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Post by hplasm on Feb 5, 2007 19:30:15 GMT -4
That's a good summary of many conspiracist quirks. "I have proven that [some theory] ... is wrong" Helping humanity requires a trust, and that trust must be earned. It is earned through demonstration of the correctness of one's findings, not through "imagination".Hello Mods! Any chance of nailing this one to the top of the board with a heading along the lines of "Your Conspiracy Theory must be taller than THIS to have any chance on here..." Nice Work Sir!
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Post by gwen on Feb 5, 2007 21:08:19 GMT -4
A few years ago, I wrote e-mails to all my elected officals (and Bush and Cheney). Not all of them sent responses (including Bush and Cheney), but most of the ones I did get were polite and well-reasoned. I have also not noted a change on the issue I wrote them all about from their opinions stated in their replies. It is very unlikely any of these politicians read your emails. Like most organisations getting lots of inquiries from the public, they have professional staffs to handle them and often, carefully crafted, already prepared, reasonable sounding text on sundry topics, which is simply pasted into individual replies. What you think was a polite, thoughtful and reasoned response to your polite, thoughtful and reasoned email was in truth, likely categorized within 15 or 30 seconds and dealt with in another 30 seconds or so of formulatic but cleverly done copy-pasting, often by interns. Soap companies do the same thing, but the latter will at least be likely to throw in a chit for free soap or whatever.
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Post by gwen on Feb 5, 2007 21:32:39 GMT -4
Any chance of nailing this one to the top of the board with a heading along the lines of "Your Conspiracy Theory must be taller than THIS to have any chance on here..." Nice Work Sir! He was helpfully responding line by line to this URI which I'd posted earlier... insti.physics.sunysb.edu/~siegel/quack.html
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Post by JayUtah on Feb 5, 2007 21:53:00 GMT -4
I thought that article hit a number of conspiracist topics right on the head.
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Post by gwen on Feb 5, 2007 21:55:01 GMT -4
I thought that article hit a number of conspiracist topics right on the head. I thought so too. To my thinking, conspiracist=quack. I also think many quacks don't believe what they're selling, but I guess some do.
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Post by sts60 on Feb 5, 2007 23:28:00 GMT -4
JayUtah: I think politicians fall generally into two types. (Is there anything that doesn't fall into two types?)
"There are 10 types of people in the world - those who understand binary and those who don't."
gwen: Yep and they become part it and do more harm instead (or if not, get drummed out of office either by whatever greedy party they hitched a ride on or... lose to another party which knows that scheming and lying is the only way to work the system which is thoroughly money driven on both ends, after all,
Money talks, but it's the voters who are responsible for putting those people in office and for keeping them there, or are replacing them. It's the voters who are responsible for looking past the slick presentations and the sound bites and the attack ads and the lobbying.
forget ideologies or idealism
No, let's not. There are a lot of politicians who still believe in ideals and ideologies, good and bad. It's a mistake to think that all, or even most, politicians are driven only by greed and hubris. It reduces them to caricatures and obscures the truth, which is much more complicated: politicians are driven by ideals and hubris and greed and the necessity to actually deal with people who think differently than they do and constituents who tell them to do things they may not believe in and expect them to bring home the goodies while cutting out the other guy's pork.
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Post by Data Cable on Feb 6, 2007 0:08:59 GMT -4
There are 10 types of people in the world - Dagnabbit, he beat me to it.
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Post by JayUtah on Feb 6, 2007 0:10:36 GMT -4
"There are 10 types of people in the world - those who understand binary and those who don't."
There's a tristate bus version of this one, but I don't remember the exact wording.
It's the voters who are responsible for looking past the slick presentations and the sound bites and the attack ads and the lobbying.
And that's why it's important to participate and encourage activities that promote critical thinking. This debate over moon hoaxery may seem ephemeral. But it teaches how to recognize bad arguments whether they come from Bart Sibrel or from some ambitious candidate.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Feb 6, 2007 0:14:26 GMT -4
There are three kinds of people in the world -- Those who can count, and those who can't.
Fred
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Post by gwen on Feb 6, 2007 0:25:21 GMT -4
" politicians are driven by ideals and hubris and greed and the necessity to actually deal with people who think differently than they do and constituents who tell them to do things they may not believe in and expect them to bring home the goodies while cutting out the other guy's pork."
Sounds like a recipe for corruption to me. I was trying to be pithy, of course it's complicated but the outcome, in my humble opinion, is a blizzard of lies and graft.
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Post by Data Cable on Feb 6, 2007 1:24:53 GMT -4
There's a tristate bus version of this one So there was this bus that went between New York, New Jersey and Conneticut... oh, maybe you meant something else...
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Post by gillianren on Feb 6, 2007 1:26:10 GMT -4
It is very unlikely any of these politicians read your emails. Like most organisations getting lots of inquiries from the public, they have professional staffs to handle them and often, carefully crafted, already prepared, reasonable sounding text on sundry topics, which is simply pasted into individual replies. What you think was a polite, thoughtful and reasoned response to your polite, thoughtful and reasoned email was in truth, likely categorized within 15 or 30 seconds and dealt with in another 30 seconds or so of formulatic but cleverly done copy-pasting, often by interns. Soap companies do the same thing, but the latter will at least be likely to throw in a chit for free soap or whatever. Oh, don't get me wrong--my US Senators didn't necessarily write back themselves; I don't expect that. However, my local representatives probably did. Actually, one of them wrote me an e-mail that could not, based on how it was worded, have been a copy/paste job; it was too direct a comment to some things in my own e-mail that were personally oriented toward him. I just think assuming the worst of anyone who is in office is just as bad as assuming the worst of anyone. I think easily 90% or more of elected officials, if you look at more than just the highest tiers of them, are doing the best job they can under difficult circumstances. The other 10% give them a bad name.
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Post by gwen on Feb 6, 2007 1:46:23 GMT -4
I just think assuming the worst of anyone who is in office is just as bad as assuming the worst of anyone. I think easily 90% or more of elected officials, if you look at more than just the highest tiers of them, are doing the best job they can under difficult circumstances. The other 10% give them a bad name. I do respect your opinion. In all honesty though I think it's more like "80% corrupt" one way or another and the rest either on the way out of office or headed towards the koolaid stand. However, please don't mind me, some of this may have to do with how I define the words.
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Post by Mr Gorsky on Feb 6, 2007 5:41:56 GMT -4
Of course, the real problem with politics is that we (the voters and the media) generally get the government and the politicians we deserve.
* We demand that they devolve power from the centre, and yet still require them to take responsibility when things go wrong. * Having devolved power from the centre we then demand that they step in and intervene when those to whom it is devolved don't do it the way we would like. * We demand that they be more honest, but then jump on every honest comment and claim that they are breaking ranks with their party. * We demand that they show willingness to change their minds and not cling to their policies when they are clearly not working, but as soon as they do that we brand them as weak and incapable of providing leadership.
It is hardly surprising that politicians choose to remain aloof and "secretive" in the face of so much hypocrisy from those who put them into office.
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Al Johnston
"Cheer up!" they said, "It could be worse!" So I did, and it was.
Posts: 1,453
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Post by Al Johnston on Feb 6, 2007 8:41:08 GMT -4
As Churchill put it:
"Representative Democracy is the worst system of government ever devised by mankind, with the possible exception of every other system of government ever devised by mankind."
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