[FRIAM] Collective sensemaking

[uǝlƃ ☤>$]

I intended to ignore this. A right-wing publication <https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Quillette> criticizing an alt-right troll <https://bookshop.org/books/against-the-web-a-cosmopolitan-answer-to-the-new-right/9781789042306>?! Good, I'm glad your community of sociopaths is fractured. Maybe you'll all eat each other and let the world heal.

But because I'm a rubber-necker who loves zombie and slasher movie gore, I finally looked into the "Ground Truth Challenge" and it seems to present an opportunity to explore the composition/division fallacy: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_composition

which should concern anyone interested in obscure gen-phen mapping. Let's just assume the referees involved will find against all the unrejected objections to isolated claims made by BW. Does that, then, imply that BW is not "promoting quackery"?

As a fan of conspiracy theories like Jack Parsons being an occult practitioner, the Deep Hot Biosphere, Evolution Without Selection, etc., it's difficult NOT to notice how conspiracy peddlers like BW effectively use factoids and then rely on their audience to "fill in the gaps". This is the essence of Lakoff's diagnosis of Trump's ... uh ... performance art rallies. It's the essence of how leaders like Charles Manson persuade their followers to, say, murder people, without ever explicitly ordering them to do so.

As I've alluded before, the fallacy of composition is particularly lethal to narrativity ... just because the factoids are, in isolation, "true", doesn't mean the narrative they serve is "true". What we desperately need is a calculus by which to demonstrate how/when/why systemic properties reduce and when they don't. And we don't even need culture war fetishes like ivermectin or critical race theory to discuss it. We can retreat to safe territory like physics and math. >8^D


On 7/17/21 10:16 PM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
> I'm a big fan of but some members of this group have been highly critical of Bret Weinstein in previous emails. I'll be monitoring the exercise described below where the integrity of Bret Weinstein will be scrutinized.
> 
> Background
> The online magazine Quilette published an article https://quillette.com/2021/07/06/looking-for-covid-19-miracle-drugs-we-already-have-them-theyre-called-vaccines/ <https://quillette.com/2021/07/06/looking-for-covid-19-miracle-drugs-we-already-have-them-theyre-called-vaccines/> highly critical of Bret Weinstein and his guests.
> 
> Now, supporters of Bret decided to challenge the article and are launching a $10k "Ground truth challenge". https://www.betterskeptics.com/launching-the-10k-ground-truth-challenge/ <https://www.betterskeptics.com/launching-the-10k-ground-truth-challenge/>
> 


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☤>$ uǝlƃ