demagogue on 25/2/2015 at 07:14
Scandal is the better word for what happens in politics when it's intentional.
At least to a lawyer, conspiracy has a very specific meaning of people cooperating to commit a crime, with a specific amount of intention & activity you need from each participant, which isn't really how it's meant in popular usage, which is more fuzzy and useless as a definition since too much can pass for it.
Actually, what I think happens most often is the public & leaders have selective attention, or confirmation bias, which is usually unconscious. The public is just more attuned to evidence that Iraq has a WMD program and ties to Al Qaida, they hear that signal emerging from the noise, and they won't be able to hear the accurate signal from the noise because they're not paying attention to it. They want to hear what confirms their suspicions even if it's noise, and they are more deaf to what contradicts it, even if there's actually a lot of signal to it.
Edit: If I learned one thing doing environmental law, the public feeds off the smallest hook of "uncertainty". If you can set up a situation as in any way uncertain, they will fill that gap with the worst (or most fantastic) case scenario -- aliens, cancer, autism, population control... And they won't let you do cost/benefit balancing with it (which is what you normally do with uncertainty), because then you're allowing people to get cancer or autism or anally probed by greys and doing nothing to stop it. It's all or nothing. Either we shut down all nuclear reactors, ban all GMOs, & occupy all Arab countries or cancer.
And all the while you have things like the lisene cartel or China's currency manipulations or the FDA's food pyramid or even just how food is stacked on grocery store shelves, actual risks out there, and people don't even see the risks at all.
faetal on 25/2/2015 at 12:59
Tony I'm not disputing the meaning of the word, and certainly it's unfair, but language evolves based on usage and the word conspiracy carries associations that make using it even in a technically correct context, counter-productive to getting your point across, particularly with how polarised a lot of the debate around conspiracies (the real ones) are. Allows people to reach straight for a tin hat diagnosis. I find that using less charged terms means that people listen for a little longer before reaching for canned opinions.
Stefan_Key on 6/3/2015 at 13:56
When I was 4-5 years old, I thought people were living, in the past time, in a black/white/grey world (in a sense, a colourless world) because I often watched some old black & white movies from the 30's/40's. Fortunately, that belief didn't last very long! :sweat:
nicked on 6/3/2015 at 15:32
I was probably 17 or 18 before I learned that an oblong is a rectangle and not an oval.
bjack on 6/3/2015 at 18:14
Quote Posted by nicked
I was probably 17 or 18 before I learned that an oblong is a rectangle and not an oval.
It can be either:
ob·long
ˈäbˌlôNG
adjective
1.having an elongated shape, as a rectangle or an oval.
noun
noun: oblong; plural noun: oblongs
1.an object or flat figure in an elongated rectangle or oval shape.
nicked on 6/3/2015 at 18:52
Nearly thirty... still stoopid. :D
Kolya on 7/3/2015 at 02:09
This is not necessarily a childhood belief, but for as long as I can think I've had an (occasionally) recurring nightmare where someone from my past shows up and hints that they know about something I've done. Eventually it occurs to me that I once killed someone that we both knew, possibly accidentally. But I was never caught and completely blocked it out. That's the most scary part, when I start remembering what I did and feel very alienated from myself. And then I'm confronted with the decision to either run away or take the responsibility and go to jail or kill the witness. I usually run, sometimes go after the witness, never go to jail.
When I watched A History of Violence a few years ago it was quite the Deja Vu, but it hasn't changed these dreams. I think I just feel guilty for having lived multiple lives that I can't easily reconcile, like most everyone else. I probably never killed anyone. But I've been meaning to ask my mother if she knows anything. I'm reeeeally looking forward to that talk.
Tony_Tarantula on 7/3/2015 at 06:07
Here's one that's a bit debatable, but I used to believe that the American education system was designed to make kids stupid. That might have had something to do with the fact that I was homeschooled and in a manner typical to some American minorities, my mother didn't feel bound by grade guidelines and would push whatever I could handle onto my plate with the result that I read most of the Greek classics by the time I was ten and completed Algebra 3 before starting high school. When I went into a normal high school I couldn't understand why the pace was so slow and why teachers expected so little from the students.
Now that believe that because...well, I've got a copy of a manual written for "change agents" to impose progressive education ideals on local school systems sitting on my shelf right now.
The first reviewer is describing the book accurately:
(
http://www.amazon.com/Change-Agents-Guide-Innovation-Education/dp/0877780390)
