it is all based are ultimately gut assumptions that are most probably true but not definitely so)

The further you get away from mathematics, the less provable things get. When it comes to politics or arts it is quite often a case of likes and gut feelings. If you could prove that a particular political idea is right then you wouldn't need elections or political debates but you could hand over control to the wise and all-knowing who could govern by mathematical principles. But it doesn't work like that. Different people have different objectives and thus different priorities and thus therer isn't an ultimate "right thing to do" but just different opinions. Poliitical discourse is different today than it was 50 or 200 years ago. Art is different today than it was 50 or 100 years ago. Ditto for literature. I see a lot of evidence for herd mentality there. You may, if you wish, believe that it is because "they are correct" and attempt to explain away why the herd wasn't "correct" 50 or 200 years ago. Or was it "correct" that changed?

I was only using 'right' as an extrapolation from your earlier statement My point being that in most cases the common and shared belief may in fact be common and shared precisely because it's _not_ a delusion. It's the simplest, and as such (described by Occam's razor as I previously posted) is the most likely, explanation.

Looking for shared 'delusions' is really only something people start to do once they've become marginalised by dogmatically sticking to a particular belief/viewpoint despite evidence to the contrary. In other words, it's only the deluded few who believe in mass delusions of the many.

But "who knows which is which, and who is who?"

Occam's Razor doesn't have anything to do with the majority or large numbers of people holding a view. It looks at the claim independently of how many people believe it.

Furthermore, I see no evidence that the majority apply Occam's Razor, but rather base their choice on other criteria (such as following the herd).

"And according to a book to be published next month, he plans to reduce funding for the Army, and then use what’s left of it to combat global warming and poverty."

The monster!!

Yeah, and to think that on the other side of the political spectrum a lot of people are mad at him because they believe he won't.