Conspiracy Theories and Religion: Reframing Conspiracy Theories as Bliks | Hacker News Reader

Conspiracy Theories and Religion: Reframing Conspiracy Theories as Bliks

cambridge.org

Logical positivism and the idea that "for a statement to hold meaning, it must be possible to verify its truthfulness empirically – with evidence from the senses," is a category error that leads to a lot of weird rabbit holes, but at least this one is interesting. R.M. Hare:

"I must begin by confessing that, on the ground marked out by Flew, he seems to me to be completely victorious. I therefore shift my ground by relating another parable.

"<<A certain lunatic is convinced that all dons want to murder him. His friends introduce him to all the mildest and most respectable dons that they can find, and after each of them has retired, they say, 'You see, he doesn't really want to murder you; he spoke to you in a most cordial manner; surely you are convinced now?' But the lunatic replies, 'Yes, but that was only his diabolical cunning; he's really plotting against me the whole time, like the rest of them; I know it I tell you'. However many kindly dons are produced, the reaction is still the same.>>

"Now we say that such a person is deluded. But what is he deluded about? About the truth or falsity of an assertion? Let us apply Flew's test to him. There is no behavior of dons that can be enacted which he will accept as counting against his theory; and therefore his theory, on this test, asserts nothing. But it does not follow that there is no difference between what he thinks about dons and what most of us think about them-otherwise we should not call him a lunatic and ourselves sane, and dons would have no reason to feel uneasy about his presence in Oxford.

"Let us call that, in which we differ from this lunatic, our respective bliks . He has an insane blik about dons; we have a sane one. It is important to realize that we have a sane one, not no blik at all; for there must be two sides to any argument - if he has a wrong blik , then those who are right about dons must have a right one. Flew has shown that a blik does not consist in an assertion or system of them; but nevertheless it is very important to have the right blik."

(https://www.qcc.cuny.edu/socialsciences/ppecorino/phil_of_re...)

And Flew's reply is easily as interesting: https://www.qcc.cuny.edu/socialsciences/ppecorino/phil_of_re...

"for a statement to hold meaning, it must be possible to verify its truthfulness empirically – with evidence from the senses,"

does the above statement hold meaning?

(i know you get the joke, i just love the joke)

> a category error that leads to a lot of weird rabbit holes, but at least this one is interesting. R.M. Hare...

That's a nice little example of nominative determinism.

If a blik is an "unfalsifiable but meaningful worldviews", I don't see how this applies to certain prominent conspiracy theories. It is easy to verify that a particular pizza parlor does or doesn't have a basement, for example.

You cannot prove a negative.

Yes you can. [1] Or rather, there are classes of problems for which you can indeed prove a negative.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proving_a_negative

The blik isn't the pizza parlor hiding bad actors in the basement, it's the belief that Hillary Clinton and her friends are the ones orchestrating the operations of the pizza parlor.

> It is easy to verify that a particular pizza parlor does or doesn't have a basement, for example

Interestingly, this is a good example of the phenomenon. The original pizzagate conspiracy theory was about weird references to "cheese pizza" and "hot dogs" in the wikileaks Podesta email dump[1] and had nothing to do with pizza parlor basement dungeons. Like most conspiracy theories, I'm pretty much agnostic on this one (I try not to confuse gut feelings with actual knowledge). I do find it interesting how hard the media straw-manned it though, to the point where apparently some nutjob felt like shooting a round into the floor at a pizza joint. My gut is that the news was just ratings pandering and a bit of comedy, but as I said I don't see how I'll ever have access to the truth, whatever it may be, so I accept that and don't dwell on it.

As for the concept of unfalsifiable, but meaningful, beliefs, there's a philosophically important distinction to be made between those beliefs that are absolutely unfalsifiable, versus those that are merely practicably unfalsifiable.

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/5gutu2/wikileak...

Someone did in fact test that. Thankfully when he found no basement, the situation resolved peacefully.

I like the story, because it’s a reminder that perfectly logical people can fall down these rabbit holes. If there are children in that basement, of course you should save them, and if you find no basement, of course you need to stop and concede. You’ve messed up.

Any one of us can fall down a little “rabbit hole” if something gets past the radar.

Could only read the abstract, and looked up "blik." Bliks are like the underpinning assumptions for a frame of reference, or the begged questions of a given belief, maybe even the axioms of an ideology.

echo 'aHR0cHM6Ly9zY2ktaHViLnNlLzEwLjEwMTcvZXBpLjIwMTkuNDYK' | base64 -d

Are there really people on HN not aware about Sci-Hub or is it that people are scared to get in trouble at work?

https://sci-hub.se/10.1017/epi.2019.46

Is the question directed at me? I don't know. You could run a poll and find out.

    - US government poisoning alcohol during prohibition
    - US government using dead baby body parts for radiation testing without consent of the parents
    - US government giving Black people syphilis on purpose
    - Operation paperclip
    - US intel's heart attack gun
    - Operation Mockingbird (CIA infiltrating media)
    - US Air Force experimenting with pheromones as a weapon
    - CIA funded Dalai Lama and related guerrilla forces
    - polio vaccine spread a cancer-causing virus
    - Operation Northwoods (US intelligence planned to stage a false flag operation in the USA and blame Cuban terrorists)
    - Tobacco companies knew cigarette smoke was deadly
    - FBI spying on John Lennon, Martin Luther King Junior, et al
    - The entire US/Vietnam war, predicated on a golf of Tonkin "incident", which never happened
    - Iran-Contras
    - MK ULTRA
    - PRISM (Snowden)
    - weapons of mass destruction
    - 9/11 having nothing to do with Iraq invasion
    - Panama papers
    - Vaccine passports
    - Agenda 21/2030

Honestly, the list goes on for so long that you would fill your disk with text before you exhausted it.

With this knowledge, you have to be woefully illogical to come to the blanket conclusion that "conspiracy theories" are just some form of ridiculous religion.

There are people who believe things that are totally ridiculous and unrealistic. There are idiots in all walks of life, but using those idiots to attempt to dismiss everything that you deem to be a "conspiracy theory" is as ridiculous as dismissing all comedians as "misogynistic racists" just because one comedian tells racist and misogynist jokes.

The article isn't dismissing conspiracy theories. The article is suggesting that conspiracy theories should be taken seriously and analyzed like religions because most conspiracy theories are very similar to monotheistic religions.

Except that theories rooted in facts, with evidence, and a track record of successful predictions, has nothing to do with mythology.

Do you have an example?

How about the 30 or so that I listed in my original comment above… read much?

Do you have links to long form essays and analysis about why those conspiracy theories were any different from all the other ones? Similarly, what are current conspiracy theories that are more than just conspiracy theories and are backed by actual evidence?

> - Operation paperclip

It's a minor nit to pick in the scheme of things, but Dr. Schumann's wife was my tutor and he told me all about it after lessons. He was vehement that it was not and never was Operation Paperclip, but rather Action Paperclip.

Knowing that makes me wonder how many other little historical details are wrong. Once an erroneous source gets into the literature, it can take a long time, if ever, before it gets corrected. For example the incorrect charge value for the electron persisted for a long time[1] and that at least can be tested in the laboratory, unlike the specifics of the exfiltration of German scientists.

[1] https://scipython.com/blog/measurements-of-the-electron-char...

Oh, that is interesting. There are some interesting historical name stories; such as "World War", which wasn't really in use until decades after the first world war.

> The nature of religious belief is elemental to understanding the epistemological foundations of the conspiracy theorising worldview

Huh, this somewhat comports with my armchair idea that religion trains people to constantly deny reality and construct their own truths that are based in “faith,” and thus it makes them susceptible to conspiracy theories.

Blik is a new word for me. Looks like an interesting study.

I tend to think of them as decentralised religions.

I usually file both of those groups under "people want to believe in something from which they can derive meaning."

https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2019.46

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