Why Conspiracy Theories?

[Mr. Tea]

You might all like to know what while attempting to find all luka's posts including the phrase "Thick as fuck", I got the two search fields the wrong way round, so the forum gave me the error:

Cannot find the following user: Thick as fuck.

 

[IdleRich]

yes its hard to do. my natural assumption is that im better than everyone. thats normal. i sympathise. i think remainers are mostly thick as fuck with their EU flags in their twitter bios etc. i think people who eat at harvester are thick as fuck. i think people that wear boat shoes are thick as fuck. the list goes on. but i also think this is a reprehensible habit of mine.

Yes there is also that. But I think that similarly and possibly relatedly, as soon as we go "let's look at Tories" or "Why do people play computer games?" or something, then we are creating a group that (even if we are part of that group, paradoxically or counter-intuitively at least) we can step away from and just observe, even understand, predict etc And once you start feeling that you understand that group and they themselves don't, then you naturally start feeling as though you are above them. Which is a different from just thinking you're better than someone cos of built-in arrogance or cos they wear shit clothes or like NFL or whatever.

 

[Leo]

As a wise former president once said, "there were very fine people, on both sides".

 

[wild greens]

Had to google his name but i do like that the Great Reset feels like a direct nod to Polanyi's Great Transformation from Century of Self

I would be more invested in it if a) it wasn't so banal and b) if the people I know who believe that it's actually happening weren't so fucking stupid

Anyway there's my day late reply, far too busy

 

[mixed_biscuits]

The Great Reset

There is an urgent need for global stakeholders to cooperate in simultaneously managing the direct consequences of the COVID-19 crisis. To improve the state of the world, the World Economic Forum is starting The Great Reset initiative.

www.weforum.org

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Only a 'new social contract' - nothing too major

 

[wild greens]

I am aware of the origin

Not convinced

 

[luka]

not convinced of what exactly?

 

[mixed_biscuits]

I am aware of the origin

Not convinced

 

[luka]

i think, reading between the lines, that greens has a lot of friends and work collegues that are convinced conspiracy nuts and hes bored of them trying to convince him that we are all going to be slaves of the robots at some point in the near future

 

[Mr. Tea]

Only a 'new social contract' - nothing too major

Devil's advocate here, but: is the current 'social contract' really all that great for most people?

 

[Mr. Tea]

So much of the conspiracy theory narrative is something along the lines of "the elites are taking over the world!" - as if they haven't already, as if we're currently living in some egalitarian paradise that must be protected at all costs.

 

[wild greens]

i think, reading between the lines, that greens has a lot of friends and work collegues that are convinced conspiracy nuts and hes bored of them trying to convince him that we are all going to be slaves of the robots at some point in the near future

Not many in work but yes there is a selection of people who are completely boss-eyed over this and it is just another disparate collection of coincidental factors uniting to expand on the classic new world order theory

It's just really flawed. I'll go through this winter oak thing while I have a few minutes

• The AI technology takeover isn't really as advanced as a lot of the hype suggests & from what I've saw in my (admittedly very specific) field, it takes as many people to check and maintain as it does replace. I'm sure it will change longterm but right now not that feasible or reliable. The global resource shortage fucks this up anyway- how do we end up with enough AI machines to take over the universe when you can't even buy a PS5 at the moment.
• The health screening, contract tracing, digital passport etc is already largely scrapped - I would bet my hat that the unvaccinated lot can travel wherever they want this summer. I've never had an NHS app, have you? This is two seperate points in the same article and neither of them actually work.
• Net zero climate is highly unlikely anytime soon but the idea that this is a negative is a bit mad anyway, and who would this negatively effect
• Israel! Why does this always end up being about Jews?
• "This war marks a major inflection point in the globalist aspiration for a new international rules based order anchored in Eurasia." this I half agree with but why is there no mention of India's support of Russia? Quite a big miss for a huge conceptual reading of the modern economic situation.
• " The economic implications of this war will be so disastrous that governments and the public sector will require a significant injection of private capital to address the financing shortfall" - hardly takes a rocket scientist to figure this one out. But how many times has this happened over the years and why is this one any different?

*

Its largely just weak paranoia to me, and all your highly vocal proponents are the same knobheads who told us we'd be using vaccine passports to take a shit and buy bread by now.

There is no doubt acres of mad shit happening that we have no idea about but this one is so clumsy and join-the-dots its almost embarrassing

 

[luka]

it is absolutely the new world order in a new costume, that's correct.

 

[luka]

and to that extent it is the apocolypse we are always promised that never arrives, is constantly postponed. but if you take these end points, or attractors and use them to measure progress towards or away from them then i think they can be useful.

civil liberty activists work in the same way, from a vision of total surveillance, and how any one measure moves us closer towards that dystopia.

or the bogeyman of fascism. trump wasn't a fascist and perhaps it was hysterical to suggest he was going to institute fascism but having the bogeyman there as a standard to judge him by is no bad thing.

 

[luka]

having an idea of the trajectory and end point of any given trend is no bad thing, in other words.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Trump isn't ideological enough to be a fascist (or at all, really) but he was unequivocally supported by fascists.

 

[luka]

yes sure but thats the point i am making

 

[luka]

the point i was making is that while things rarely if ever reach their ideal form it's not a bad idea to have a firm grip of what their ideal form might look like

 

[luka]

so greens is almost certainly right to say we wont be the slaves of robots some time later this year. but its not unreasonable to think about what a world of full automation might look like for example. what does a world look like when people are surplus to requirements.

and of course the same goes for digital ID etc. whether it ever happens or not is a moot point but it's not at all mad to consider what the implications of such a scheme might be and to be aware that there are people, princes, demons, archons etc that are quite fond of the idea.