Trutherisms and spectra of opinion

Last edited Thu Jul 25, 2013, 07:01 PM - Edit history (5)

A lot of bizarre theories seem more wide-spread than they are because of mushy boundaries and peoples' desire to be in generally like-minded groups.

Did Sarah Palin probably lie in her accounts of Trig Palin's birth? Yes. Her account is weird and dramatized.

Was Trig Palin actually born to teen-aged daughter Bristol Palin and Sarah Palin had pretended to be pregnant and pretended to give birth to Trig?

No. And people who believed that (Andrew Sullivan, for instance) lack a basic level of rationalism and cannot be presumed to be rational persons for other purposes.

But some folks who dislike Sarah Palin would generally go along with Trig-truthers because "there is something fishy about that story," or because their opinion of Sarah Palin is low enough that she might do something like that (even if factually precluded in the specific instance) or because they wish it was true or simply to fit in with a group that is like-minded in despising Sarah Palin.

Was there something fishy about 9/11? Yes. There were thousands of things fishy about 9/11. Does that support the "planned-demolition" crowd? No.

MIHOP was always on par with thinking the moon landing was fake. LIHOP was quite unlikely in a literal sense, but less crazy than MIHOP. Allowed it to Happen through Gross negligence (AHGN) on the part of the Bush administration is pretty well established.

Weighed as rational propositions the three have little in common. (Absurd — Far-fetched — Reliably Established) Weighed by negativity toward George W. Bush they have a lot in common, since all are unflattering. (Murderous/Treasonous — Cynical/Sociopathic — stupid/idologically-blinkered) So depending on one's lens, MIHOP and AHGN are either wildly different and unrelated, or are parts of a spectrum of Bush evil.

It depends how your Venn diagram bubbles are labeled. If labeled "likely true" and "likely false" then MIHOP and AHGN are in different bubbles. If labeled "Bad for Bush" and "Good for Bush" then the two are in the same "bad for Bush" bubble.

I would hope/assume that everyone uses concepts like "true" as their primary lens, their primary way of arranging notions about the world, but that is not always the case.

Do the majority of Republicans really, truly believe that Obama was born in Kenya? I suspect not. Some do, of course. But others pretend to because they are not very concerned with rationalism and don't even think about the truth of the matter, and just identify themselves with the hate-Obama position.

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Was the press release about Zimmerman and the car crash made by, or in some way influenced by, someone sympathetic to Zimmerman? Sure. Probably so.

Was Zimmerman's involvement arranged after a real crash happened, for PR purposes? Possibly. One would need evidence, but it is plausible in human terms.

Was the crash staged, or there was no crash at all? Absent compelling evidence of things so implausible one would have to be rather loony to really believe them.

But it appears that the Crasher "thought community" is defined through the lens of antipathy for Zimmerman, not the lens of "what is true?"

If reason is the lens than "something fishy" does not belong in the same group as "staged." The one is skeptical, the other is delusional.

But "something fishy" will form common cause with "staged" in a community where "staged" is considered a normal view.

A big majority of people in polls say they believe in God. We can assume that very few, if any, people who believe in God as a factual proposition tell pollsters they do not believe in God.

But all sorts of people who do not have a speciffic or organized or reliable belief in God say they do. It is, for them, a default position.

In a predominantly atheist society, many of those "believers" who have only indistinct notions, rather than beliefs, would default to atheist instead of believer.

People who do not know exactly what to think will often default to the social norm, even when that involves associating themselves with things they don't actually believe.