"Being open-minded doesn't simply mean being skeptical...

[Bicoastal]

...it also means being skeptical about the skeptics."

I said this tonight, after a discussion w/a friend about Alex Jones, Glenn Beck, and other conspiracy theorists. Just thought I'd share.

[defacto7]

1. Actually...

Being a skeptic means being skeptical of skeptics. And I don't think it's possible to be open-minded without being skeptical.

[Warpy]

2. Well, some people are so open minded their brains fall out

and their empty heads get filled by whatever charismatic charlatan comes along.

[defacto7]

3. Oohhh

I just had this photographic picture of what you were saying go through my head... nasty. I think those are the non-skeptical open-minded. Call them the brain rollers. Or the "there's a charlatan in my skull" folks.

[Quantess]

8. "the brain rollers"

I like it.

[olddots]

4. the saddest thing about Jones ,Beck etc.all is that they're just entertainers

and the entertainment industry is one of the only industries we have left in the country.

[Archae]

5. They are con men.

Pandering to the suckers, making tons of money.

[napoleon_in_rags]

6. WWE.

The professional wresting industry (which was legally required to change its name away from WWF to WWE - to replace the word "federation" with "entertainment&quot is also entertainment. They had a whole coalitions of wrestlers named the new world order, riffing off Alex Jones' material. And I love WWE. I love Alex Jones. Why?

Because at this point, its ALL entertainment. I have no problem with you dismissing Alex Jones or WWE that way, its true. But do you also dismiss mainstream sources like Fox news? Like the History channel or CNN (which I also love) that way? If you don't you're in lala land. You're tuning in to one kind of distortion but turning a blind eye to others. If you blame WWE/jones for overhyping the seriousness of something, but not CNN for extensive coverage of the fap-off session that was the Jodi Arias trial as something with any relevance whatsoever, you're missing the real character of the modern world: Its all distraction, its all entertainment.

We live in a world of stories and storytellers, and excepting a few people who really tried to buck that trend, we always have. The awareness of this fact is rare, and once you wake up to it, you are confronted with a disconcerting world: people who think the next dance reality show episode is more important that impending doom through issues like climate change make up the majority of the population.

So bash the mad fringe all you want - just don't, even for a second, get the idea that the majority is leading us in a direction any more sane.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2154923/Half-Americans-believe-creationism-just-15-percent-accept-evolution.html

[Warren DeMontague]

9. Yes, but certain things are objectively true, or objectively false.

I'm all for a bit o' the blarney, a tall tale wrapped in a good yarn, but peddling absolute bullshit and wrapping it up as anything resembling "truth"; that's not storytelling, that's lying. And they're not the same thing.

Saying "everybody does it", or "mainstream news is crap", isn't an excuse.

[napoleon_in_rags]

10. Well, that's a really good point, Warren.

Some things ARE objectively true, and some are objectively false. Some things are explicit lies, and some things are not. But some things are also implicit lies, and these are harder to detect and more damaging.

For instance, look at the Republicans who want to throw out due process for the Boston bomber. 4 people killed, and they want to shred the constitution. Now lets pull out our calculators, and do some math.

31940 people died of gun injuries in 2011

31940/365 = 87 people a day. Gun deaths are a minor cause of death compared to other diseases, car accidents etc, but 87 people die a day from them, according to this source. So the Boston 4 were a tiny, tiny percentages of the people who died that day from bullets, who were a tiny percentage of those who died, yet the media obsesses on it, Republicans want to throw out the constitution over it. What is going on here?

What's going on is the way the supposedly mainstream, reputable media lies to us all the time. Not necessarily explicit lies about the facts, but implicit lies about what stories deserve attention, implicit lies about what is relevant to the viewer. Jodi Arias, Boston bombings, get all the attention, and thus they broadcast a false threat profile to the public, to drum up ratings. But these threats don't actually threaten most of the public. And while they obsess on these threats, major actions happen behind the scene, like the passages of laws which have major financial (and with that long term safety) implications for the people, but all these are hidden, behind the false threat stories.

I love a good yarn too, sir. But I'm aware of the spinning of yarn not just of some conspiracy guys talking about bigfoot, but also the main stream media, when they spin a story for instance about WMD's in Iraq which the public buys, even when they whole thing is based on vastly amplifying a few sources while muffling many, many other ones, the same as the main stream news does every day - the power of the implicit is often stronger than they explicit.

Peace!

[Warren DeMontague]

11. Sure, they "want to". The GOP lives to huff and puff and bloviate.

But the Constitution has already been shredded- namely the 4th Amendment- over the implicit lie that people smoking pot and listening to Jimi Hendrix (or Bob Dylan, yo ) is somehow an existential threat to civilization that warrants a massive prison industrial complex, a 60 Billion dollar a year drug war, and all the rest.

So, yes, there is a lot of bs out there, a lot of implicit lying and hyperbole.

But that's sort of off the subject. When Alex Jones tells people that "Newtown was a false flag", his audience isn't going "What a cad! Brilliant Post-Modern Performance Art, a Veritable Andy Kaufman he is!" They think he's serious.

[napoleon_in_rags]

12. I just see him as an actor in a world of actors.

He's the one who breaks down on air and starts screaming like a cartoon character. I've heard him do Dr. Claw from inspector gadget, many other cartoon voices...really good voice work actually. Max Keiser sometimes gets the same screaming fits, but without the cartoon voices.

I can't defend Jones, nor do I particularly want to. What I want to express is the simple fact that its ALL performance, its ALL show, across the board. The implicit lies - the distortions of priority, effect the populous far more than the explicit ones. And all the news, even sites like this, spread these implicit distortions of priority.

And you know what I MYSELF engage in this all the time. My life, when I stand back and look at it, is a living practice in the art of distorted priorities. That's why I don't hate CNN for giving so much time to the Arias trial, or hate the history channel for Ancient Aliens. But I recognize the absurdity of all of it, from them to me.

[Warren DeMontague]

13. I pretty much stopped watching CNN during the 2004 election.

So I'm not really interested in defending it, either.

[Warren DeMontague]

7. There's a big difference between being skeptical and being full of shit.

Alex Jones knows that any act of violence which might precipitate a conversation in this country around gun regulations, "was a false flag".

He knows this. Doesn't fucking matter one whit what the act was, what evidence there is around it, none of it.

That's not skepticism; that's being full of shit.