[FRIAM] Guided Apophenia

[Steve Smith]

Yes, it was all very meta-meta and as you say rabbit-turtles all the way
down the turtle hole... I found the self-exemplary style effective in a
disturbing way.  I don't know if that is what you meant by "hard to
read"... keeping track of the extra levels of indirection (with the risk
of infinite recursion)? 

I was left also with the paradox parallel to "good guys with guns" of
wondering at the idea that anyone can (and many do) engage in guided
aphophenia, and in fact that seems to be the basis of all (effective)
rhetorical discourse?   Who do we become if we begin to deliberately
manipulate the belief systems of others "for their own good".   Is
politics anything else but that?   But I can't help wanting to make it
my next mini-career... to set up mini whirlwinds of anti-cyclonic
conspiracies to collide with the cyclonic ones being spun by the likes
of Q (individual or collective).

Your reference to the little evidence, etc. leads me to another new word
I encountered: "Aeteology" in the tongue-in-cheek usage of your own
oft-lobbed "just so stories".   Is there any difference between a "just
so story" and "a conspiracy?".   Intent?  Consequence? 
Convergence/Divergence?


On 11/12/20 7:27 AM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:
> 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
> - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
> un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 
>