[FRIAM] Guided Apophenia

[uǝlƃ ↙↙↙]

That article was so painful to read! It's a good 'theory': basically that the Q character is an explicit, funded campaign. But we'd need a little evidence, which the author doesn't provide. So, it looks to me like they're looping it around. A conspiracy theory about a conspiracy theory. A 2nd order conspiracy!

The sprinkle of scientific articles was a nice touch ... adds that slight hint of authority ... "You can read those papers yourself. Do your own research!" And the explicit title "Curiouser Institute" provides more evidence that Rabbit Rabbit (the author) *intended* the post to present a 2nd order conspiracy theory ... you know, Lewis Carroll being Lewis Carroll and all (Oh wait! Lewis Carroll WASN'T Lewis Carroll! ... And he was [rumored to be -ed] a pedophile! Damn you Q! He's probably a Democrat and a close friend of Hillary. [he died 50 years before she was born -ed] Now I have to scour all related material for goat heads and pentagrams.).

And my (apophenia-justified) conspiracy theory about Rabbit Rabbit's intentions produces a 3rd order conspiracy! It's turtles all the way down.

But, of course, my eyeballs popped out at the reference to Resnick's book, which hearkens back to my post on 11/2 about the role of ad hominem in critical thinking <http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ad-hominem-as-critical-thinking-tt7599336.html>, which is very questionable simply because *I* posted it. 8^D I have trustworthy evidence I'm featured prominently at the top of many a killfile.

This examination of vote counts and Benford's law is related: https://youtu.be/etx0k1nLn78. Funny patterns in data are merely abductive triggers, not evidence. It strikes me that the overwhelming majority of investigative journalism is simply methodical ad hominem, as in Rabbit Rabbit's piece, "Follow the money. Don’t let them fool you. This goes all the way to the top." Perhaps we can suggest Rabbit Rabbit's apophenic "evidence" that Q is a moderately funded campaign to Pro Publica?

On November 11, 2020 6:46:28 PM PST, Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:
>wicked good (but frightening) analysis of QAnon
>
>https://medium.com/curiouserinstitute/a-game-designers-analysis-of-qanon-580972548be5