Ask Lemmy

one thing he said was that he didn't consider belief a binary as in that you either believe something or don't. He viewed all beliefs as a continuum. You can believe one thing 10% and another thing 90%, but he wouldn't let me pin him down as to whether he "believed" any particular thing or not.

That seems pretty reasonable. The only thing I believe 100% is that my consciousness exists in some way. I'm about 99.9% certain that reality is roughly as I experience it (I have a physical body, the things I witness correlate to an external world, I'm not a brain in a box or in some kind of simulation, etc.). Every other belief carries some higher degree of uncertainty.

I think of how much evidence I'd need to believe something. If someone told me their dad was childhood friends with Bill Clinton, I probably wouldn't believe them, but all it would take to convince me would be a yearbook and a couple old photos. If someone told me they had a tea party with Sasquatch, they could show me a video and I'd still assume it was faked.

This seems like a healthy perspective, to me. The problem pops up when you start assigning high confidence levels to unlikely claims, or spend too long obsessing over low confidence claims. I suppose aliens could run the government, but even 10% confidence is way too high.

Brother-in-law told me that the government is using weather-control machines to target Republican states.

Like everyone here in have stories but instead of adding to the pile may I offer a simple solution. I tell people who fall this stuff to make a list and post it on their fridge. If just one of them turns out to be true they can call me up and rub it in my face. There are two reasons I suggest this. First, the people in the media who push this stuff keep a steady flow of BS incoming. They put out a new one to distract from the last one. Second, back in 2011 I realized it's like a cult and I did a little looking into what it takes to get people to snap out of it. The expert I found said there is nothing you can do, folks have to reach their own conclusions. Should any of your friends come around just let it go, don't make a big deal about it.

This one is gomna break you brains:

Y'all heard of the "Great Replacement" unhinged conspiracy theory?

Imagine that, but Han Chinese Edition.

Context: My family was born in PRC

My older brother told me the CCP is conspiring to... wait for it

Replace Han Chinese with ethnic minorities and "African Migrants"... 🤨

Yea his brain is totally cooked.

Might be lead poisoning or some other weird shit in China.

He hates racism, yet simultaneously believes in a racial hierarchy. 🤨

(of course, he believes Han Chinese are on top 🤨)

Oh did I forget to say, we live in the US.

Why is he so worried about China, a country he no longer has citizenship in... 🤨

He believes in Han Supremacy but became a US Citizen? 🤨

(Sorry for the 🤨 emoji, its just so... bewildering)

Also, doesn't like vaccines, but still caved in and got a tetnaus vaccine when he stepped on a nail. Yes he know its a vaccine, but apparantly, if your risk of dying is high enough, survival instincts overrules conspiracy theories? 🤔

Two weeks ago.

California’s reservoirs are empty and couldn’t fight the fires because of democrats.

You can log into a website to see the realtime water levels. They are nearly full and have been. They are also above average levels.

My neighbor told me I was gonna die in 1year after getting the first round of COVID vaccines. Pff. I wish! Still here unfortunately.

Jesus christ, where do I even begin? I have parents who are conspiracy nuts, so this'll be quite a list. There's a difference between my mom, step dad, and oldest little brother, though, as two of them believe in more occult crap.

Well, here we go...

• Chemtrails. Also HAARP. For some reason "they" are constantly trying to control the weather. Somehow it involves better controlling the population. There was also the idea that Chemtrails seeded clouds to then rain chemicals onto people that'll keep them complacent and controlled.
• During the Syrian mass immigration crisis; "they" are trying to replace us with a more complacent population to control us better.
• Vaccines are a scam to create a more complacent population, or is a means of population control, or is transhumanism and transhumanism is bad.
• By extention, COVID-19 exists only as a scare tactic. A frightened, scared population is a complacent population more easily controlled.
• Global warming is a scare tactic, and same as COVID-19, exists only keep the population scared and complacent.
• Most wars, especially the "war on terrorism" by George W. Bush, is a scare tactic.... Yadda yadda complacent, controlled, etc...
• NATO is an expansionist, imperialist organisation to consolidate all power in one place for better control. It forces members to join it either through coercion or passive aggressive pressure. Russia only defending itself.
• The military (which military?) has far more advanced technology than what's available to the public. Such as anti-gravity drones and thought suppression antennas.
• Every action, event, political decision, election, or organisation is always caused by a shadowy group of people who are the ones really in control of everything. A shadow government. They control truly everything, and their actions are done in order... To... Control........ Everything... Yeah, not a really thought out one, this one is. But the basis for all the other conspiracies, and the "they" or "them" always refers to this.
• The Rothschild family is part of "them", the most powerful family in all of history! (probably forgot about the Hapsburgs).
• They will never give true medicine to the world, as a means of keeping the population controlled. All medicine exists to keep you reliant on them.
• Homeopathy is the medicine "they" don't want you to use.
• "They" are hoarding ancient, advanced technology.
• "They" are suppressing archeology, in case any "true" history comes to light, such as those involving highly advanced precursor races.
• The Smithsonian museum is hiding skeletons and archaeological findings that don't fit with "established, mainstream archeology", such as skeletons of a giant, highly advanced precursor race. Yes, they like David Icke. How could you tell?
• There are ways of generating free energy that "they" don't want you to know, but ancient civilisations did. Such as the Egyptians who built pyramids as huge power plants. They're either plasma fusion plants, pizo-electric generators producing energy from Earth's vibrations, or some kind of funny triangular rock that in its exact configuration can generate power from the Earth's lay-lines.

There's probably a lot more, but I'm tired of typing all this out.

Electricity from nuclear power plants is radioactive and that's why people get cancer.

A440 was developed by the Nazis because it is harmonically dissonant and causes disorder and chaos as it is incongruous with people's natural frequency. A432 is the 'natural' tuning system.

As someone who went to college for music theory, it was hilarious hearing this

I have one some say is interesting.

There's this author I've enjoyed, in a way where you could call her an idol of mine. She wrote a few books I liked and I knew she went by a certain name and so I looked her up in a user directory based on this just as a way to entertain myself. Sent a request to be friends. The response was "request sent" and I was like "hehehehe, there's a really small chance that's her".

A week later I got a response and almost shat myself. But we talked and talked and soon she invited me to a few of her social circles. I accepted. And... one of them is a flat earther club.

I definitely don't mind and don't judge. We're still strong friends, we talk every day, and I'm a VIP in their social circle (I feel honored), but she's big on that stuff and there's a big discussion every now and then on the shape of the Earth, and it's an... interesting experience. So I just sit on the sidelines as the one woman who silently disagrees with the Earth being flat. ~~It's concave.~~

Too darn many. Some of the family close to me has ignored their neurological decline for years. when I was a kid they used to drag me along to all sorts of crowds. It was quite the cluster####.

One that I debunked myself: one lady told me that I'd be drinking by the time I was 19. I proved her wrong, and I now realise what she did. I messaged her years later as we agreed to I would, but she did not remember me.

Your coworker may have small testicles.

Rats fed 100 mg boron/kg/day as borax in the diet, but not 50 mg boron/kg/day, for 30 and 60 days showed testicular atrophy.

Sorry. I tried to find out what would happen if you swallowed borax. There are several other reasons not to, but I couldn't stop picturing a conspiracy theorist talking about chemtrails and taking a sip of ball shrinking juice. Maybe he even thinks that it's from chemicals in the tap water and therefore increases his borax dose.

A friend of mine was a Nazi and believed that Jews controlled lots of stuff. He believed that they were trying to destroy white people through race mixing and therefore made the country take in more immigrants. He's getting treatment in prison now.

Installed Internet for this dude who was saying all kinds of crazy shit. The craziest was that he was in a famous rock band during the 80's and the government forced them to break up because their lyrics were female-positive and also included "top secret" information about the Star Wars program, which his own dad apparently worked on (along with how they actually have nukes and lasers in space to defend against the aliens).

When I finally was done with the job, I looked up the band he said he was in. No such band ever existed. The closest thing I could find to the name he gave me (which I've forgotten now) was some German techno band that was only formed like 3 years before I had looked it up. The least he could have done was actually use an actual band name that existed in the 80's. lol

There's new conspiracy theories popping up;

The issue with conspiracy theories nowadays though, is stigma. There are plenty of people who tell me that there's super evil conspiracies. But calling those conspiracies makes people upset.

And not because their ideas are always unreasonable. It's just the stigma as far as I can tell

Just the other day my friend told me that if I put TikTok on my phone the Chinese government will connect my phone to all my other devices and accounts so they can get my juicy data.

I have a coworker that believes every single conspiracy theory out there. Thankfully he doesn't vote. I've only talked to the guy a couple times tho, so I can't remember any of the specifics.