Your Conspiracy Theory Free Pass

[SuperBacon]

1 hour ago, organizedkaos said:

Suggesting that Shakespeare didn't write his plays but Francis Bacon did works with that. Francis Bacon is the son of a lord, of course he'd be better at stuff than Shakespeare

Excellent, EXCELLENT surname as well.

[Keith Houchen]

Knowledge is power - France is bacon. 

[Merzbow]

4 hours ago, Keith Houchen said:

Yeah I remember that one. It’s completely rooted in misogyny and seems to forget that she was extremely successful in her own right anyway. She’s one of the people I’ve done a 180 on over the years. She is absolutely bang on about the abuse and misogyny in entertainment. And “Awful” is one of the best songs of that era!

There's so many genuine reasons to dislike her, a long history of racism among them but yeah it's always the sexist garbage thrown her way.

[Jazzy G]

4 hours ago, Keith Houchen said:

Yeah I remember that one. It’s completely rooted in misogyny and seems to forget that she was extremely successful in her own right anyway. She’s one of the people I’ve done a 180 on over the years. She is absolutely bang on about the abuse and misogyny in entertainment. And “Awful” is one of the best songs of that era!

She really turned her life around. 

[BomberPat]

On 1/12/2023 at 12:07 PM, Carbomb said:

There was a fascinating article a few years ago by some academics at UCLA, where they used AI and folkloric structures to map out how conspiracy theories (i.e. the extreme tinfoil hat ones) work, and how delicate they actually are, because they rely on all their elements connecting to each other and holding up to scrutiny.

https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/how-conspiracy-theories-emerge-and-fall-apart

 

Finally got round to reading this, loved it. 

I often worry that debunking or arguing against conspiracies can often make you look just as mental as they do - because it can involve drawing connections between things that seem completely unrelated, and it starts to look like you're the one with the wall-chart of newspaper clippings. For example, when it comes to stuff like Ancient Aliens, it can all feel really harmless and just a bit of fun, but if you look into it, you can see how it props up racist, colonialist narratives, how it sows distrust in academia and science, and how elements of the "theory" have been weaponised by Soviet Russia during the Cold War, and by Hindu Nationalists now; but without doing a fair amount of legwork to explain all that, it sounds like I'm just pulling together completely unrelated concepts. But, following the logic of that article, those arguments still hold up, because there are more genuine connections than tenuous ones.

It's not quite what the article is about - the exploitation of Ancient Alien/Astronaut theory isn't really an active conspiracy so much as something that multiple bad actors have independently exploited - but it's an interesting way of looking at things.

The first thing that came to mind for me was an argument I got into with a creationist on the Guardian website while bored at work about ten years ago. The point I kept trying to get him to address was that even if it were possible to prove that the Earth was 2000 years old, that Intelligent Design played a hand in its creation, and all the rest of it, that still isn't proof that whatever created it was specifically the God of the Bible.

[Tommy!]

On 1/10/2023 at 11:08 AM, simonworden said:

Plenty of times I've had a conversation about something and get adds for it which goes beyond coincidence

Do you own an alexa by any chance? If so I might just have the inside scoop to blow this story wide open bro. 

[gmoney]

Guy at work was convinced his phone was recording him for ads and cited the fact we'd been chatting about a 5 a side team for work and him getting ads for 5-a-side pitches on facebook that very afternoon. Spooky, you think, until I pointed out I'd watched him search for them on the very same phone just after we'd talked about it. 

[Tommy!]

I'm not a conspiracy bod but given some stuff that does come out as true I can see why people do. The problem with most I have heard is the how and why, the stuff that comes out always has a very basic explanation for both (MK Ultra or the proposed Operation Northwood for example) but I went around a museum of espionage in East Germany and some of the lengths gone to to monitor people and groups of interest makes it perfectly feasible it also happens now in this high tech world. 

There was also an exhibit in the science museum when I went years ago which pulled posts from a series of forums and read it aloud with text to speech. I've also seen twitter used in models to find trends in words from other words, so again I can believe that's done somewhere in the realm of national security. 

Am I being watch, probably not. And if I am someone's got a boring job sifting through the shit I post here and twitter and dozens of Google searches for "real ale in (town/city)" but I can believe it happens.

And to be fair if we are it's just like them leaning over your shoulder to read your screen

 

Off Topic, and really the only reason I wanted to post, but I like to think back to that science museum exhibit and imagine a family sitting down on the benches near it to eat a sandwich after a fun family day out to be met with stories of shitting in sweet tins or trying to break up bangers and mash with a drill bit from this place to really top thier day off. 

Edited January 17, 2023 by Tommy!

[BomberPat]

The surveillance culture stuff is interesting, and another good example of a real phenomenon can very easily bleed into conspiracy - yes, a lot of devices are "listening" to you, a lot of websites are harvesting and potentially selling your data. But it's not part of some over-reaching conspiracy, it's late stage capitalism, that's how social media companies and the likes operate. They're making money, and that's all there is to it - there's no grand plan. 

I've heard lots about how complex it is - that your phone recognises if it's often in close proximity to another phone, so starts tailoring responses based on that; so if your partner is regularly searching for things, that will start influencing the algorithm on your phone, that sort of thing. I don't know how true that is. In reality, most of us use one or two devices and only a handful of accounts to access everything - logging in with Google or Meta, or Apple, or whatever, so of course our data is in common across all of those places.

I had this conversation at the pub recently, and the point I always use is that if all of these companies and the government are spying on us, it's refreshing to know just how bad they are at it. There's a page in your Instagram settings where you can see what categories of ad they think you're interested in, and mine is absurdly wrong. Here's some of the list, in order. I haven't cut anything out, not focusing on the weirder ones, this is what Meta thinks my "interest categories" are:

Spoiler

1. Marvel Studios - I could happily never watch an MCU film or series again
2. Japanese language - I follow some accounts that mostly post in Japanese, so fair enough
3. Apartment List - what?
4. UEFA Europa League - I have never gone out of my way to watch football, don't follow any football accounts
5. One-Punch Man - I know it's a manga thing, that's all.
6. Gift basket - I guess?
7. Yahoo! Auctions - never used it.
8. Boarding school - absolutely not.
9. Private school - also not.
10. Amazon Kindle - never owned one.
11. Department store - ?
12. Dog health - I don't own a dog.
13. Coffee bean - I drink coffee, I suppose?
14. Tea (meal) - not really an interest, is it?
15. Arsenal F.C. - nope
16. Otaku - hardly.
17. Pro Tools - don't use it
18. Scottish Fold - I don't know what this is
19. DC Universe - see Marvel
20. Bike (magazine) - never heard of it

Going through the whole list, there's maybe 10 things I'm actually interested in, and most of them are either so broad as to apply to almost anyone, or a pretty safe bet based on what I post - "professional wrestling", for example. A random number generator would probably do a better job. The main thing to remember is that, for most of us, the internet doesn't know who we are, they know what we buy and what we consume, and hopefully most of us have more of a life than that.

On an AI sidenote, a lecturer I used to work with was adamant that somewhere down the line there'll be a class action suit against Google, because they've used Captchas and various "I'm not a robot" tests to "teach" their AI, and that means we've all been doing unpaid work for them in teaching AI what is or isn't a traffic light.

[Carbomb]

Scottish Fold's a breed of cat - so named because their ears naturally fold downwards. 

Agreed with all of that post - the mechanical issue with a lot of the Tinfoil Hat Conspiracies (THC?! We're through the looking-glass here, people!) is that they've focused almost exclusively on the "how", and allowed the nature of it to shape the "why". 

[Tommy!]

13 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

yes, a lot of devices are "listening" to you, a lot of websites are harvesting and potentially selling your data. But it's not part of some over-reaching conspiracy, it's late stage capitalism, that's how social media companies and the likes operate. They're making money, and that's all there is to it - there's no grand plan. 

-

I had this conversation at the pub recently, and the point I always use is that if all of these companies and the government are spying on us, it's refreshing to know just how bad they are at it

As you say that's no conspiracy, you agree to all that when you sign up and is, as you say, marketing. I can believe if you post enough about, for example bombing the White House, you'd get picked up and listened into by the state but that's about it; I'm sure it's simple enough to whitelist words and phrases, catalog the locations and or users in some cases and it's in the name of state security. 

And having posted that example I'll say hello to everyone in Langley. 

 

Likewise I can believe that companies skew algorithms to push things they want, but again that's just marketing. 

 

The most mundane use of that sort tech I've seen is using the public WiFi to feed connected people's routes around shops so they can move stuff around to try and force as many people down all the isles as they can. 

[Keith Houchen]

I can’t believe the technological illiteracy on here. I haven’t had any algorithms track me or my browsing habits for a few years. I copied and pasted a thing on my Facebook saying how I do not consent to their tracking or stealing my pictures and that was that. 

[Carbomb]

26 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

I can’t believe the technological illiteracy on here. I haven’t had any algorithms track me or my browsing habits for a few years. I copied and pasted a thing on my Facebook saying how I do not consent to their tracking or stealing my pictures and that was that. 

So you don't get loads of adverts for plastic/unbreakable cutlery or joke books?

[Keith Houchen]

7 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

So you don't get loads of adverts for plastic/unbreakable cutlery or joke books?

Why would I? I don’t need them. 

[Jazzy G]

Lots of great offers on travel between London & Manchester, though.