This Weeks Patron Content - Conspiracy Theorists and Entitlement
Added 2024-03-13 01:15:08 +0000 UTCHey all,
I hope you enjoy this weeks video. If you have any ideas on topics you would like us to cover let me know :)
Thank you all so much for supporting the SGU!
-Jay
Comments
Thanks, Jay and Steve! I watched a good video a couple of years ago that talked about 3 main categories of motivations for believing in conspiracy theories: - Epistemic, to give a sense of certainty in understanding complex or mysterious events or phenomena - Existential, to feel less anxious about, or less powerless to control, one's life - Social, to feel good about having special knowledge and being part of an "in-group" (the entitlement aspect) Here is the video from The Living Philosophy on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXWLm4IE0ho
James LaGuardia
2024-03-16 20:14:47 +0000 UTCSounds a lot like "main character syndrome" in a roleplaying game, but applied to real life. Too bad 'plot armor' doesn't actually exist.
The Illuminaughty
2024-03-13 16:01:30 +0000 UTCTrue, but it still works. By eliminating childhood deaths, more people live to be taxed as well as longer. Why else would we vaccinate children? (#sarcasm) Plus most people weren't meant to reach SS retirement age.
Asymetra
2024-03-13 13:28:35 +0000 UTCThis adds another layer, certainly and kind of confirms something I suspected. However, I didn't think about the entitlement aspect of it. I was aware of the correlation between conspiracy myth thinking (I hate calling it a theory) and feeling a lack of control, but I also formed a hypothesis that there was a weird form of narcissism involved. They "figured it out" by "doing their own research" (You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.), which provides a mental boost from "accomplishing" something. It then makes them a threat to "THEM," and therefore must be taken out. Not killed. Never that. Just threatened, discredited. But the Conspiracist is now extremely important. And thus, taking them out would reveal the conspiracy the sheeples are too dumb to figure out, or even believe when the Truth is handed to them on a silver platter. Conspiracy thinking dovetails well with religious belief, believing simultaneously that we are worthless, yet the most important beings in the universe. Cognitive dissonance abounds. For some, it's a superpower.
Asymetra
2024-03-13 13:16:05 +0000 UTCThere's one small error in that theory. The reason the average life expectancy was so low was because infant and childhood mortality was so high. People that lived to adulthood generally lived close to as long as we do currently. But infant mortality significantly skews the average to a much lower age. Approximately 40% of people died as children either as infants or in the first five years, sometimes from things as minor as a fever.
Lisa Ertolahti
2024-03-13 12:44:04 +0000 UTCI've been working on my own conspiracy theory, it's a work in progress but here's what I have so far: Facts: 1. living people pay more taxes than dead people 2. The longer lived people pay more taxes than shorter lived people 3. Healthy people pay taxes, unhealthy people are a burden on tax paying people 4. From the 1500s onward, till around the year 1800, life expectancy throughout Europe hovered between 30 and 40 years of age 5. As of 2021, life expectancy in most industrialized countries is more than 75 years. 6. Governments love taxing people Governments of the world have long ago initiated a secret program to make people live longer healthier lives so that the governments can tax people longer. Vaccines have been created to keep tax paying citizens paying their taxes. There is a faction of anti-government people who create various conspiracy theories, such as the anti-vaxxers, to frustrate the efforts of governments from collecting taxes.
Jim
2024-03-13 09:28:23 +0000 UTC
