Healthy intellects almost by definition must contain the scars of years of examining where they were wrong. It's when people are not allowed to be wrong, or always given extra chances to be right, that they end up in frames of mind where they will simply believe what it is they're being told.
I had the (fortunate?) experience of growing up in a christian cult that dissolved itself as I became an adult and learning the value of spotting the signs that what you're being told is bullshit, even when the person telling you doesn't want you to see that.
The post on aliens vs wokeness is a good technique for getting people to examine their thinking, if only they'll admit to themselves they were fooled. That's the first step for everyone, admitting to yourself that you can be fooled, that you have been fooled, and that you may be fooled again.
Spoiler alert: don't read my comment if you still want to read the alien piece.
My analysis: I am a skimmer, at least with my first read-thru. The phone did catch my attention, but I discounted it, imagining a flip-phone and doing some quick math with your age (early 40s I think). The story appealed, as imagining Aliens as having a sense of humour is more attractive than the alternative. I thought, though, that if true, there most certainly would have been a post-script with your GF's/now wife's reaction. That would have been more memorable to you all these year's later, than the aliens themselves. I also was waiting for some details about the horrible, smelly ride home. More unpacking? The tongue in cheek tone of the 2nd entry and the phone again. Like something this big happening would most certainly result in a video/pic and be splashed all over the news in both scenarios (well, the National Enquirer would have certainly been all over your story, with CNN all over the second).
I then re-read the first part, including the title and Zuby's tweet.
Other takeaways? Trust and the argument of authority are powerful lenses from which we view the world. Hence, the cognitive dissonance I felt from reading your alien story. You have earned our trust, so my first instinct was to believe your tale, regardless of how "out of character" and how "out of this world" it sounded.
This same earned trust or trust in authority allowed the exploitation of the masses by the likes of Dr. Fauci and the alphabet agencies. In a similar vein, confirmation bias for those who've been brainwashed to believe the worst about society resulted in the 150,000 likes on the second Twitter thread.
This was a good exercise/psychological experiment!
I agree, John, "earned trust or trust in authority" are not the same. There is a cross-over of sorts thought. Because in Canada, at the very least, when I worked in a hospital the FDA and CDC were considered gold standards. They must have had some credibility at some point (they pulled swine flu vaccine in the 70s), right? Likewise, Health Canada had earned respect at one point - they switched to 90% pharma funding a few years ago (I didn't know that until recently). So many now trusting ARE basing their trust on these institutions' authority, but based on former earned trust, that is now severely misplaced.
OK, I failed big time. My initial reaction to the story was: "What! Why are you saying this?" My focus was on what people would be hearing, not on whether any of it was true.
Regarding lessons on epistemology: well, I wonder, how many people here understand that catastrophic CO2 warming is pseudoscience; that is, how many understand the epistemological basis of that science? And how does it relate to DoD and Great Reset and everything else? It's my theory that CO2 warming pseudoscience is deliberate and is part of the reset trajectory. Just curious: does everyone see this? Or do some of us still think that CO2 catastrophic warming is real and is an emergency?
I think I failed Mathew's test, but not because I was confused. I think maybe I am just too old. When the alien story got to the peeing part, my mind could only think, "I have seen the movie before, but the theme song in Close Encounters was way better." On the Amtrak part, I have ridden them many times, but only on the Empire Builder through Spokane. Those trains only operate in the middle of the night. I was unable to take my lived experience of groggy passengers in the dark to those shouting "pedophile!" at other passengers. The most exciting thing that happened to me on those trips was asking the guy next to me when I boarded, why was the train delayed two hours at the previous stop? His answer: it took that long for the coroner to come haul off the guy that died in his seat. (Don't go there: this long predates COVID)
Apr 17, 2022·edited Apr 17, 2022Liked by Mathew Crawford
As I started reading the alien article, I was reminded how you said you would have been happy to remain anonymous. Then when it sounded like the second and third aliens peed on you, I knew it was fiction. Seriously, they can travel trillions of miles but they have not evolved to not have to pee?🤣
Otherwise I have been wondering, if our leaders are so focused on keeping power that they would unleash a pandemic, provoke a war against Russia, lie outright about The Science to support the narrative and destroy the Dollar to get their digital control currency, it seems to me it would be nothing then to fake a much digital election.
I also see a connection between this pandemic and the money system. There's no way we can get ourselves out of this national debt. So they needed to weaken people, weaken local economies to be able to transition to another money system that keeps the rich wealthy, in control of the money system, and keep the assets that they have bought up. It's the same boom and bust cycle of the manipulated stock market where the banks takes people's assets. This is happening to countries around the world.
I thought this was an INSANE hypothesis when I heard anarchists say this in Feb. and March 2020. Now it's the explanation that makes the most sense of all.
Apr 16, 2022·edited Apr 16, 2022Liked by Mathew Crawford
LOL. I knew the alien story was BS immediately. "Here goes Mathew with another lesson on epistemology again..." But I thought it was going to be about optical illusions or a near death experience.... haha
I have to say I did not immediately detect your alien story as fake. I caught on when the alien winked and the other aliens also pissed on you. Personally I never know where to draw the line with alien abduction stories. Obviously anyone telling such a story has a better-than-typical likelihood of being loony, so you can't use the same set of metrics to detect fabrication. In this case, it was only when it began to sound like something Christopher Steele would send to Buzzfeed, or that would be given in testimony in a supreme court confirmation hearing, that I caught on.
Your comment about the DOD being at the center of this is interesting, as we do seem to have more than one State Intel Agency involved. Perhaps even "all" of them. If multiple intelligence agencies are cooperating that is a bad sign, and it may indicate this is a lot bigger than we thought.
Well Mathew you may think you were joking but you don't even know how close you are.
I just finished an article that outlines the Transhumanist Agenda and the origin of Transhumanism is exactly that... an "Alien" agenda so to speak that see the "Human Condition" as a stepping stone to immortality.
They see us as animals... and they see themselves as Gods over us...
Interesting mindset they have, nothing short of megalomania but there are a few very prominent people who drive technology that most people would not believe exists which is designed to enslave humanity such as manufacturing microchips at atomic level.
Having had experience with UFO's, I didn't think the story was fishy until the car was acting on its own. Of course all subsequent things were beyond credible. There was however a pull on my mind, because I do have "faith" in what you write. I'm looking for explanations for the unexplainable. The unexplainable, as best as I can reason, is because my model of expectations for humans is way to optimistic.
I saw a UFO many years ago (in the sky, no aliens!) so I'm not super quick to dismiss a story about seeing something out of the ordinary. But I was suspicious from the beginning by the wording of a tale "never told". Surely you wouldn't keep an ET encounter secret all these years! Of course, the "humanoid" sealed the deal! 😂
Now there is all cause mortality data from the state of Massachusetts. How many of these datasets are public now? (UK, Indiana life insurers, original DMED data...) With so many datasets showing young people dying starting roughly Q3 2021, the (apparently faked) DOD DMED data should have the burden to explain why their dataset does not show same rise as all the others.
I remember when the SARS pandemic happened and there was talk of locking everything down the way it happened in 2020 but luckily the virus petered out before that could be seriously considered.
I don’t think pandemics like this are possible from natural causes in first-world countries in this day and age. Everything is too sanitized to enable the really deadly bugs like Ebola, and the tendency of the less deadly but more spreadable viruses is to evolve to be less deadly, not more. It’s like they’re anthropomorphizing the virus in expecting it to evolve to be deadlier, like how a predator evolves to be more efficient at catching prey, which is certainly the intuition that many in the public may have about it making it easier to fool them about this but the fact is that the virus is less like a predator than a parasite which depends on its host remaining ALIVE for its survival. What are the odds of a virus spontaneously mutating to be ultra-transmissible AND deadly enough to burden hospitals and on top of all that be something that most of the population doesn’t already have sufficient preexisting immunity to so that the mutation gets nipped in the bud? And why would you have to eat the bat to get it if it’s airborne? Why does nobody get coronavirus from breathing the same air as bats? I wonder what’s wrong with all these computer simulations that predict spontaneous pandemics. Too many variables, certainly may be rigged as well. I think the default assumption for such a bug should be that it’s a bioweapon, or at the very least manmade.
Good morning Matthew - on the Masking front, one of the completely unmentioned (other than my blog https://controlgroup.science/2021/08/27/mask-mandate-science/ ) negatives of masking is the inhalation of microplastic particles, which can probably never be removed from lung tissue. For just the science go here - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7773316/
Healthy intellects almost by definition must contain the scars of years of examining where they were wrong. It's when people are not allowed to be wrong, or always given extra chances to be right, that they end up in frames of mind where they will simply believe what it is they're being told.
I had the (fortunate?) experience of growing up in a christian cult that dissolved itself as I became an adult and learning the value of spotting the signs that what you're being told is bullshit, even when the person telling you doesn't want you to see that.
The post on aliens vs wokeness is a good technique for getting people to examine their thinking, if only they'll admit to themselves they were fooled. That's the first step for everyone, admitting to yourself that you can be fooled, that you have been fooled, and that you may be fooled again.
Spoiler alert: don't read my comment if you still want to read the alien piece.
My analysis: I am a skimmer, at least with my first read-thru. The phone did catch my attention, but I discounted it, imagining a flip-phone and doing some quick math with your age (early 40s I think). The story appealed, as imagining Aliens as having a sense of humour is more attractive than the alternative. I thought, though, that if true, there most certainly would have been a post-script with your GF's/now wife's reaction. That would have been more memorable to you all these year's later, than the aliens themselves. I also was waiting for some details about the horrible, smelly ride home. More unpacking? The tongue in cheek tone of the 2nd entry and the phone again. Like something this big happening would most certainly result in a video/pic and be splashed all over the news in both scenarios (well, the National Enquirer would have certainly been all over your story, with CNN all over the second).
I then re-read the first part, including the title and Zuby's tweet.
Other takeaways? Trust and the argument of authority are powerful lenses from which we view the world. Hence, the cognitive dissonance I felt from reading your alien story. You have earned our trust, so my first instinct was to believe your tale, regardless of how "out of character" and how "out of this world" it sounded.
This same earned trust or trust in authority allowed the exploitation of the masses by the likes of Dr. Fauci and the alphabet agencies. In a similar vein, confirmation bias for those who've been brainwashed to believe the worst about society resulted in the 150,000 likes on the second Twitter thread.
This was a good exercise/psychological experiment!
I agree, John, "earned trust or trust in authority" are not the same. There is a cross-over of sorts thought. Because in Canada, at the very least, when I worked in a hospital the FDA and CDC were considered gold standards. They must have had some credibility at some point (they pulled swine flu vaccine in the 70s), right? Likewise, Health Canada had earned respect at one point - they switched to 90% pharma funding a few years ago (I didn't know that until recently). So many now trusting ARE basing their trust on these institutions' authority, but based on former earned trust, that is now severely misplaced.
OK, I failed big time. My initial reaction to the story was: "What! Why are you saying this?" My focus was on what people would be hearing, not on whether any of it was true.
Regarding lessons on epistemology: well, I wonder, how many people here understand that catastrophic CO2 warming is pseudoscience; that is, how many understand the epistemological basis of that science? And how does it relate to DoD and Great Reset and everything else? It's my theory that CO2 warming pseudoscience is deliberate and is part of the reset trajectory. Just curious: does everyone see this? Or do some of us still think that CO2 catastrophic warming is real and is an emergency?
Are we all on the page?
I think I failed Mathew's test, but not because I was confused. I think maybe I am just too old. When the alien story got to the peeing part, my mind could only think, "I have seen the movie before, but the theme song in Close Encounters was way better." On the Amtrak part, I have ridden them many times, but only on the Empire Builder through Spokane. Those trains only operate in the middle of the night. I was unable to take my lived experience of groggy passengers in the dark to those shouting "pedophile!" at other passengers. The most exciting thing that happened to me on those trips was asking the guy next to me when I boarded, why was the train delayed two hours at the previous stop? His answer: it took that long for the coroner to come haul off the guy that died in his seat. (Don't go there: this long predates COVID)
As I started reading the alien article, I was reminded how you said you would have been happy to remain anonymous. Then when it sounded like the second and third aliens peed on you, I knew it was fiction. Seriously, they can travel trillions of miles but they have not evolved to not have to pee?🤣
Otherwise I have been wondering, if our leaders are so focused on keeping power that they would unleash a pandemic, provoke a war against Russia, lie outright about The Science to support the narrative and destroy the Dollar to get their digital control currency, it seems to me it would be nothing then to fake a much digital election.
If they were girl aliens, then yes, we have to stop frequently. Every trillion miles or so.
I also see a connection between this pandemic and the money system. There's no way we can get ourselves out of this national debt. So they needed to weaken people, weaken local economies to be able to transition to another money system that keeps the rich wealthy, in control of the money system, and keep the assets that they have bought up. It's the same boom and bust cycle of the manipulated stock market where the banks takes people's assets. This is happening to countries around the world.
I thought this was an INSANE hypothesis when I heard anarchists say this in Feb. and March 2020. Now it's the explanation that makes the most sense of all.
Covid-1984 is a World Bank 5-year plan (just as USSR had them).
Yes. 😬
Welp. I need a walk.
LOL. I knew the alien story was BS immediately. "Here goes Mathew with another lesson on epistemology again..." But I thought it was going to be about optical illusions or a near death experience.... haha
Subscribed, thanks.
I have to say I did not immediately detect your alien story as fake. I caught on when the alien winked and the other aliens also pissed on you. Personally I never know where to draw the line with alien abduction stories. Obviously anyone telling such a story has a better-than-typical likelihood of being loony, so you can't use the same set of metrics to detect fabrication. In this case, it was only when it began to sound like something Christopher Steele would send to Buzzfeed, or that would be given in testimony in a supreme court confirmation hearing, that I caught on.
Your comment about the DOD being at the center of this is interesting, as we do seem to have more than one State Intel Agency involved. Perhaps even "all" of them. If multiple intelligence agencies are cooperating that is a bad sign, and it may indicate this is a lot bigger than we thought.
The DoD and the intelligence agencies are joined at the hip. So too is the banking industry a part of that body Moloch.
First camera phone wasn’t available until 1999 (I had to look it up)
Depends on the source of the story, but there was one available in Japan in 1997 even.
Well Mathew you may think you were joking but you don't even know how close you are.
I just finished an article that outlines the Transhumanist Agenda and the origin of Transhumanism is exactly that... an "Alien" agenda so to speak that see the "Human Condition" as a stepping stone to immortality.
They see us as animals... and they see themselves as Gods over us...
Interesting mindset they have, nothing short of megalomania but there are a few very prominent people who drive technology that most people would not believe exists which is designed to enslave humanity such as manufacturing microchips at atomic level.
https://fritzfreud.substack.com/p/zen-vs-the-transhumanist-agenda?s=w
FF, it is exactly these kinds of possibilities I was referring to with the comment about seemingly "all" Intel Agencies being in on the game.
Add that mRNA reprogramming to the mix, and anything is possible, from "World Communist Revolution" to "They Live."
PS. Subscribed.
They live is a Documentary not a film...
Thnx
Having had experience with UFO's, I didn't think the story was fishy until the car was acting on its own. Of course all subsequent things were beyond credible. There was however a pull on my mind, because I do have "faith" in what you write. I'm looking for explanations for the unexplainable. The unexplainable, as best as I can reason, is because my model of expectations for humans is way to optimistic.
I saw a UFO many years ago (in the sky, no aliens!) so I'm not super quick to dismiss a story about seeing something out of the ordinary. But I was suspicious from the beginning by the wording of a tale "never told". Surely you wouldn't keep an ET encounter secret all these years! Of course, the "humanoid" sealed the deal! 😂
Now there is all cause mortality data from the state of Massachusetts. How many of these datasets are public now? (UK, Indiana life insurers, original DMED data...) With so many datasets showing young people dying starting roughly Q3 2021, the (apparently faked) DOD DMED data should have the burden to explain why their dataset does not show same rise as all the others.
I remember when the SARS pandemic happened and there was talk of locking everything down the way it happened in 2020 but luckily the virus petered out before that could be seriously considered.
I don’t think pandemics like this are possible from natural causes in first-world countries in this day and age. Everything is too sanitized to enable the really deadly bugs like Ebola, and the tendency of the less deadly but more spreadable viruses is to evolve to be less deadly, not more. It’s like they’re anthropomorphizing the virus in expecting it to evolve to be deadlier, like how a predator evolves to be more efficient at catching prey, which is certainly the intuition that many in the public may have about it making it easier to fool them about this but the fact is that the virus is less like a predator than a parasite which depends on its host remaining ALIVE for its survival. What are the odds of a virus spontaneously mutating to be ultra-transmissible AND deadly enough to burden hospitals and on top of all that be something that most of the population doesn’t already have sufficient preexisting immunity to so that the mutation gets nipped in the bud? And why would you have to eat the bat to get it if it’s airborne? Why does nobody get coronavirus from breathing the same air as bats? I wonder what’s wrong with all these computer simulations that predict spontaneous pandemics. Too many variables, certainly may be rigged as well. I think the default assumption for such a bug should be that it’s a bioweapon, or at the very least manmade.