Consept

OK so youre saying its impossible to come to truth at least in this government because the evidence will always be skewed to fit an agenda. So that means any evidence that has an agenda should be thrown out as well, ive come across many youtube documentaries that definitely have an agenda such as 'out of the shadows' for example, this is not to say theres not some truth in these docs but to deny they have an agenda would be dishonest. To come to this theory that they have an agenda I use my intuition in noticing the rhetoric is similar to right wing rhetoric, its heavy on christian fundamentalism and it appears to be backed by right wing people. (keep in mind im not saying theres anything wrong with any of the standpoints or that they should be dismissed simply because they take these standpoints) I know for a fact some people have come to conclusions about the government with documentaries like these, im not sure you brought up this particular one but there is another thread on it. So by your logic because this has an agenda behind it shouldnt this and most other documentaries should not be looked at as valid evidence? Also there is at least a chance some of these documentaries couldve been produced by people in government, thats not an ascertion, i really dont know but its definitely in the realms of possibility You might also say, of course docs are not valid evidence, but again the question remains, what is a good way to get to truth?

Fully get you what i was trying to do is come to a way we can establish truth that we can both agree in. Of course evidence is the default because it seems quite obvious if were dealing with material things ie we can see this person killed that person because theres video footage and dna at the crime scene. So if we are throwing out hard evidence which i dont mind doing at all, that has to be the case for any conspiracy you might have, lets stick with vaccines. We'll throw out the scientific evidence but that absolutely has to go both ways meaning, any evidence you have that can be considered scientific that says vaccines are dangerous also has to be thrown out as essentially its from the same source if its peer reviewed etc. So then what are we left with to determine truth? Youve mentioned intuition, ok so the question would be do you think thats a good way to establish truth, like if i had an intuition that vaccines are relatively safe and you have an intuition that theyre unsafe how do we determine who is right?

Well yeah obviously, there couldnt be an agenda that either side is trying to push, that goes for both government and any other stakeholders. Heres where you might run into problems if your belief is binary, on the other thread we had a truther (at least in standpoint) supplying evidence on vaccines, as well as someone looking on both sides. The evidence was scientific based and accepted as a legit foundation of truth, so if the evidence presented against vaccines was true that would be accepted and of course the evidence for vaccines would also have to be accepted. So the result like anything, was nuanced, overall vaccines are a positive but there are some issues with metals in some vaccines specifically for those with pre existing conditions. Looking at about 99% safe i might be wrong about that exact number but it would very high nonetheless. So using this model of aiming for truth we've come to a conclusion in our new government that we have to keep going with vaccines, however we need to work tirelessly to make sure theyre 100% safe, get rid of any that are potentially dangerous and make sure that anyone who has pre-existing conditions that could be affected by a particular vaccine does not take it. How does that sound for you?

Maybe I didnt get my point across clearly. Im talking about nuance as in grey areas so of course i wouldnt say for example 'the government does some good things so therefore it doesnt need improving'. What im saying is that to really know what improvements need to happen you have to unbiasedly look at say the government in this case, and say whats working and whats not working. To be able to do that, truth (real relative truth) has to be stuck to, what can get in the way of that is if you already have a binary belief that government is bad, as i believe 'truthers' do for the most part. If you have this belief its likely that you just want to rip and destroy this thing that has been improving and progressing for 100s or even 1000s of years. If you think about it most of the political debates we currently have are because of black and white thinking, abortion is a very nuanced subject, so is healthcare, so is welfare, having politics that just says one side is good and one is bad is completely ridiculous, but it exist because thats what most people vote in. If you have candidates that see 'yes i can see both sides and we need to find a solution based on the truth that we will investigate', who will vote for that candidate? You get the system you deserve and at the moment we think in this way which is why we have this system

I was trying to look but couldn't find anything just interested if anyone had some kind of list of Icke predictions and whether they came to pass or not. Even if they didn't I'm not saying he doesn't have value, I'm just wondering how accurate he actually is as hear a lot of people referring to him regarding conspiracy theories. He's been doing this for 30+ so there should be results by now

Great list and advice

I really believe you have to get past conspiracy theories if you want to grow as a person, not just conspiracies but any linear narratives you might have and hold on to, be it religion, politics, or anything. Why i say that is you have to be able to hold more than 1 idea in your head at a time. Could you look at the government and say they could be seen as both good and bad? Theres bad stuff they do but theres good stuff that is absolutely essential that they do. There doesnt have to be a binary decision, the conspiracy point of view is that they are unilaterally bad, thats why if i were to say at least in the UK, 'we have a national health service, if they were completely evil that wouldnt exist' people who believe the government are bad would call me a sheep and say i dont understand all the bad things theyve done, but im well aware of what theyve done and their colonial history. We're dealing with super complexed systems with millions of people and plenty of nuance within each person let alone the country, i dont even see how its possible to just make overarching statements. What we need to focus on in this context is whats true and whats not, having the opinion that everything is bad or good would cloud you from seeing any truth, which is ironic for a group called 'truthers' but is definitely true when you consider the confirmation bias that occurs. If you look at the other thread about Bill Gates that will be very clear

Fair points, i have learnt that its not as clear cut as i thought however i would say the pros far out weigh the cons, the cons shouldnt be dismissed though. I think a lot of this issue is that the government does not give you 100% of the facts for vaccines and they should do that even if the risks are 0.01% so at least you can make an informed decision, by them not doing that it builds distrust. To say that its better not to get vaccined for most people will not be true so it would be irresponsible to promote that as the a good option. So going back to the title of the thread i think it would be fair to say that Gates is not 'evil' at least in the context of vaccines, logically if you were planning to kill people or make people ill on mass, vaccines seem like a very ineffective way to do so especially as youll probably save lives along the way.

OK so watch for the come back here. Whats happened is @TrynaBeTurquoise has made the claim that vaccines are linked to autism and that there are solid peer reviewed scientific studies that confirm this. This is important because note that scientific research is considered valid evidence, so if the studies were to show that there was a link @TrynaBeTurquoise would feel thats a definitive result otherwise there would be no point in sharing the docs. After reviewing the studies most of which are not relevant, @Serotoninluv has confirmed that one vaccine has a causal relationship although there could be more in the meta analysis provided. So we can say there are areas that maybe can be looked into more but for the most part the studies show that there isnt much evidence for a link to autism. So the assumption would that @TrynaBeTurquoise is mistaken at least using the scientific method in this case, so the obvious next step would be to rethink and reevaluate your beliefs as the evidence that informs these current beliefs is incorrect. So lets see what happens next, will more evidence be presented or will we see the science be denied which would be shooting yourself in the foot (im very bored in lockdown if youre wondering lol)

What's happening guys, left side is me back in the day and right side is me not too long ago

There could be something to that conspiracy but the point is that you stop where the evidence stops and anything past that you can acknowledge that you are in the area of speculation, nothing wrong with speculation but ultimately you realise you don't know. What happens with conspiracy theorists is that they'll take that extra leap and say that it's definitely created in wuhan, then they might cite another of their favourite theories to back up this one and then it goes off the rails. As for the spiral dynamics I think you could have critical thinking at most levels but green and below tend to have narrow narratives that they believe so if they haven't developed critical thinking it's very easy for them to get into conspiracy territory. Once you get into yellow the narrow narratives tend to drop away so it would be less likely for you to fall into a conspiracy theory

I actually feel exactly the same, like it would be great if we could just talk about a topic without someone being stuck to a point of view because in that case you can really pick out the intricacies of the topic. Its very rare to find people that would do that, most of the time its setup as a debate rather than a mutual exploration. Content is really just a tool to help you come to conclusions so putting this arbitrary lump of content versus this opposing arbitrary content and seeing who.. i dont know, has the best content, is completely pointless. From a spiritual perspective you could even see truth as the absence of content but i guess thats for another thread

This discussion was never about a science or anything evidence based, as in i believe A heres the evidence and you believe B heres your evidence, lets see what parts of your evidence are correct and what parts of mine are correct and then we can come to belief C which is either a mixture of both or one or the other wholesale. If it was that it wouldve been over very quickly. So i wouldnt advise you to do that with conspiracy theorists. What you should is look at it from an epistemological level, with questions like how did you come to your belief, what evidence would be needed to change your belief. So really you want to look at the structure upon which their belief is built on (this doesnt just go for theorists it can be for any belief thats held to as a truth), if the structure is faulty then that will be very obvious. For example a christian might say 'i believe in god cos the bible says so' then you might say 'well does believing in a god because a book says a good way to establish truth, what about the bhagavad gita does that make that true as well?', which of course is impossible for them to answer if they want to stick to their narrative and reason for belief. Im simplifying it but i hope that makes sense. Theres guy on youtube who does street epistemology that i like, this will give you a better idea -

@TrynaBeTurquoise for the win!!! Close one but great knock out punch at the bell

@Serotoninluv right now

All good man, i completely get where youre coming from and its a long road for all of us. But i think pointing out where there are holes in your logic does ultimately help you along that road, it can be a hit to the ego but you know fuck that guy anyway lol. I just wanted to post this video because its exactly how i felt when i heard looked into this Bill gates stuff -

I feel you but ultimately we dont know everyones situation completely and also i didnt want the discussion to devolve into something else as its already quite a touchy subject

Yeah of course im only talking within the parameters of this thread. Science in 100 years will probably have evolved so much what were talking about now wont even make sense but forget the content we have to have a flexible mind that is able to discern relative truth over bullshit and a big part of that is not getting caught up and being completely steadfast in narratives whether that be mainstream or conspiracy theory. If you stuck at this point how would you ever even start to understand the highest truths? But respect to you anyway bro i think we've all learnt something here

I think a trap that some have fallen into on this thread is that they think there is a particular narrative or way of thinking that is right. What i mean by that is that maybe when they were younger they felt with 100% certainty that what they learnt in school was right, what the mainstream was telling them was right etc or at least they didnt question it. Now theyve switched to an anit-mainstream way of thinking, but the truth of it is to escape the matrix its nothing to do with the content or theories or whatever else youve attached yourself to, like say you change your mind on your current theories and move to another set youre still trapped in the idea that there is just one perspective that is right. To get out you need to realise that no one perspective is right, even a narrative is mostly an illusion, they package it up in docs and books but how much info do you think they are ignoring? Thats not to say they dont have value but thats when your discernment comes in, isnt a crazy coincidence that most conspiracy theorists settle on the same conspiracies and the same general narrative, what a strange coincidence that everyones out here doing independent research but they all have exactly the same narrative, that could of course mean 2 things, that narrative is the actual reality of the world so if you look hard enough youll find it, or that youve been fed the same stories and end up believing the same things. The way you are approaching this is holding your progress up, you may not see it now but you will at some point hopefully

Thats fine but the weight isnt balanced, you should scrutinise official scientific research as much as you can but you should also do that with the alternative research that has been presented here. For example there are many articles that just dont hold up to scrutiny that have been posted here, but you havent said ok maybe i was wrong about that. Yet articles that are scientific research you dismiss because without looking into because you say they are funded by agenda. OK so using your own logic that things that are funded by agenda are as useless as 'wild speculation,' the doc 'Out Of the Shadows' which is obviously funded by the right wing for their agenda and has been used several times here and i believe theres even another thread about it, should definitely be thrown out. Do you see that that is literally your own logic but it only seems to apply one way

I must say @Serotoninluv is in fire, ive learnt so much in this thread, so thanks for that. Its funny because it started off as a thread about conspiracy but actually its a real look at confirmation bias. I asked earlier what would need to be shown in terms of evidence or facts to make you question your belief and essentially its nothing, even with a doctor (not an appeal to authority) telling you first hand, so much evidence, logic and everything people still cling to these beliefs. Whats interesting is that the same weight is not put on the evidence that has been used to gain these beliefs in the first place, for example to know that vaccines are terrible for people, it might have taken a youtube vid, a book and some unverified sources and people will believe it without needing much else or but to dispute it they can have a doctor tell them first hand, they can have a scientific consensus with thousands of tests done, research etc etc but they still will cling to the original belief. If there was even one study that proved the autism and vaccine link that would be held up all over the place but yet there a thousands that dont prove it yet you dont accept them, so either the scientific research is valuable or its not, if its not accepted when you dont like the result then it shouldnt be accepted and even used as an argument when you do like the result. Do you see the fallacy of these viewpoints?

@TobiaRespect bro, takes a lot to look at yourself in that way

Still be respectful though, these are traps i know weve all probably been caught in, in the past and still get caught up in

I didnt say they were bad im just saying they would have an agenda, youre not watching unbiased docs, i would 100% feel the same if it was a doc funded by left wing people and had a very obvious partisan rhetoric, the point isnt where they sit on the spectrum its that theres an obvious agenda behind them. Conspiracy theorists big argument is that mainstream media cant be trusted because of those behind it, my point is that these docs that are being held up as proof against the mainstream media also are funded by similar people that are behind the mainstream media. Potentially its worse with the docs as the people are hidden. So its like escaping one matrix and getting caught in another

Guys look im not completely dismissing your docs, there is some truth in them but like @Serotoninluv says they only provide a very narrow view. You get entangled in them because they take facts but then adjust them to an agenda but the way they do it is pretty ingenious as they add fear, rebelian and many other factors that stoke the paranoia within you. I bring up the docs because its really the only thing people seem to point to. Now all these docs have some kind of backing esp the well produced ones, ive been recommended 2 in the last couple days one from the Epoch Times which is actually the second biggest funder of Trump facebook ads and Out of the Shadows which is very clearly funded by right wing people although its not clear who exactly. Now before you watched these kind of docs you wouldve never backed Trump about anything and rightly so given the ridiculous amount of examples of just shitty things hes done, which i mentioned in an earlier post. Now you back him in his decisions, regardless of the stories you tell yourself in your mind and regardless of how right you think you are, the fact is very clear you have changed your mind because of at least some right wing propaganda. The fact that its mixed with truth is beside the point of course they would do this to manipulate you. Look at things with nuance, its not just 'vaccine bad, so gates bad, trump no like gates, trump good' (im not saying guys think exactly like this but some on my feeds do), everything is super nuanced and i feel like a lot of you are blind to that at the moment. Im not worried about you because youre on here so you will develop past this but still it needs to be pointed out