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magma wrote:

Laszlo wrote:
It was all about the crouching uppercut if you couldn't remember a proper finisher.

People often defend criticism of conspiracy theories with something like "yeah right, conspiracies never happen.", or "I don't have to be a nutcase to think that the government is corrupt.

Conspiracies do happen, but notice the term is "conspiracy theory". This is when a theory tries to replace evidence with conspiracy. For example, the idea that natural herbs can cure cancer but the evidence is being suppressed by big pharma. In science, a theory must have some evidence, or else it is simply a hypothesis. Anytime someone tries to use the lack of evidence as evidence, they are violating the scientific method. This is why conspiracy theories are pseudoscience.

But what about the times when conspiracies do happen? Well, how do we know they were conspiracies? Leaked documents, confessions giving inside information, people failing to keep silent, unplanned circumstances interfering, ect. These are all things that prove a true conspiracy produces evidence. None of the conspiracies we know about were uncovered by arm-chair supposition. True conspiracies leave a trail of cause and effect which in some cases takes very rigorous investigation to uncover. True investigation takes time to build a case, yet conspiracy theories crop up almost immediately after an event occurs. Because plausibility is presumed and speculation is treated as investigation, conspiracy theorists really do not even have a hypothesis, they simply have a narrative they’ve strung together using as many assumptions and leaps of logic as needed for the glue. In this way, they bastardize the scientific meaning of the word theory, abuse the entire process of scientific discovery, and the term “conspiracy theory” becomes an oxymoron.

So don't get mad when a conspiracy thoery is dismissed without evidence. What you should get mad about is the theorist who asks you to throw out all the standards and quality controls we have for investigation, to overlook the lazy methods and lack of merit, and believe his/her story, which accuses people of horrible things and calls you a sheep, without evidence.

wub wrote: "The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence"

jigglypuff wrote: 'Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.' - Carl Jung

wub wrote: "The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence"

wub wrote:I hadn't replied since last time you posted, so not sure who you're responding to but it's not me.

magma wrote:"I'll fuck you 'til you love me, phaggyt" - Mike Tyson

Pistonsbeneath wrote:
And the family tree thing which if you're agreeing is for the most part true surely proves the whole system of politics is corrupt and nobody will ever get anywhere unless it has been decided beforehand

magma wrote:quotation is a handy thing to have about, saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself, always a laborious business." - A.A. Milne

"He wrapped himself in quotations - as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors." - Rudyard Kipling

d-T-r wrote:Thich Nhat Hanh's a cool guy. Were you at the trafalga square thing last year Zena?

Also, a shortened version of that quote ,

"A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving." - Lao Tzu

d-T-r wrote:It's ok to enjoy the words of other people.

"That which blossomed forth as cosmic egg fifteen billion years ago now blossoms forth as oneself, as one's family, as one's community of living beings, as our blue planet, as our ocean of galaxy clusters. The same fecund source -- then and now; the same numinous energy -- then and now. To enter the omnicentric unfolding universe is to taste the joy of radical relational mutuality." --Brian Swimme

d-T-r wrote:

magma wrote:quotation is a handy thing to have about, saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself, always a laborious business." - A.A. Milne

"He wrapped himself in quotations - as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors." - Rudyard Kipling

The quotes that criticize quoting as being lazy, a sign of no wit or an ability to think for yourself don't really cut it for me. Especially when the quotes enable you to think in ways you might not have to begin with.