Memories of the 28th Century

It is frightening how gullible most people are. That subject has come up a few times today, so I will honor it with a blog post. Apparently there were aliens on the Moon to greet Neil Armstrong, and there is an ancient alien base on the Moon. There are many websites that have detailed information about human and alien activities on the Moon and on Mars. Some of the information is perfectly serious; some might be legitimate data about those places, and some was clearly put together for humor. ...

I was thinking about conspiracies, propaganda, and who or what would be engaging in them. Conspiracy theory lovers often mention the Illuminati and the New World Order, but both are very much in the Classical Liberal tradition and wouldn’t deliberately lie. The Bilderberg Conference is cited as a planning forum for various nefarious schemes, but the actual facts belie that. The Rothschild family is mentioned, but they only go for the money, and harming potential customers is bad for business. Then ...

I just saw an article that suggested that the Malaysian airliner (MH370) that disappeared was stolen by aliens (link below), and that reminded me of other examples of aliens being used as scapegoats for things that some people are too lazy to understand, and for things where there is no evidence of anything. That is very lazy thinking. I don’t know when the first alien abduction was claimed, but there has not been any definite evidence of alien abduction yet. There have only been wild claims, naked ...

Or believing versus knowing

It has come to our attention that religious thinking has been spreading to other matters. By religious thinking I mean opinions that are believed or claimed as fact, without question and with nothing more substantial that a nudist’s pants to support them. Such unsupported ideas have appeared in politics, diet, clothing, and just about everything else, even in the hard sciences. It might be easier to say that it appears that more people are taking their ...

I was wondering whether the willingness or capacity to believe conspiracy theories and similar foolishness is a matter of education, or if it is inbred. Perhaps there is an innate predisposition to accept such things that needs to be triggered by something to become active. If the latter is the case, then many or even most people will erroneously think that the trigger is the cause, rather than just setting off the underlying condition. (This is a parallel with how many people think that smoking ...