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Memories of the 28th Century

Fighting Big Lies

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“A big lie (German: große Lüge) is a propaganda technique. The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, about the use of a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie

“I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true." The Bellman in “The Hunting of the Snark” https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Hunting_of_the_Snark

The above are two of the most common and important techniques in propaganda: Make the lies so big that no one would believe you made them up, and lies repeated become truth. I am writing this now, because I was thinking about writing a detailed refutation of the argument for Anthropogenic Climate Change, but when I started putting it together I realized that there is no substance to it; the “science” is a web of lies, half truths and quarter truths, and misstatements and the data has been significantly faked. It is a big lie, so big that no one could have made it up, so everyone is expected to believe it. And I don’t think that anyone did make it up; I think that is was built by people acting separately whose work happened to work together.
Then I looked around, and it became clear that there were many more examples of that persuasive technique in use, and Donald Trump is an excellent example. There is a link below to an article that lists some of Trump’s lies; it is an interesting list, but I never believed any of them. In both cases people are telling lies and repeating the lies over and over, and most people just eat it up.

The medical industry has used big lies in the past and may be dreaming up even more. Notable lies that the medical industry has used (although some have been dropped) include the cholesterol myth, the idea that cholesterol causes heart disease; this has been thoroughly debunked, but some medical people still profess it. Within the last few years there has been a push to get people to use sunscreen and/or avoid sunlight, because it causes cancer. This has bee debunked, but many people still believe it. Following this myth can cause many diseases, but people still pour on the sunscreen. Apparently they don’t realize that melanoma is caused by a genetic defect that can be triggered by sunburn. I don’t know if anyone still believes it, but some people used to think that massive doses of vitamin C could cure and/or prevent colds. That was dreamed up by Linus Pauling, a Nobel prize winning chemist who wasn’t much for medical research.

Then there are the lies in social and criminal activity. It is still widely thought that drug addiction is a moral failing, and that crime is caused by moral difficiencies. Drug addictions are caused by imbalances in neuro-transmitters, and crime has many causes; although nearly all criminals are of low intelligence.

Big Lies do have the advantage that they can’t be refuted in detail, because they are simply completely false. While normal lies can be refuted in detail. For example, When Bill Clinton said, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman," it was relatively easy to explain that he had had sexual relations with that woman. Even when Big Lies can be shown for what they are people will often hang onto the lies. This might be an underlying deficiency in human thought processes, because The only way to counter a big lie is with another big lie.

This apparent need for big lies probably is the key to the development of religions, and it is another reason why I might get into the religion business. After all, I have had a revelation, and it was sent by the Gods. And I will be able to reap a mighty harvest, tax free. It appears that the only way to eliminate big lies is with a bigger lie, especially one direct opposed.. There are big lies that have been around for hundreds of years, and don’t show any signs of abating. One that comes to mind is the thing about here being several races of humans, even though the human species has no subspecies or races. But many people prefer to believe the lie. How do we get them to change their opinion without putting some other lie in the place of the present lie?

I have heard that television is a major source of lies, but I don’t watch it, unless I am in a bar where one is on, so I have the pleasure of evading those lies.


https://www.buzzfeed.com/maryanngeor...Z9p#.rdMB4y69E

Comments

  1. Magnocrat's Avatar
    It is a problem for me as a complete layman to know what to believe and some experts in a particular subject seem to think they are universal experts. Regarding medicine it has always been somewhat changeable, but we cannot argue that it is not moving in the right direction.
    In politics exaggeration and lies are absolutely essential to be elected and that involves the popular media.
  2. PeterL's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Magnocrat
    It is a problem for me as a complete layman to know what to believe and some experts in a particular subject seem to think they are universal experts. Regarding medicine it has always been somewhat changeable, but we cannot argue that it is not moving in the right direction.
    In politics exaggeration and lies are absolutely essential to be elected and that involves the popular media.
    One can never be completely certain what to believe, but there are certain characteristics of things that are believable. One is that there must be a way to prove it or to show that something else is true; That's what make "religious truth" an oxymoron. In the hard sciences there has to be data' if there is no data, then there is nothing.
  3. Magnocrat's Avatar
    Yes I take your point just out of interest what are the essential hard sciences ? and do you think some knowledgeable pursuits are borderline ? Do you think the Popper test of falsifiability is essential?
  4. PeterL's Avatar
    Yes, falsifiability is essential to something being scientific. A decent understanding of physics and chemistry is essential to understanding. Medical things are more complicated, and the evidence may be very difficult to find. Finding errors in medical ideas is often a matter of learning more and more. The cholesterol myth is like that. Back when it was decided that cholesterol caused arteriosclerosis, the medical people were reasoning by correlation: the plaque was made of cholesterol, so e\excess cholesterol must be settling out of the blood in clums, but that reasoning was mistaken. Chpolesterol is being transported in the blood all of the time, and it is necessary for the human body, so something must be making it form plaques; this is what researchers realized in the mid-1980's, but they didn't know what caused the plaque, but they knew that it was something other an cholesterol. Since then a number of viruses and bacteria have been connected to the formation of plaque, and it became clear enough that cholesterol was not to blame, th\at the guidelines were corrected. The whole thing took decades, and I didn't know the facts until the late 1980's, but many people still falsely believe that cholesterol is to be avoided. A couple of years ago a physician even suggested that I have my cholesterol level checked.

    How much knowledge is enough? All knowledge, so I keep on learning.