TFTRH #27 - Michael Shermer


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvrHX0qRRMs


Dr Michael Shermer is founder of The Skeptics Society, and editor-in-chief of its magazine Skeptic. He's written several books on science and skepticism and his latest work is an audio-only 12-part course, for Audible and The Great Courses, called Conspiracies & Conspiracy Theories: What We Should and Shouldn't Believe—and Why. We cover the full spectrum of conspiracies, their history and context, their social and psychological causes and their very real effects. We discuss real and false conspiracies, and how to tell the difference. We then finish up with UFOs, the Intellectual Dark Web, and the Skeptical Movement.

Conspiracies & Conspiracy Theories can be found on Audible or via Amazon.
https://www.audible.com/pd/Conspiracies-Conspiracy-Theories-Audiobook/B07XH3YSD7?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XH2H2TP/?tag=cowboyprogra-20

Skeptic's Society and Magazine - https://www.skeptic.com/
Michael Shermer on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/Michael.Brant.Shermer/
Michael Shermer on Twitter - https://twitter.com/michaelshermer
Episode Web Page - https://www.tftrh.com/2019/10/09/ep...es-and-conspiracy-theories-the-great-courses/
Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podca...acies-conspiracy/id1462120258?i=1000452958335
 
I've made it a little more than half way through so far.

Listening to Shermer, he's one of those people who causes me to have to take a couple days to recover from the realization that I'm dumb as a rock. ;)

Great conversation.
 
Shermer at 49:00
External Quote:
No one argues that there's been this conspiracy to drive the arc of the moral universe toward freedom and justice, that there's been these secret operative forces to ban slavery and overturn capital punishment and end torture and give women the right to vote and gays the right to marry and so on. No one has a conspiracy theory about this.
Sure there's a conspiracy theory about this: that Jews are responsible for these awful destructive developments. A Nazi just tried to shoot up a synagogue in Germany because "Feminism is the cause of decline in birth rates in the West" and "The Holocaust never happened" and something about mass immigration, and "The root of all these problems is the Jew."
 
It's a good idea to find common ground by bringing up real conspiracies like MKULTRA and COINTELPRO, but those real conspiracies as well as false conspiracy theories about 9/11 or FEMA camps don't hold a candle to an actual government conspiracy to commit genocide, yet Holocaust deniers deny that one.
And in general, conspiracy theorists deny actual conspiracies by Nazi Germany or Al Qaeda or Russia, and substitute their own fake ones about crisis actors or Seth Rich or whatever. This is explained better by motivated reasoning than by other cognitive biases like agenticity. Agenticity may explain why people see conspiracies where there are none, like chemtrails, but it doesn't explain why they deny actual conspiracies and substitute fake ones.
 
External Quote:
1:29:16 Shermer: My one concern about it - this is really more about the atheist movement than the skeptical movement - is being too political.
1:31:40 Shermer: And even if you're a 9/11 truther, they're skeptics. So the skepticism thing is good, that's fine. Be suspicious of the government. The government does do suspicious things, that's OK. We should all be skeptical. Then it comes down to how do we know what's true, and that's really science is our best tool.
Calling 9/11 truthers "skeptics" muddies the waters. See my previous comment.

Shermer is a lifelong libertarian, and he's linked skepticism with libertarianism.
See for example: "Michael Shermer – Science, Skepticism And Libertarianism"
https://pointofinquiry.org/2009/05/michael_shermer_science_skepticism_and_libertarianism
External Quote:
Michael Shermer discusses skepticism and its possible relationship to libertarianism... He defends the position that skepticism should not remain apolitical — instead, he argues that skeptics should apply their skepticism to religion and God, pseudoscience and the paranormal, and also economics and politics.
What turned me off libertarianism was the prevalence of anti-government conspiracy theories about vaccines, water fluoridation, 9/11, mass shootings, FEMA camps, Global Warming, the Federal Reserve, the moon landings, anything that might justify government intervention.
 
Shermer at 49:00
External Quote:
No one argues that there's been this conspiracy to drive the arc of the moral universe toward freedom and justice, that there's been these secret operative forces to ban slavery and overturn capital punishment and end torture and give women the right to vote and gays the right to marry and so on. No one has a conspiracy theory about this.
Sure there's a conspiracy theory about this: that Jews are responsible for these awful destructive developments. A Nazi just tried to shoot up a synagogue in Germany because "Feminism is the cause of decline in birth rates in the West" and "The Holocaust never happened" and something about mass immigration, and "The root of all these problems is the Jew."
I have to point out that there were conspiracies to do progressive things or reach ordinary political goals. Especially if you apply the legal standards of the past. The attack on Harper's Ferry was a violent anti slavery conspiracy. many Unionist and feminist pioneers had to hide from the law even to meet or publish. A hundred years ago in Canada it was illegal to hold a meeting in a foreign language. We could say that the Dominion was conspiring against the Union movement or that the union movement was conspiring against the Dominion. Actual evidenced, well understood conspiracies are thick on the ground over the last 400 years! Why should we listen to any source that isn't working from this large a database? it's not like we couldn't study the phenomenon properly.
 
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